Why We Cancelled Fall Festival 2010

Recently our leadership made a very tough decision to cancel our Fall Festival for 2010.  This has been a very popular event both within our church and in our communities and has blessed many people so this decision was not an easy one.  However, I am convinced that for this particular year it is the right decision (we may decide to do it again in 2011).

2010 is an unprecedented year for our church.  We have opened a third campus and started a Thursday night service at our Dalton campus.  We have added hundreds and hundreds of new people into our church.  We have increased our missions giving (locally & globally) by a substantial amount.  However, our resources are limited.  Our budget income has not increased from 2009 levels, our Next Step Campaign is 30% behind projections, and our local economy is still struggling.  Additionally, our staff is working harder than ever to lead, shepherd, and connect people to Christ at a time when we numerically need to add new staff.  Several key ministries are in need of more volunteers.

Given those realities the wise thing for us to do is to focus our limited resources (staff & money) for the greatest impact. We have always tried to be a simple and intentional church.  This means we deliberately choose to do only a few things and those few things must have an intentional or clearly defined purpose that aligns with our mission. The areas of greatest impact in this church are undoubtedly our regular large group and small group gatherings of adults, children, and teenagers.  Our call during this season is to focus relentlessly and almost exclusively on these environments and the people they are impacting for the glory of God.

A common question is doesn't Fall Festival impact thousands of lives and bring new people into the church? The answer is yes and no.  Yes, on that one night thousands of people come out to the festival but we have never seen new growth in our church from Fall Festival.

Another question is what if someone donated the money for Fall Festival, could we have it then? If someone wanted to give the church money I would encourage them to give it where the church most needs it.  Our staff and elders believe that the best place for God's money to be leveraged right now is funding our core ministries (worship, small groups, children, students, and missions), adding new staff in response to our rapid growth, and continuing to pay off the Next Step construction loan to reduce future debt load on the church.  We see this practice in the New Testament where people would give money to the church, and the church would distribute it where it was most needed (see Acts 4:34-35).

A similar question is since we have lots of people willing to volunteer at Fall Festival, can't they carry the load? Fall Festival has typically had great volunteer support.  But again the question is one of priority.  Right now we need more volunteers in almost every area of our church, most especially small group facilitators/hosts and children's ministry servants. Acts 6:1-7 shows an example of people being asked to serve where the church most needed it.  Fall Festival is simply not the area of greatest need right now in our church.

I continue to ask for your prayers because we need God's wisdom to navigate these waters of uncertainty.  While we can never be 100% certain, we can be 100% clear.  Our clarity comes from our mission of connecting people to Christ, our values that include being intentional, and our strategy of large groups and small groups.