If you think two guys praying at the gas station is a public menace, then you’ll flip out over the plan to bring thousands of pious celebrants to snarl traffic in Sioux Falls:
LifeLight will hold its new festival at a local stadium.
The Christian organization announced Tuesday that City Fest will be at the Sioux Falls Canaries Stadium on August 26-27.
The stadium holds 18,000 people, and ticket information will be available soon. Tickets will be free, but there will only be a limited number for the public [“LifeLight to Hold City Fest at Sioux Falls Canaries Stadium,” KSFY, 2017.04.11].
From thousands of campers and an average 130,000 concertgoers at the rural Worthing concert site to a mere 18,000 tickets at the Sioux Falls stadium? Wow—better start praying for tickets!
The move does seem to make sense from a Christian perspective:
“The festival has gotten, frankly it’s gotten harder to fund, most years we’re short and yet our vendors have been very very patient with us over the years in paying the bills,” Greene said.
So Greene and other organizers searched for a new way to better use their ministry dollars while still reaching those in need.
“The homeless and homeless children in public school and the human trafficking, and people who need food and clothing, we’re partnering with these other ministries to reach those people within our city, launching what we call 60 days to unite a city, servesiouxfalls.com,” Greene said [Bridget Bennett, “LifeLight to End Worthing Festival, Shifting Focus to Sioux Falls,” KSFY, 2017.02.02].
Spend less on partying, more on service—yeah, that’s probably worth an amen. Just don’t say that amen at the gas station, or my “Americans First” neighbors will make fun of you.
Sioux Falls Stadium seats 4,462 for baseball, according to its web site. To get to 18,000, one must assume that most of the playing field will be filled with concertgoers standing or sitting in close proximity.
They can say whatever they want at the gas station and you can say whatever you want about them. That is called freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
I thought LifeLight had plans to expand its ministries to Iraq a few years ago. Whatever happened to that? They had to settle for Sioux Falls?
Use the Delmont Field for this! Most excellent for sure. Would be the Woodstock of the times for the small village. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/south-dakota/articles/2017-04-09/longtime-delmont-baseball-program-dissolves
Sponsors could pony up the 20K and let’r rip! Bring out old Ted Nugent for the event, a lot of folks say that he is kind of religious in his way, so let’r rip indeed!
Chris, it’s possible they burned up so much money running LifeLight that they didn’t have money left to make that expansion. This scale-back could make sense from a service perspective: throwing a huge party is fun, but if it isn’t translating into more church fellowship, membership, ministry, and social work, is it really a core church mission?
How does LifeLight get away using a name so similar to LifeFlight-a non-profit operation to keep medical helicopters in operation?