The story of “Revelation Generation” begins quite awkwardly for me. I had just begun my second pastorate here and had decided to take the students to this new music festival with a name that I wasn’t crazy about. Long story short – Rev Gen got rained out and headed to Philly. The following year, we attended and the kids loved the Philly Stage and stayed for Newsboys. Last year was exactly the same, kids loved Philly Stage, and the Newsboys did the exact same set list, down to Peter telling the same stories. We left during Breakfast in Hell to beat the traffic. After that, I was fairly certain that we would not return (We have a saying in Texas, “That says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again”). How could we return for a fourth year? Well, we’re glad we did and here’s why.
What I liked about Rev Gen:
1. The excellent line-up. The Philly stage attracts a number of our students. The NY Stage has gotten alot better. One year they had Brian Latrell (I believe he was a Backstreet Boy and I refuse to Google that for any type of confirmation). Opening bands like the Fold and Seabird were steps in the right direction. Then headlining bands like Relient K and Switchfoot tell people like me that they are really trying to make this a great event. There were more tents like the Urban Stage, the Come and Listen Stage (which is a label that gives away free music), and the Nashville Stage which had Bethany Dillon, Jon Foreman, and Derek Webb. (I really, really liked that they invited Derek and didn’t censor him. He’s an important prophetic voice in the Church and along with many of my friends, we were grateful he was there).
2. We didn’t do the Friday concert last year but this year, they had Jars of Clay, Matt West, Delirious, and Mercy Me. For most of us, wanting to hear Jars do new songs off “The Long Fall Back to Earth” was the reason we came Friday. The unfortunate thing was we underestimated a couple of things. Some of our students had just returned to school and so by the time we left, we missed most of the bands. Two, Jars wasn’t headlining. Three, Mercy Me was. And Four, it wasn’t really Jars’ best show. Not a big crowd yet, not very energetic either. Then Jars said they lost track of time and were told they had just played their last song. Frankly, I think the concert organizers should have let them play their last song, it was clearly an accident and they are an established band. I don’t know the business of putting on concerts but I’m pretty sure Jars has earned enough respect to play one more. So in the most anti-climatic way, Dan took the blame, apologized for not paying attention to the clock and said something like, “We want to be invited back so we’ll say good-bye here.” I thought it was pretty classy to submit to the stage manager and end their show the worst way possible. I know I’m not being complimentary but it was an awkward moment that Jars handled really well and it spoke to me a bit.
3. Unless you go into the merchandise tent, you don’t feel that you are at one of those cheesy Christian concert events. The production is fantastic from the signs a few miles away directing you how to get this to obscure farm to the numerous workers and volunteers that create a presence of “we know what we are doing so don’t get any ideas.” They have great signage, very professional looking stages, and enough porta-potites to “facilitate the pending needs” of their own feeding of 5000.
4. Cheap Water. Bottled water was only a dollar. I still think water bottles should be allowed in because there are no water fountains but $1 water is a fair deal. Speaking of concessions, food tickets do help eliminate lines at the actual food booths – nice job.
5. I appreciated the leader tent, (even though they seemed a little more stingy with the water this year).
6. All the workers, volunteers, security measures, demonstrate their professionalism and communicate that they are serious about keeping control of this event. This is important to me because too many Christian events are put on by well-intentioned churches with not enough expertise or volunteers and people, students especially, find the weak spots and exploit them. For instance, there is only one way to actually get in. The perimeter is fenced in very well and monitored. As a youth pastor, I like this level of safety and security and aside from a few check-ins, our students roam as they please and check in with me every so often so I can make sure they are hydrated and more importantly not hanging out with home-schooled kids from the hyper-fundamentalist church ;-)
7. Loved going with Tim Nye, Josie, and my youth group. Also loved seeing my friends, Evan Curry, Eric Couch, Charlie Lyons Pardue, KJ Marks, and appreciating seeing Rob Schwinge.
Stay tuned for what I didn’t like.
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