The festival featured a number of Christian bands who used their performances as a platform to preach the gospel. | Courtesy of Emily Lewis

A four-day music festival for University of Southern California students, organized and put on by the United House of Prayer, Youth With a Mission Circuit Riders and Biola’s own Revive ministry kicked off Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 25. At this free campus-wide event, Revive — a prayer ministry led by Biola students — partnered with these ministries and a group of Christian students at USC to bring the gospel, along with what they tag-lined “New music. New people. Four shows. All new bands. Irresistible.”

Joe West, a junior biblical studies major here at Biola, attended Friday’s concert and spoke of the student response to the gospel.

“It shows in a sense how eager people are for a gospel that makes sense to them,” West said. “I heard a lot of people at USC say ‘I’ve never heard of Christians like you guys,’ or ‘I’ve never heard it like this before.’ I think a lot of the non-Christians were really impressed by how real it was.”

West also said he hoped to see Biola involved in future events like Launchfest.

Biola students pray and attend event

“It’s like a concert, you can just go and have an opportunity to talk with people … Biola should go and love on people. It’s super easy,” West said.

David Walton, director of Revive, said that the day before Launchfest, about 130 students involved in Revive met together and prayed over the event.

“I know personally of at least 20 or 30 [Biola students] who went,” Walton said. “We want to go out and not promote ourselves but to go out and promote and lift up other ministries, and that’s kind of what it was for Launchfest.”

There were at least 150 students that raised their hands and came forward to receive Christ when the gospel was preached at Friday’s concert, according to Kurtis Love, a graduate of YWAM. Chloe Brennt, a member of Circuit Riders, shared that the student response was not hostile, but that students had a genuine desire to know about Jesus.

USC alumnus Charles Jones (‘07), who sings professionally, opened Launchfest on Tuesday afternoon with simply his piano and voice. Jones, who performed at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, came out to play at USC for free. The three days of mini-concerts were held at the Tommy Trojan statue on campus, and about 200 people showed up that first day to listen as Jones played piano and sang about the gospel.

Lead singer Jake Pappas of the indie-folk rock band J. Thoven performed some music from the band’s latest album on Wednesday afternoon, and Mac Montgomery and the FMLYBND took the stage Thursday, drawing another large crowd.

“In the beginning, we didn’t want to scare people away by talking about Jesus; we just wanted to get them excited about the concert,” Love said. “But we found that they were drawn to that music, and more people showed up when we were singing about Jesus than when we weren’t.”

Friday evening’s concert with United Pursuit was the main event, with an estimated 1,000 students present. A guitarist who works with House of Prayer in Kansas City, as well as DJ Shenanigans, drew a crowd of students with some live funk and dub step. Brian Brennt, the speaker for the event, spoke about the secular portrayal of God and how Jesus wants everyone to know and encounter him personally.   

Moving forward

YWAM’s follow-up plan for the new believers, according to Chloe Brennt, is two-fold. The various Christian clubs on campus came up with a plan to visit each student who filled out a connection card after coming forward to receive Christ, at their dorm. From there, they are working on meeting up with each student individually to do one-on-one discipleship and continue teaching them about Jesus.

This was the first music festival put on by YWAM’s Circuit Riders on a secular college campus in California, and according to both Love and Brennt, they plan on doing more.

“They [USC students] heard that we're doing UCLA next and they’re asking ‘When is it?’ ‘What’s it going to be called?’ ‘We want to be there.’ So they’re already wondering about the next one, and they’re going to bring their other unsaved friends to it,” Love said. “This was a start to something big. We’re going to see this happen on every college campus in America … This was the initial launching point.”

The Circuit Riders, a smaller program of YWAM, go from campus to campus to preach the gospel and see people come to Jesus. Brennt, a graduate of YWAM’s program and a circuit rider stationed in Huntington Beach, gave a charge to Biola students.

“The gospel is good news, and Jesus wants everyone to know it. There’s not a good time to preach the gospel, it’s always time,” he said.

Lack of Christian publicity of no consequence

According to the Daily Trojan, USC’s campus newspaper, the misleading publicity of Launchfest may have left many students feeling tricked into being presented with Christian music. While it asserts that an awareness of the concert’s Christian affiliation would have attracted more students to the event and fostered a better attitude towards it, Love says this was of no consequence.

“When we started talking about Jesus, nobody actually left … I don’t feel like they felt misled or anything; it may have shocked them, but nobody left and people were interested in what we were saying,” Love said.