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Wild Goose Festival: A brief review

posted by Tim Nafziger on 06/26/11 at 11:53 PM

This afternoon was the conclusion of the four-day-long Wild Goose Festival. The setting for the festival was Shakori Hills, a farm half an hour south of Durham, N.C. It was inspired by the Greenbelt Festival, a long-running U.K. Christian festival known for its combination of strong musical acts and speakers that bring together arts with social justice and peace. Charletta and I attended the festival twice while we were in England and found it to be an energizing and renewing space. And so I had high hopes for Wild Goose, which aimed to be bring the Greenbelt model to the United States.

For once, I have no photos to share, although both the setting and the festival were beautiful. The focus of my time there was conversation with those who were (or might be) drawn to the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams. And the connections were there to be made in abundance. I found dozens (if not hundreds) of people who had never heard of our work and were very interested.

While the list of presenters was extensive and impressive, for me, the conversations at the event was the most striking. As people came by the CPT booth, I found that again and again they showed deep interest and connection with our work. Festivalgoers seemed to grasp the way that our work flows out of a biblical call to justice.

I also appreciated the way the speakers followed through on their promise to do more than just show up and talk. Many well-known authors could be seen wandering around the festival ground talking to people and sampling the food.

Though I didn't watch much of the music, it was fun to watch musicians as different as Michelle Shocked and the Psalters sharing the stage on the last evening of the festival.

If you're interested in learning from Christians outside the Mennonite church drawn to similar values, this is a great place to start. I hope that the festival will be an annual event for many years to come. It creates a much needed space for conversation and connection. Perhaps most tellingly, as the festival ended I found myself wandering around the farm saying good-bye to friends new and old who I got to know better during the week.

The one major challenge organizers will need to contend with is figuring out to attract more than just white people to the gathering. Though there was some diversity among speakers, the audience was a sea of white.

Nafziger_tim_2_thumbnail Tim Nafziger is a activist, writer, organizer and web developer. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Charletta where he attends Living Water Community Church. He is the administrator for the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and serves as Outreach Coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams. For more about his life, read his first blog post.