A whopping 11,000-plus people, it’s estimated, attended the second year of the Christian music festival over Labor Day weekend at Five Rocks in Gering. While organizers are ecstatic that so many people enjoyed top-notch music artists, lots of fun games & activities and market vendors, and delicious food, they’re especially excited about the incredible impact the two-day festival made on people, including those who decided to give their life to Christ.
JEFF FIELDER Editor
GERING – Brent Holliday, president of the Horizon Music Festival, used the words “phenomenal” and “remarkable” to describe this year’s event at Five Rocks in Gering.
Those words certainly seem to be spot-on, based on the incredible turnout for both days of the festival as well as the impact the event made on people.
A whopping 11,000-plus people, it’s estimated, attended the second annual Horizon Music Festival, and an estimated 8,000 people enjoyed the headliner concert featuring Skillet, one of the top rock bands in the world.
But while those numbers are eye-popping, especially for a second-year festival located in the Panhandle of Nebraska, what made Holliday and other organizers smile the most was seeing the positive and even life-changing impact the event had on people.
“Every year everybody asks, ‘What do you think the attendance will be?’, but my reply has always been, ‘I don’t want to measure success on how many people show up. I want to measure success on how many lives are touched by their experience at the Horizon Music Festival.’ I’ve heard so many comments and stories about how the Horizon Music Festival has impacted individuals on a personal level. That’s what Christ is all about — relationships. He wants to have a relationship with us, and He also wants us to have relationships with everybody else. So, our vision for this festival was to get people back together for fellowship, and I feel we accomplished that.”
Just like the first year of the festival, this year’s event took place over Labor Day weekend. An estimated 8,000 or so people showed up to enjoy the first day of the festival (Saturday, Aug. 31), which featured the following music artists: Remedy Drive, Leanna Crawford, Blanca, and that evening’s headliner, Rhett Walker.
The following day – Sunday, Sept. 1 – the grounds at Five Rocks were even more packed as artists’ Chase & Co., Rare of Breed, Colton Dixon, and Skillet took the stage. Some people believe the crowd for Skillet’s concert, which filled a huge portion of Kahuna Park, was the largest gathering ever for a concert in Scotts Bluff County.
You can read the entire story in the September 2024 issue of Nspire Today! magazine. A one-year subscription (12 issues) is only $20. You may sign up for a subscription by sending $20 to Nspire Today!, P.O. Box 454, Scottsbluff, NE 69363, or you may pay with a credit card by calling 308-220-8907.
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