FaithFest 2025 still has room to improve, but offers hope in the midst of struggle.

If you know me, you know that my other great love, besides Jesus and writing, is music. This weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Wilkesboro, North Carolina for a Christian Music festival called FaithFest.

If you have no idea what that is, allow me to explain. FaithFest is a two day music festival held in western North Carolina. Based in Wilkesboro, FaithFest’s open air venue is unmissable — you’ll know it when you arrive, because there is a giant white cross erected on the grounds.

FaithFest is a great experience for Christian music lovers, and it does have some things I’ve never seen before I began attending. One of those things is what the festival calls a “special friends” tent. For the first 150 families with a special needs attendee who register each year, the festival provides free tickets for the guest and their immediate family, access to premier parking, assistance getting in and out of vehicles, a tented seating area, special food, and more.

Special Friends: FaithFest’s disability friendly option

This is where things get tricky for me as a concertgoer who qualifies for the special friends perks. Since it’s hosted in a large, open-air venue, I had to contend with a lot of gravel and grass. We’ve struggled for a few years with getting the parking attendants to realize we needed to park our handicapped van close because I am in a wheelchair and our van has a ramp. The path to get to the special friends’ tent, even from the premier parking, is long. The special friends tent is also crowded and can be noisy, with large fans to keep people cool and guests talking between and sometimes during artist performances.

Thankfully, Special Friends are given a wristband and are allowed to enter and leave the tent as needed, so my mom and I were able to go out once it cooled off later in the evening and sit with our friends in the main open-air portion of the field.

Although I didn’t need to utilize them this year, I was pleased to learn that accessible restroom trailers were rented, providing accessible grab bars by the toilet. I still hope that FaithFest will consider either purchasing a few such trailers or building an appropriate permanent facility in the future. Past years featured porta-potties that required me to be transferred from my chair to another chair and be assisted to the toilet.

The music was enjoyable, although there were noisy fans, sound system errors, and other issues that made it difficult to hear on occasion. One of the highlight of the Saturday night sets, for me, was hearing artist Phil Wickham perform “What an Awesome God”, a refresh of Rich Mullins’ 1988 song “Awesome God”.

Speakers and other important information

The festival also features a brief sermon or motivational speech, and this year, we had the opportunity to hear from Pastor and author Greg Laurie, whose autobiography became the basis for the 2023 film Jesus Revolution. While I didn’t agree with everything Pastor Laurie shared, I was pleased to see it reached some of the young people there.

The number of people at Faith Fest also presented problems. As we moved to our seats or left each night, we had to be careful of people not paying attention and other cars in the makeshift, grass “premier parking” area.

Overall, if you enjoy such events, I recommend trying FaithFest at least once. Note that booking a hotel as soon as possible is essential because rooms sell out quickly. If you’re so inclined, you can also camp at the grounds.

You can find out more about it at https://faithfestnc.com/.

As I close this blog, let’s talk: Do you enjoy events like FaithFest? Have you ever encountered accessibility or other issues at events like these?