Who We Are

Soulfest exists to celebrate and advance the love of God and love for neighbor through an annual festival of Music, Love and Action. It is our hope that all who attend are moved to answer God’s call to live relationally with God and neighbor in their communities and throughout the world and to take action against any injustice that crosses their path.

The SoulFest Pledge

I want to live from the inside out as a soul-connected risk-taking follower of Jesus. With the help of God and my friends, I pledge to live the revolution Jesus started, one day at a time... because eternity begins today:

1) With myself and Jesus: I will further develop my intimate relationship with God by nurturing my soul, heart and mind and body, intellectually, and devotionally. I will take time to allow God to minister to my soul in silence, in prayer, in meditation, in music, and in the word.

2) With my family and loved ones: Charity will flourish in my actions and with my words, I will love my family, my spouse, my children, my brothers, my sisters, my parents, and all those who share my home.

3) With my neighbors: The people who live next to me, across the street and down the block. I will meet them, get to know them, serve them, love them, in action and in words.

4) With my community: I will use my gifts and talents to serve my community by serving those whom Jesus commands us to serve. Whether in a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, senior center, big brother/big sister program, prison ministry, local school, library, or any other point of need, I will commit to at least 2 hours of volunteer service each month.

5) With our church fellowship: I will commit to serve my brothers and sister unselfishly, allow Christ to use me to build his church and not try to make it mine. I will be more giving of my time, gifts and resources, to help the church be the body Christ calls us to be to each other and the world.

6) With my fellow inhabitants of this global village: I will regard each one as my neighbor. I will respond to those in need wherever they may live. I will work for peace, justice, and reconciliation wherever they are needed and I will give of my time, talent, and resources to lift up, encourage, and support anyone God brings across my path, regardless of race, religion, or class.

7) With God’s creation: I will intentionally accept the responsibility to be a steward of this beautiful earth God has blessed us with. I pledge myself to leave it better than when I found it, locally, nationally, and throughout the world.

I will... stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves • support the sanctity of life everywhere • build relationships that reflect Jesus’ priorities for all God’s purposes • fight against powers and principalities • become more aware of, educated about, and responsive to all indignities and injustices that enslave those who are weaker and who suffer from extreme poverty. I will not be silent or passive, because these crimes are so great an atrocity against the image of God. Today, this is my pledge to pursue True Love and live the revolution Jesus started.


What Brings You to SoulFest?


It's year number fourteen, number eight here at the beautiful Gunstock Mountain Resort. Some of you have been attending SoulFest since 1997, year one. Some of you are returning and some of you are here for the first time. We want you all to know that you are welcome here and that we are very excited that you are joining this Revival, this uniquely wonderful blend of risk taking, soul-connected, water-walking and True Love Believers.

We sincerely believe that whether you are aware of this or not, you have arrived here on your sacred adventure, for more than just the great music, the fellowship and the inspiration. We have great expectations that you will experience something profound, something so powerful, that you'll look back on this SoulFest experience years from now, as a pivotal point in your life. As an audience, we have a few requests of you, but one of the most important requests is that you expand your expectations as to why you are here to include something you were not expecting, something that will transform your life, this very weekend.

SoulFest, a name that was coined from The Inside Out Soul Festival, exists to inspire all who attend to grow in their understanding of God's love, so that our capacity to reflect God's love to everyone, everywhere, can increase. Each year there is a festival theme, one that we hope and believe is a trigger point for change in your life. A few years ago, we put a large rugged cross up in the Revival Stage arena, not to reinforce any cliché, but to invite us all; attendees, artists, speakers, staff, to consider whether or not we actually believe that in dying on the cross, Jesus actually paid the price for each and every sin, for everyone's sin, for all time. He covered the debt our nature creates. He set us free. Through this horrific act we are forgiven. The question is, why then do we hide some of our failures, live as though sin is greater than forgiveness, that there are additional conditions? What do you believe? Do you live and believe your debt is paid and your salvation is contingent, not on your capacity to stop sinning, "falling short of the glory of God," but on God's unconditional love which was made clear though Jesus on the cross and right on through to His resurrection.

We still invite you to come to the cross, to tap one of those nails, symbolic for a specific sin or sin in general, onto the cross, and then reach up and put your fingers back on the nail and decide whether or not you will leave it there. Try to be honest, because if you are going to truly take what happened on the cross at face value, your capacity to love yourself, love your neighbors, live the revolution Jesus started, increases, and you become unstuck. You are no longer governed by sin, guilt and fear, you are transformed, made new and the Good News flows through your life and actions in ways you could not otherwise predict or imagine.

Another year, the SoulFest Pledge emerged. We asked everyone who entered the festival, artist, attendee, staff alike, to read the pledge and sign it. The belief is that living from the inside out as a soul-connected believer in God's love will transform us. Thousands have taken this pledge and not just once. The SoulFest True Love Pledge has been printed on the back cover of the festival program ever since.

Then the SoulFest True Love Pledge walls were built and erected just inside the main entrance where you are greeted and given an opportunity to reflect your heart on a small piece of heart-shaped paper. The act of writing a few words, your expectation, your hope, your worry, your experience, and tacking it on the wall as you enter, seems to lay the ground work for something powerful to happen. By Saturday, the SoulFest Pledge Walls are completely covered with hopes and prayers written on hearts. Not only do we ask you to write and post one each day, but please spend some time reading what others have written. This whole process of writing, posting, reading, can ignite your loving heart.

The True Love exchange showed up a few years back, inspired by the simple idea and mutually beneficial process of expressing a practical need in writing, putting your cell phone # on the request and allowing God to supply your need as someone else reads your request, dials your number and you both begin to figure out how the spare dishwasher, washing machine, laptop, car, etc... is going to get into your life. Friends are made and we experience a fundamental truth that if we each truly trust that God loves us and will look after us, our capacity to share increases. By the way, on the other side of the True Love Exchange Wall, you'll find postings with phone numbers saying things like, I've got a spare bed, a sofa, set of tools, a guitar, frequent flyer miles, I'm a plumber and can volunteer some time, etc.... It's really a healing experience to confess your needs as well as loosen your grip on your possessions, because you believe that God will not forsake you or abandon you.

The Dollar Nightly Offering takes place each night at the Revival stage. We are asking everyone to put One dollar in the buckets to support the charity of that night. If you can afford more, fantastic, but if each person donates just 1 dollar, 4 charities will be helped significantly. One dollar a day, $4.00 for the entire festival and the 4 primary charities will receive essential fuel to reach more people with the Good News through their efforts to fight human trafficking, connect more orphans with families through adoptions, provide clean water and provide essential and vital support for women, young mothers who have been rescued from abduction by the LRA. Thank you for taking this to heart, and for your action.

True Love is everywhere is the SoulFest 2011 theme.


This theme addresses chronic fear and anxiety both of which inhibit our ability to experience what we've been called to experience. Fear and anxiety block, mute, diminish, and dilute our abilities to live the revolution Jesus started. While it seems life is constantly riddled with bad news, stories of horrific happenings, predictions of tough times, suicide as an epidemic among teenagers, kids dying from drug overdoses, families giving up on each other, house foreclosures, unemployment, oil spills, floods, wars, disease and depression is at an all time high. Its hard to see evidence of Love winning out in our lives, in our communities, in this world. At SoulFest this year, we're asking that if you simply believe God is omnipresent and if you believe God is Love, then God's Love, True Love, is everywhere. We need to believe that True Love will prevail if we are to grow further in our faith. Fear and anxiety will consume us and hinder our capacity to experience love, love ourselves, those we live with, our neighbors, and prevent us from being engaged in helping those in need. We're asking everyone to take a close look at whether or not you believe True Love is everywhere. If you do, then you can live with great confidence that nothing will separate you from True Love and True Love will ultimately prevail. Please review the festival program. Not only does it contain the daily schedule of events, and information about the charities we are highlighting, you'll also find some testimonies and essays from artists, authors and staff who are transparently writing about how they have experienced True Love, how they became victims of God's love, how this love transformed them and continues to daily transform them.

One of the key ingredients to the SoulFest experience is the annual Walk for Water produced by the Blood Water Mission. This vital one-hour walk takes place on Saturday at 11 AM. It's only a one mile walk of solidarity, but it will likely change your life. The walk gives us a visceral understanding of what thousands of people, mostly women and children, do daily. If they don't walk for their water, they will die. Risking their lives and many times, collecting polluted water, they have no choice unless we provide them with a deep water community well. In the past we've just taken an offering and the SoulFest attendees have funded wells. A few years ago, we learned of a few other organizations doing Water Walks and felt it was important to establish and annual Walk for Water at SoulFest. This walk takes only an hour. We will provide you with an empty bucket and directions to where the water is. If you can contribute a donation towards this year's well, thank you, if not, please walk just the same, collect the water and carry it back to the starting point. This will trigger a release of understanding that's essential to living as Jesus has told us to. You get the picture. If you're reading this program, you're likely somewhere within the festival grounds. Maybe you are sitting at the Gate Way Cafe or on the Mountain side waiting for Chris Tomlin. You'll catch a glimpse here in this program that there's so much more to experience here at SoulFest. Don't miss the Mountain top rare unplugged music performances in a panoramic breathingtaking setting, the candlelight experience at the Revival stage, the Soul University conversations and workshops, five different music performance stages, meeting some of the festival focus charities and discover where your sacred journey might be headed next. (The ministries include: Not For Sale, Show Hope, Child Voice International, Blood Water Mission, Gospel For Asia, the Amirah House and several others.) Gunstock has expanded their activities to include New England's longest Zip line. SoulFest will be fun, the music will be great, the fellowship like none other. We request that you allow yourself to grow further in your understanding of God's love.

By Fantastic Mercy,
Dan Russell & The SoulFest Team