With and For Our City - Bragg Jammin'

While all of the numbers are still being counted from this year's Bragg Jam Music and Arts Festival, from all indications this year was a BIG success! This was Bragg Jam's 10th Annual festival and included 8 different venues all over the city. The crowds at the 567, Capitol Theater, Rookery, and up and down Cherry Street looked great and I have heard nothing but positive things about the music.

Bragg Jam is good for our city for a number of reasons, including:

The great celebration of Macon musicians (not just ancient, but current)

A great exposure to the positives of downtown Macon (restaurants, cafes, theaters...)

A great boost economically for downtown businesses (not just venues but all businesses)

A growing interest in participation from those outside of Macon (tourism)

For those reasons and more, New City Church is proud to be a Bragg Jam venue (already signed up for 2010) and we are proud to support our city and the festival by volunteering. This year's festival had a total of 116 volunteers. New City supplied 38 volunteers for the festival who served in 8 different locations. David Wilson, a Volunteer Coordinator for Bragg Jam said in an e-mail to me:

Keith,

Thanks again for all of your help. It was instrumental to making this happen and we could not have done it without New City.....no doubt!

And in a second e-mail David wrote:

Thanks again for all your help Keith.

Those numbers demonstrate that over one third of our volunteers came from New City Church!?!?!?! All I can say is Wow and Thanks Again so much!!

One day I will get to write about all of the opportunities that came our way because we loved our city in tangible ways, and I can't wait! Thanks New City for loving Macon! I think this is yet another step toward our vision as we dream of being a church that celebrates the arts and looks for creative ways to engage our culture, a church willing to cross traditional lines and take significant risks to bring Jesus into the public square!