A Ministry of Faith and Revival: Craig Church Testimony and Faithfest History
Written by: Ben Cox
From the: Current Summer 2025
Before I sat down today to write this last story for our July Edition of The Journey, the passages of Scripture came to my mind and I felt led to start my writing by simply posting these Words from God for you to read. It is my firm belief that when you get into the meat of Craig Church’s story you will be able to connect the dots between his calling and these verses.
You will see not only the foundation that this ministry is built upon, but you will also see where the strength comes from. That same strength will enable any of us to be strong and do exploits for the Lord and His glory to be revealed in the Earth in the critical times in which we live.
Luke 6:46-49
“Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”
Isaiah 40:28-31
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
Daniel 11:32b
“but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.”
Since 2007, when I first got into publishing a magazine on my own, the context of my life in Boone has always influenced the stories of those we choose to feature. And, of course, it influences what I write and how I interpret the times we’re living in. Therefore, on this nice Summer day in June 2025, my heart is filled with gratitude for the life my Lord has given me here in Boone, but also in the bigger context of my 70th year of living in the USA. I feel blessed to live in a nation that our Creator God has blessed, in spite of our nation’s many transgressions.
In much the same way as God chose to bless Israel when He led them out of slavery in Egypt, he has done the same for the relatively young nation we live in. As it relates to our nation in my lifetime, I have personally experienced many seasons of blessing and refreshing from the Lord! And there have been national times of revival and spiritual awakening too. The Jesus movement that swept the nation in the late 1960s and early 1970s comes to mind here. I won’t elaborate on that since I wrote about that in detail in the other article I did on Faithfest in this same edition.
However, I have also observed times when it seems clear to me, from my biblical mindset, that God’s judgements are being poured out on our nation. Many of the plagues and judgements that we’re experiencing resemble the ones we read about in the Bible when God was disciplining His people of ancient times. We see in those Biblical accounts that every time God enacted His judgments upon them, it was because they kept plunging headlong into hedonistic, self-absorbed behaviors and lawlessness while rejecting God and the Messengers / Prophets He sent to warn them. Yet every time they repented and returned to their senses and to Him He was willing to forgive and restore and bless them again. That is always GOD’S REDEMPTIVE PURPOSE couched within His judgements.
Though I lament the turmoil and seemingly steady descent we find ourselves in, I realize that the descent is being fueled by hedonistic thinkers who do not even realize they are under the control of the doctrines of demons. It particularly grieves me to see Christian people I know and love being pulled down into the mire of putting our hope in mere humans to save us when we know that the only hope for mankind is in Jesus!
But, it’s not just the ministry of mercy by reaching out to people in Jesus’ name that’s needed. We also need to let them know what Jesus told us when He was here. That is, we can have stability in the winds and storms of life if we will build our lives on the stability of knowing and obeying His teachings!! (See Luke 7:24- 27 above & also Matt. 7:24-27)
In the midst of all the upheaval we are witnessing in our nation and our world, it’s healthy for us to remember the importance of Scriptural warnings like this that we read about in passages like this one found in Hebrews 12:25-29:
“See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth (meaning Jesus), how much less will we, if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven? (meaning God the Father at Mount Sinai when He gave His people the 10 commandments) At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.”
That is why it was crucial in biblical times for God’s anointed Messengers to call that nation back to God. And that is why in New Testament times God still raises up messengers in the form of evangelists like Craig Church who, with the help of others, has raised up Faithfest for such a time as this.
As we’ll soon discover from Craig’s own testimony, Faithfest is not the Craig Church show, it’s God’s Church working together to find our place of connection with Jesus. From that place of connectivity with Him in His body, we can be HIS HANDS AND FEET THAT REACH OUT TO THE SUFFERING!
After my exhilarating personal revival experience at Faithfest 2024 and the exhaustion I felt from the strain of Hurricane Helene, it was with deep gratitude that we were able to get Craig and I to sit still long enough to do this interview. I was eager to hear Craig tell his testimony of how and when he became a follower of Christ. I was also intrigued to know about God’s call on his life to become an evangelist and how that led to Faithfest.
What follows are excerpts from that interview and other sources that will give you an understanding of Faithfest’s history, but you’ll also learn about Faithfest’s vision for the future!!
BEN
Just by way of introduction, I recently learned as I have been getting to know more about you that you have been in ministry since 1999. So Craig, can you give us a little background about first of all, your journey when you became a follower of Christ. And also how that led up to how FaithFest was birthed, and how your transformation led you to create the festival in the first place.
CRAIG
Well Ben before I get started with anything, I just want to praise the Lord because he has been so good to us. And what he’s doing in and through the ministry in the venue is, as Ephesians, chapter three, verse 20 says: “God can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works in us!” I’m thrilled to say, we feel like we’re getting to walk that out with what’s happening with Faithfest.
My personal testimony begins when I was saved at 15 years old. The Lord started dealing with my heart, when I had heard the gospel preached one Sunday at a church service I attended. It reached my heart in such a way, I knew I needed to respond, but I didn’t.
It wasn’t until that night when I was laying in bed that the convicting power of the Holy Spirit just overwhelmed me. And I knew I was a sinner, I knew I was in need of a Savior, and I knew that the gospel was true!!!
Though I had heard the message before I now had faith to believe that Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture and that after having been buried for three days, He rose again just like the Bible says!!
So I got up out of the bed and went to tell my daddy what happened. Upon hearing the news, daddy immediately brought me to my granddaddy’s house at about 10:30 or 11 that night. He was a pastor whose name was Clyde Church. He came out with his bedroom slippers and pajamas on. When we told my grandaddy what had happened to me he said, “Boy I’ve been waiting for you a long time.” And right there on the floor of my granddaddy’s study he called on Jesus with me to save me. That’s what started my journey.
BEN
So having been saved at 15 years of age in Wilkes County says to me that you must have been born and raised here in Wilkes County. Is that right?
CRAIG
Yes, I graduated from high school in Wilkes County and went on to college to become a teacher and a coach at West Wilkes High School. I coached Varsity baseball there for about seven or eight years out of college, I was doing that when the Lord started dealing with my heart about a calling. I knew something was missing even though our team was successful. We went deep into the state playoffs, and I couldn’t ask for more out of my career. But inside, I was miserable.
It was 1999 when the Lord really started dealing with my heart. It was at a Promise Keepers meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the old Charlotte Coliseum where the Lord just broke me. A man named Larry Jackson got up and preached on being a godly man in an ungodly world. And though I was a follower of Christ, I wasn’t sold out at that time.
So that night the Lord just started dealing with my heart and on the floor of the Charlotte coliseum Larry Jackson said, “I’m going to do something a little bit different. We’re going to have an open invitation so when the Holy Spirit of God speaks to your heart, you come.”
The Holy Spirit had been dealing with me for a long time. That night, I surrendered on the floor of the Charlotte Coliseum, saying to the Lord: “Lord, if there’s anything in this old boy you can use, here I am! I surrender my career, I surrender my family, my home. If there’s anything you can use. Here I am!!”
It took about four months to clean this old boy up! On December 12, 1999 at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church here in Wilkesboro I thought I was going to do something that’s not supposed to be done. I thought I was going to have to stop the preacher because the Lord stamped it into my heart that day that He was calling me to preach the Gospel. Though I didn’t know then how everything was going to work out, I just had faith that God was going to “do exceedingly abundantly above all that I could ask or think.”
So I started in ministry as a Pastor. I pastored for about seven years at Mount Pleasant Church as the youth pastor. Then I went to Miller’s Creek Baptist, where I was an associate pastor and then the interim pastor, until the Lord called me to the ministry that I’m in right now as an evangelist. It was about halfway through my time at Miller’s Creek that the Lord’s burning in my heart to be in full time evangelism increased dramatically.
I just got a passion to see people saved but I didn’t know how it was going to work out.
Evangelism is so different from pastoring a church. Years ago, those who were known to have the ministry of an evangelist would go preach revivals at churches every weekend. In that time period, you didn’t have to go to another nation to be a missionary. You could preach 3540 times a year and all the churches would support it. But now the spiritual climate has changed and our culture has changed and it is not like it once was back in the day. Since churches are declining not many are doing revival services anymore.
So how does an evangelist survive today? Or how do they answer the call to be an evangelist? Because I have pondered that and worked through that, I now believe the Lord’s called me to write a book to help others learn from the things I learned the hard way.
So it was about 18 years ago in 2007 the Lord spoke to us. He called us to get out of the boat, and we took a step of faith into full time missionary evangelism. The avenues, venues and the platforms are different today, but that’s what I’m called to do. I’m called to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, because I’m fully convinced that that’s what the world needs. That is the main thing that we can do to see people saved! It’s what the Apostle Paul referred to as “the foolishness of preaching” in 1 Corinthians 1:21-25:
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
So when we started I would just go wherever God opened the door. I was going to churches. I was also going around to different nearby states. Then it got to be national and international. The Lord’s blessing was on the ministry and it was in 2015 when I was coming back from a mission to Haiti the Lord communicated to my heart to do something like we did in Haiti at home.
That’s when I started paying attention to Merlefest, which is a local Americana festival that brought in 30 to 50,000 people on the last weekend in April. As I was thinking about that it was like the Lord spoke in my spirit: “Why can’t you do that for me?”
I shared what I was feeling with one or two other people, and then we just started praying. It wasn’t until the latter part of 2016 that God opened the door for me to get in front of the people at Merle fest. So I got in front of the committee at Merle Fest and told them what God had laid on my heart. And surprisingly to me, they embraced it, and they said we’ve been looking for another festival. And so that started the inroad to Faithfest.
One dear friend of mine named Randy Brooks, who co-owns Gardner Glass had me minister to the employees when I was in town like their company chaplain. So I came back from that meeting with the Merlefest Committee and Randy asked “Well, how did it go?” I told him that they embraced the idea and that we would probably start in 2018. That would give us over a year to prepare and to get everything together. That’s when he looked at me, and he challenged me to the core that day. He said, Craig, what are you waiting on? And I said, I don’t know. And he looked at me, and he said, Let’s do it.
So it was that day, after I talked to the committee and talked to Randy, that we took a leap of faith not knowing what in the world, or how in the world, we could do it. We just knew that God was calling us to do something here. And so anyway, that’s how it was birthed in Wilkes County. We did our first faith Fest in 2017.
I want everybody to understand something Ben. Faithfest is not a concert. Faithfest is so much more than an event. It’s an experience!!
We do Faithfest for one reason. If you ever want to know what Faithfest Evangelistic Ministries is all about, it’s this: We are an event producing Evangelistic ministry. Our whole goal and purpose is to gather people in the presence of the Lord and present the gospel through word and worship and give the Holy Spirit of God an opportunity to change lives.
That’s all we’re about. We recruit the musicians and the main speaker for the Word of God to be preached. But all those things are done to gather people together so they can hear the Gospel, and either come to know Jesus in a personal way for the first time or to grow closer to Him.
Because the Bible says “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” that’s our job, to gather hearts and then proclaim the Word through preaching, testimonies and and through the songs and the ministry that takes place from the stage, it prepares the way for the Holy Spirit of God to do what only He can do. And so that’s what Faithfest is all about. That’s what we’re all about. I’ve given the rest of my life to seek and to save, and so that gives you a little bit of background and a birth of FaithFest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
BEN’S FINAL COMMENTS
When I set up this interview with Craig Church. I asked him to provide me with more material that fills in the blanks of what Craig just told me in this interview. Plus I wanted to hear the vision God has given him and his team for the future. What follows is the rest of the story that we the church need to know so that we can pray and sow into what God is doing in Wilkesboro while following their example in the counties where we live to pray and plan for the harvest that he wants to bring on the mountaintops of Western NC!!
The History of FaithFest: A Testament to God’s Faithfulness
FaithFest is more than just a music festival—it is a movement of God, birthed in prayer and driven by a passion for evangelism, revival, and family restoration. Founded by full-time missionary evangelist Craig Church, FaithFest has grown from a vision placed on his heart in 2015 into one of the most impactful Christian events in the region.
The Vision: A Call to Minister at Home
Craig Church, having been in ministry since 1999-2000 and in full-time missionary evangelism since 2007, has traveled extensively, preaching the gospel both locally and internationally. In 2015, after a mission trip to Haiti, the Lord placed a burden on his heart—not just for the nations, but for his own community. While seeking God’s direction, Craig felt led to create an event that would bring people together in the presence of the Lord, where the gospel could be preached and lives could be transformed.
For nearly a year and a half, Craig prayed for clarity. He didn’t know what the event would look like, but he knew God was calling him to do something in Wilkes County, North Carolina. As the vision became clearer, FaithFest was born—a gathering designed not only to reach the lost but also to revive the church and restore biblical family values.
The Early Years: FaithFest Begins (2017-2019)
In 2017, the first FaithFest took place on the Watson Stage at Wilkes Community College, inspired by the town’s long-standing music festival, MerleFest. The organizers of MerleFest welcomed the vision, providing valuable insights on organizing a large-scale festival.
The inaugural FaithFest drew around 4,000 to 5,000 attendees, featuring contemporary Christian artists, powerful preaching, and testimonies of God’s faithfulness. The following year, in 2018, FaithFest saw exponential growth, welcoming Casting Crowns as a headlining act and drawing an even larger crowd. Each year, the festival continued to expand, becoming a highly anticipated event in the Christian community.
Overcoming Challenges: A New Home for FaithFest (2021-2022)
By 2021, FaithFest had outgrown its original venue. Wilkes Community College informed the team that the festival had become too large to host on campus. This led to a season of uncertainty. Craig and his team sought the Lord’s guidance—was this the end of FaithFest, or was God leading them to something greater?
After an extensive search for a new location in Wilkes County, God provided a miraculous answer in 2022. Through a divinely orchestrated meeting at a local restaurant, Craig connected with a key landowner who offered 38 acres of land in Wilkesboro. This land would become the FaithFest Venue, a permanent home for the event.
FaithFest Venue: A Monument for the Gospel (2023-Present)
The new venue was more than just land—it was an opportunity to create a place where God’s presence would be hosted year-round. In the center of the venue stands a 110-foot cross, a visible reminder of the hope and salvation found in Jesus Christ alone. This cross serves as both a landmark and a declaration of FaithFest’s mission: to gather people, proclaim the gospel, and give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to change lives.
In 2023, FaithFest celebrated its largest crowd yet, marking a new chapter in its history. By 2024, the festival expanded to a two-day event, featuring renowned evangelist Franklin Graham and Clayton King. That year, FaithFest witnessed 350 decisions for Christ and 108 baptisms, a powerful testimony of lives transformed by the gospel.
Expanding the Vision: FaithFest’s Future
Looking ahead, FaithFest continues to grow, with plans to:
• Build a permanent stage for worship events
• Develop an indoor event center to host conferences and ministry gatherings year-round
• Launch a sports ministry, using athletics as a platform for evangelism
Each step is taken in faith, trusting God’s provision and guidance. The festival remains committed to its mission of gathering people, proclaiming the gospel, and allowing the Holy Spirit to work.
A Ministry of Faith and Revival
FaithFest is more than just an event; FaithFest Evangelistic Ministries is a year round ministry with a focus on revival. it is a movement of revival. Every year, it brings together thousands of people—from believers seeking renewal to those encountering Christ for the first time. It provides a space for families to grow in faith, for churches to be strengthened, and for individuals to step into their calling.
As Craig Church often says, “All we want is what the Lord wants.” FaithFest stands as a living testimony of what God can do when His people seek His face and step out in obedience.
To God be all the glory, honor, and praise!
