WILLMAR - The sun might be setting on the Sonshine Festival. For the first time in its 35-year history, the Christian music festival has canceled its summer event.
According to the festival's Facebook page, the 2017 show will not take place, due to financial reasons.
"We are praying and working diligently to seek what the future of Sonshine will be," the Facebook post said.
Bob Poe, who founded the festival in the early 1980s with Linda Westberg and Gary Crowe, said festival attendance and finances continue to be an issue.
"Maybe the course of the event has run its race," Poe said.
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For its first 33 years the Sonshine Festival took place in Willmar. However, Poe and Come Alive International, who took over the festival in 2014, decided to move the multi-day event to Somerset, Wisconsin, hoping that a location closer to the Twin Cities would bring more people to the event.
"It didn't turn out that way," Poe said.
Poe said the site of the festival, the Somerset Amphitheater, was a perfect location. Attendance was down in 2015 from the previous year, its last in Willmar. Poe said that could have been due to the move, because things did turn around the next year.
"Last year was up, but not up enough," Poe said.
Poe said festival partners will now have conversations about the future of event, though he doesn't expect any decisions to be announced until next fall. Anyone who purchased tickets for this year's festival will receive a refund.
While the relocation might not have brought the crowds for which Poe was hoping, he doesn't necessarily regret the decision to move the festival from Willmar.
"I think it was the best step we could come up with. We had to do something," Poe said.
The summer music festival was founded in Willmar in 1982. The first year drew 1,800 people to the campus of what was then the Willmar Community College. The event moved from the college campus to the grounds of the Willmar Civic Center and during its peak would bring an estimated 20,000 people and big names in Christian music to Willmar. Some of the performers who graced the stage included Toby Mac, Newsboys, Switchfoot and Family Force 5.
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While the organizers decide where to go now, supporters and fans are sharing their memories and thoughts on Facebook.
"Praying for you Sonshine festival that every thing will pan out for ya so we can have one in 2018. I feel so bummed out on this. I've been going to this since 2009," Brandon Mallin, posted on the festival's Facebook page.
Poe and the other organizers are hoping to keep the festival going, starting in 2018.
"It is our hope and desire to see Sonshine Festival return in 2018 at the Somerset Amphitheater with a renewed vision and similar mission to impact youth of the Midwest in a positive and life changing way," reads the festival's statement.
