Artist and co-founder of the production company Première Partie, Grégory Turpin co-organizes the Jesus Festival.
How did the idea of the Jesus Festival come about, which brings together artists from different Christian Churches?
We had wanted to do a big Christian music festival for a while. Recently, we found ourselves among friends of different denominations, with Louis-Étienne de Labarthe, from the Emmanuel Community, as well as Emmanuel Schulz and David Nolent, from the evangelical media TopChrétien, and we had the idea of come together to make an event in the unity of Christians, which was not necessarily the case for other festivals in the past. Because Christian music itself is in unity!
I got to know the other Christian Churches thanks to the musicians: when I started playing music and Glorious arrived, we toured with evangelical musicians, because few Catholic musicians were professional. This dialogue with the other Churches is really born from there. I worked with evangelicals on my first two albums. When I started to sing the poems of Saint Thérèse, they still made the choice to stay, because our goal of following Christ was common, and we were friends. This unity of Christians comes from a friendship, much more than from the institutions that we represent.
Several Christian music festivals have existed in the past, with varying degrees of success. How did you learn from the experience of your predecessors?
This is not the first Christian music festival. In my career as an artist, the Chartres festival, every year at Easter, has been an unmissable event for ten years for all Christian artists. Since then, several local initiatives have emerged, but none have taken shape at the national level. Recently, we went to England and set up a partnership with the Big Church Day Out, the largest Christian music festival in the world, with 35,000 spectators! We were inspired by this very festival aspect, including the family, rural side that we wanted to give to the Jesus Festival. Those who know Paray-le-Monial in summer will not recognize the site: there will be a very friendly atmosphere with rides, food trucksa lively brunch, praise by the fireside, a refreshment bar with a springboard stage for new artists… All centered on praise.
What is the difference between worship music and Christian music?
Praise is a form of prayer. In the Catholic Church, we tend to think of it as an animation technique for teenagers, but it really is God-directed prayer. Christian music aims to announce or exhort, to transmit to men. We have chosen to focus this festival more on praise.
The development of more charismatic prayer vigils gives the impression of a movement from Christian music, initially supposed to nourish the liturgy, towards songs of praise…
Some songs of praise are used at Mass, but they are not written for that purpose. The Psalm of Creation by Patrick Richard is often sung during celebrations, whereas it was never intended for the liturgy! Each song has its function, but in fact, current musical production tends to be more paraliturgically focused.
This is also a bit of a problem, because today, the lack of an economic model for Christian music increasingly prevents artists from making a living from their art. The only models that are able to work are either the monastic communities, whose income does not all come from music and which are not always adapted to the liturgy in the parish… or the Emmanuel Community, which does a great job, but whose members are not necessarily professional musicians. There are fewer and fewer Christian artists in France, which causes a lot of contributions from the United States, questions about translation.
The Jesus Festival website assures that non-believers are welcome. Does praise have a specific role in terms of evangelism?
This is one of the differences we have between Christian denominations. For evangelicals, Sunday worship is the place to welcome newcomers, praise and preaching, while the week is dedicated to formation, home groups, biblical study… Catholics, the mass tends rather to be the place of the initiate, and not of initiation.
However, more and more people do not have a Christian culture. It’s difficult for them to go to Mass, where the liturgy is calibrated, where things are not always accessible. We lack an airlock in the Church, a square that allows us to make the link with people in search. Praise makes it possible to offer something other than the liturgy, to create these accessible places of discovery and deepening of faith. It’s easier to take someone who doesn’t have faith to a vigil of praise than to Mass, to make them discover the presence of Jesus before getting into the liturgical aspect.
To register for the Jesus Festival: jesusfestival.fr