Winter Jam is an annual Christian music tour that showcases artists such as Skillet, TobyMac, Newsboys, NewSong, Andy Mineo, Lecrae, Red, David Crowder, Rend Collective, for KING & COUNTRY, Colton Dixon, Lauren Daigle, Trip Lee, Sidewalk Prophets, Hillsong UNITED, Third Day, Ledger, Tenth Avenue North, Kari Jobe, Steven Curtis Chapman, Hawk Nelson, and more.
The tour started on January 7 and runs through March 27, ending it’s 40-city tour in Allen, Texas.
Winter Jam also focuses on the hard work youth pastors and student leaders do by providing a exclusive reception at each concert, where they thank them for the important work they do in the student’s lives. Winter Jam leaders, pastors, some of its artists encourage them and pray over them and allow them to have a more up-close and personal time with some of their favorite bands.
Each night the concert stops to explain the gospel to everyone in attendance and invites people to commit their lives to Jesus Christ. Greg Stier announced in 2020 that, in just one weekend, the tour witnessed over 5,000 first time decisions for Jesus.
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NewSong founded the tour in 1995. Since then, it has become one of the most attended music tours, Christian or non-Christian, every year. According to their website, the tour has often outpaced any other tour’s attendance worldwide, based on Pollstar statistics.
ChurchLeaders reached out to NewSong’s Russ Lee to discuss this year’s Winter Jam tour and why now, more than ever, working through the hurdles of the pandemic is worth it to spread the name of Jesus throughout the country.
CL: Why start winter jam back up this year after missing a year due to the pandemic?
Lee: We felt like it was time for us to encourage Christians and others to get back together for the sake of communities and to strengthen and gather local believers for corporate fellowship and worship.
CL: What type of obstacles did you run into planning out this year’s tour?
Lee: We always face the obstacles of routing the tour so that it makes sense for our drivers and team, as well as scheduling the artists. Finding venues that were big enough and at the same time could accommodate the new protocols is also a challenge. We did a smaller test run last year and just a few cities and learned a lot of things about what to expect and what to put into place so that the evening at Winter Jam would be safe, comfortable, and at the same time fun.
