Ichthus is a word defined as an image of a fish used as a symbol of Christianity. For more than 40 years the mention of that word, primarily for those in church youth groups, some, hundreds of miles away, prompted images of a contemporary Christian music festival. The re-launch of Ichthus takes place this Saturday near Wilmore.
A couple of weeks ago, West Virginia’s Joe Lycan was on a tractor and his wife Cheryl on a riding lawn mower at Servant Heart Farm. They were preparing for a weekend show by Lexington Lab Band, known for covering iconic rock bands.
Joe Lycan was ready for that Labor Day weekend show. But also eagerly awaiting a Saturday coming up, September 18th for a re-start of the Ichthus festival. “We’re breathing new life into the original vision that Ichthus was a ministry, that music was the celebration, but the focus and the impact was on making disciples, new conversions, and plugging people into the Gospel, so they can serve and have a purpose to their life,” said Lycan
Joe Lycan got introduced to Ichthus when his band, “Sons of Thunder” played at the festival first in 2009. The bands and speakers last played music and spoke on the Ichthus amphitheater in the summer of 2012. The Lycans purchased the 109 acre property off U.S. Highway 68 in 2013, always with hopes of faith-based events, including a return of Ichthus.
The very first Ichthus Festival took place in May of 1970. Then Asbury Seminary Professor Bob Lyon is credited with having the idea, an alternative to the well-known “Woodstock Festival” just nine months earlier. Lyon passed away in 2004. His wife Judy Lyon remembered a somewhat “rough around the edges” first festival that was just right.
“They had a handmade banner that ran across the tabernacle stage and I have that banner and the thing is there a place on it where they must have made a mistake and they just blotted it out and started over again. So, it was very simple. Very simple,” she said.
1970 was a time when a lot of music was moving at a faster and faster pace. Lyon said the idea of an upbeat music festival didn’t go over well with all in the Wilmore community. “This was just… I mean this was music that was not welcome here, even though it was wonderful music. But they drew on, as I remember, they drew on artists locally,” said Lyon
One of those local acts was Ron and Bill Moore. The duo did a lot of what would be considered folk music and other acoustic tunes including Simon and Garfunkle covers. Bill Moore is a retired Methodist minister in Lexington.
There was a lot of pitching in to do beyond banner preparation for that first Ichthus. Moore remembers the wives of seminary students being asked to each make ten pounds of potato salad. And then there were meetings with earnest Asbury students and seminary leaders to, as Moore said, “smooth ruffled feathers” because it was “so avant-garde” for two conservative schools, the seminary and Asbury College and a conservative town. “But the upshot was that in future years, the college, for instance, really came around because they found that Ichthus was a publicity bonanza for the school,” explained Moore.
In fact, where the first few years of Ichthus attracted hundreds, by the 1990’s the weekend festival crowd might top out at 20,000. The hillside would be covered with tents.
But the inaugural get together was a more intimate setting in the Wilmore Camp Meeting site. Maybe the sights and sounds did set the stage for what was to come in the next four decades. While Bill Moore and his brother Ron’s music was fairly light and melodic, the Methodist minister said a California band named “Earthen Vessel” put on an eye-popping set.
“Here were all these polite kids sitting out there and the lead singer comes out, dressed in a buckskin jacket. And he looks at the people, and he says ‘Ok, everybody grab a leg and make a wish.’ And they took off on really the hardest rock that these kids had ever heard. Everybody was quite taken aback by it,” said Moore.
Moore said Ichthus went on to become a Christian cultural phenomenon.
Judy Lyon said organizers certainly thought of the event as clean entertainment for teenagers but, “at the same time, always, always with the idea of winning them for Christ.” And as it grew, she said there were challenges to live out those lives.
Just a couple weeks ago, a random quizzing of a few students on the Asbury campus found that they had heard of the re-launch of Ichthus. Growing up in nearby Nicholasville Faith Osborne said she was aware of the past festivals and would like to go to this one. “I feel like a lot of people have a stereotype of what Christian music is so I think it’s a cool thing to kind of broaden your aspect of what it is. There’s some more upbeat songs, there’s some slow ones. Just really impactful like words and phrasing,” said Osborne.
Caleb Metzenberg, a senior who’s also from Nicholasville, said he attended Ichthus years ago. And he likes the opportunities for local outreach found in this kind of event. “So I actually looked into our church worship team going into it and kind of leading worship, but we were never able to get that far ahead into planning it, so maybe next year, I don’t know,” said Metzenberg.
And that is the plan, to have Ichthus 2022. Organizer Joe Lycan said the hope is to see Ichthus expand to multiple days with a return to camping on the farm property. But, first, the return comes this Saturday just after noon on the central Kentucky farm.
Here's more of a conversation with Judy Lyon. Her husband played a sizeable role in the creation of Ichthus
