By Jay Sorgi • Posted September 11, 2026

AbbeyFest, the annual Christian music festival with Catholic Mass and eucharistic adoration held at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, for the 12^th year has become a 10-hour sonic invitation to enter into a deeper life in Christ.

Artists and organizers of AbbeyFest are extending the event’s arms of missionary discipleship to several Philadelphia-area Catholic schools through the festival’s Outreach Program. It brings artists to full school assemblies that create brief but impactful bursts of the festival faith-filled experience for young people.

“You’ll have 500, 600 kids in an auditorium or a gym, and some of those kids might not really have a relationship with God. Some of those kids might be hungry for something deeper,” said Joe Melendrez, an artist and emcee at this year’s AbbeyFest on Sept. 19 who has participated in many outreach assemblies.

“But what happens there is almost a jumpstart in your faith, if you will. We’re getting the kids dancing and singing and worshiping, and then at one point throughout the assembly, we give them the option to dedicate their lives to Jesus and to say yes to the mission and call that He has in their lives.”

Five of those encounters are set to happen before this year’s AbbeyFest. They are scheduled for Archbishop John Carroll High School in Radnor, Bishop Shanahan High School in Downingtown, Msgr. Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast Catholic High School in Drexel Hill and St. Hubert Catholic High School for Girls in Philadelphia, along with St. Andrew School in Drexel Hill.

Nicky Verna serves as director of the New Evangelization at St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Drexel Hill, whose school has a predominantly non-Catholic student body. She has seen firsthand how many students experience the seed of the Catholic faith planted within them through the openhearted, fun and energizing school assemblies.

“To bring that opportunity to them, sometimes they come begrudgingly, but I never have seen anyone walk out of any of those experiences (thinking), ‘That was horrible. I wish I hadn’t sat through that for an hour, like I’d rather be in math class,’” Verna said.

“To see that there is an element of fun and entertainment, and you can still be a Jesus-loving person, it’s not nerdy or weird, I think is a beautiful opportunity for them to see.”

Martha Wilbur, a leader on the production team for AbbeyFest, has seen her children both witness and help out at the annual festival and its school assemblies. They have seen each event extend Christ-filled personal impact into the lives of their peers.

“What my own children have experienced too is giving an opportunity to bring that same energy, that same joy of being Catholic, of loving Christ, and bringing it into the school and having the kids having fun together, having fun for Jesus together,” Wilbur said.

All five schools on this year’s tour of assemblies are repeats of past AbbeyFest Outreach Program visits, which have also included faith-filled performances by past AbbeyFest artists the Scally Brothers.

The last 18 months have also seen them share Christ’s love through assemblies at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield, Delaware Country, Conwell-Egan Catholic High School in Fairless Hills, Our Lady of Czestochowa Polish Language School in Doylestown, and St. Norbert School in Paoli.

Some of those visits happen just before AbbeyFest, while others have happened during times like Catholic Schools Week in January.

“Schools that have already experienced having an assembly keep on welcoming us back, because I think that they have been able to experience this in their teachers, their student body, and they want it back the next year,” Wilbur said.

These assemblies aren’t just faith-filled music. Part of the assembly also includes a time for personal testimony, the kind that often illuminates God’s love in times of struggle and the journeys that often go unspoken among peers and teachers.

“Everyone has their own ‘God story,’ (and) it really stirs up the faith in the room,” Melendrez said. “There’s a teacher who said he had stage-four cancer and he got healed, and he’s in the front row proclaiming this to the whole student body. They didn’t know that.”

Melendrez also described a young woman at a school who had her arm cut open and an artery severed by shattered glass the day before the assembly.

“Teachers were getting her arm, saving her life basically to get her stitches,” Melendrez said. “She was there the next day in the assembly with a wrapped arm and everything. We prayed over her. We’re just so grateful that it’s not going to stop what God’s going to do.”

Melendrez says that for some of kids, these assemblies become the opportunity for true evangelization, the kind that might not otherwise happen for a student from another religious tradition  or no faith.

“These are kids that might not go to a church event, they might not go to AbbeyFest, and they might not go on a retreat, but this might be the touchpoint,” Melendrez said. “This might be the moment where (they say), Wow, I never thought I could experience God in that way.’”

See the following links for the full AbbeyFest schedule and ticket information.