Four years ago, Clyde Ferguson Jr. started hosting backyard music concerts at his Elkin, North Carolina, home along with three neighbors who have adjoining yards. The inaugural music festival was called Put a Little Love in Your Yard, a spin on the 1969 hit single by Jackie DeShannon.
“It’s about sharing and caring and being who you are,” says Ferguson Jr. “Our main theme always is that you don’t have to look like me … but you have to learn to like me. Scripture says we’re all created in God’s image.”
Ferguson Jr. is not only an award-winning music educator and gospel and blues bassist, he also is a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) East Coast board member representing the Eastern District Conference of the U.S. Mennonite Brethren. Recently, he was looking for ways to bring the story of MCC to his community.
“I’ve been on the board for five years, and I kept saying, people in North Carolina don’t know who MCC is, and I don’t know how to show them,” he says.
On June 15, Ferguson Jr. and his neighbors hosted their fourth annual backyard music festival. This time the theme was Blues for World Peace and Unity and invited concertgoers to donate to MCC’s relief, development and peacebuilding ministries.
The festival featured a variety of musical groups across multiple genres and attracted a mix of new and repeat attendees from diverse backgrounds. Typically, the festival attracts 150 to 200 attendees each year.
Lunch is carefully prepared by a collection of hands — among them family, neighbors, friends and coworkers — featuring everything from slow-cooked Carolina BBQ to Jewish European family recipes and vegan salads.
Jennifer Gray, from Winston-Salem, and Kent Clifford Cooley, from Thomasville, were two North Carolina musicians who performed that day. They form the gospel group Renewed and are returning performers at the annual event.
Gray says, “From the beginning of time, music has healed people. When there were wars and there was famine, people danced, people sang. When people were living in slavery, they sang, they danced. So music is hope. It can be hurt everywhere, but as long as you have a song you can have hope and you have love. It’s the greatest thing.”
At the MCC tent, MCC staff interacted with friendly festival-goers from diverse religious, ethnic and social backgrounds who were intrigued to learn about MCC’s relief, development and peacebuilding ministry.
Melissa Parker is a neighbor and co-host of the annual event since she and her husband, Lee, moved to Elkin four years ago. The patio connected to their home served as the stage this year.
“We just have a wonderful community of neighbors, Parker says. “Clyde’s mission is always about unity and community.”
In the grassy yard, Mennonite Brethren Anabaptists sat next to a Jewish rabbi, who sat next to people from no religious background, who sat next to members of the LGBTQ+ community, who sat next to Southern Baptists.
Parker notes, “I think it’s great to get everyone together from different races, different cultural backgrounds, different religions. It’s just an eclectic mix of people here today.”
The themes of peace and unity were central throughout the afternoon. Ferguson Jr. shares, “If I can get different cultures to cooperate in my backyard, I know that it will go on the street, and it will continue to grow. It’s one person at a time and we just make it infectious.”
Motivated by his dedication to community and MCC’s mission, Ferguson Jr. is also trying to recruit 100 individuals in his area to sew base units for MCC dignity kits, which provide reusable menstrual hygiene products for women and girls.
He hopes each person will sew five base units each, resulting in 500 women and girls somewhere else in the world who will have access to sustainable hygiene. Throughout the music festival, he connected with festival goers who expressed interest in getting involved with the project.
“I know that I think my role on the board is very small, but I want to make an impact wherever I can,” Ferguson Jr. says. “It didn’t have to be giant, but it dawned on me…we really need to do some more. North Carolina needs to get involved.”
As the festival wound down, new combinations of musicians got onstage to jam together. Neighbors and festival attendees got out of their lawn chairs to dance together and sing along to songs they knew.
Hyacinth Stevens, executive director of MCC East Coast, says, “MCC envisions communities worldwide in right relationship with God, one another and creation. This is a different way of building those relationships. [Being here] means supporting, learning, listening and even broadening our experience of being with communities.”
Laura Pauls-Thomas is Communications director for MCC East Coast.
Mennonite Central Committee is a global, nonprofit organization that strives to share God’s love and compassion for all through relief, development and peace. MCC is committed to relationships with their local partners and churches. As an Anabaptist organization, they strive to make peace a part of everything they do.
