The 2005 GraceFest Christian music festival in Pensacola, Fla. has been canceled, due to the Hurricane Katrina and ongoing relief efforts.

The event was scheduled for Sept. 16-17, with a lineup including Jars of Clay, Third Day, Joy Williams, Kevin Max, and more.

”It just came to the point where it’s not the right thing to do,” said Lisa Long, a GraceFest executive committee member.

”We don’t want to kick a person out of a hotel when the person doesn’t have a home to go back to,” Long said on behalf of organizers who agree that hotel rooms are more urgently needed for hurricane refugees rather than performing artists and festival visitors.

Besides that, a third of the festival’s ticket buyers come from the areas affected most by Hurricane Katrina, according to Long, and many of the GraceFest organizers are hurricane relief volunteers who are concentrating now on helping those in need.

Katrina has affected several Christian artists as well, who reside the disaster area including members of Fervent Records band Big Daddy Weave, whose homes and offices were also hit by Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004.

“Our spirits are high and we are doing well,” band member Jeff Jones told Billboard Radio Monitor. “We’ve been without power now for almost 48 hours, but our houses sustained little damage compared to others. It was quite frightening to hear the power of the wind outside – there are no words to describe it.”

Singer Mark Harris, a solo artist and member of vocal group 4HIM, was also an eyewitness to the effects of Katrina from his home in Mobile, Ala.

“It is a very sad situation for anyone who had coastal property on Mobile bay, Dauphin Island, and anything further west. The wind damage was not that bad but the water damage was the worst it has ever been,” Harris told Billboard Radio Monitor.

“I have been here all of my life and been through all the major hurricanes – Camille, Frederick, Ivan,” he continued. “This is by far the worst because of the size and the overall scope of damage. Please keep us all in your prayers as we on the Gulf Coast clean up and pick up the pieces.”