most prominent Christian music acts—dc Talk and Michael W.
Smith—and developed a youth-focused advertising campaign to
broadcast on rock radio and local television stations. At 4:00 p.m.,
before the debut of Billy’s reinvented youth night, 35,000 kids
eagerly waited for the stadium gates to open. When the festivi-
ties finally began at 7:00 p.m., 65,000 youth first screamed for
their favorite musicians, then listened intently to Billy.
Marshall told us, “We didn’t have a clue what we were doing
that first concert. I had two old men ushering, holding yellow
ropes and standing in front of 5,000 kids, trying to keep them back
from the stage. After that, we learned we needed to provide crash
barriers and let the kids come up front to experience the intensity
of a real concert.
“The superintendent of police, who’d been at Cleveland Sta-
dium for thirty-three years of Browns games, told me that while
the official attendance was 65,000, we had closer to 80,000. He
had never been in a building with more kids or seen youth stay
completely silent for a longer period of time than they did when
Billy preached. That night we touched the next generation,” Mar-
shall said.
Inspired by the Cleveland response, the BGEA dubbed youth
nights “Concert for the Next Generation” and planned similar
events for upcoming meetings. Of the twenty-three cities that
hosted Graham “concerts,” thirteen broke stadium attendance
records, including San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium with 72,000
people in 2003. The octogenarian evangelist was breaking stadium
records all over America on youth nights.
Indeed, the results validated Billy’s risk. He had listened to
wise counsel and remained relevant. Of the younger generation’s
musical tastes Billy said, “I don’t really understand what they’re
saying, and I don’t like the music. But I like them. They like it.”
Ruth Graham, typically, described the approach with a vivid
image: “Groups like dc Talk fill the pond, and Billy gets to fish.”
Rick Marshall reflected, “By the time Billy reached his eight-
ies, I figured he was probably speaking to four or five generations
in those meetings.
Innovating