Each group played roughly a 30-minute set, followed by acts that performed while the stage was set-up for the next band or the Rev. Graham’s Gospel message.

The band Superchick understood the challenge of trying to reach today’s youth for Christ. Tricia Brock, lead singer of the band, believes kids want authenticity. “The generation now, they want genuine,” she said. “They read through people putting on an act. They’d rather us be us. The kids are saying, ‘I want it to be real. I want to know that you’ve messed up, because I know that I’m going to mess up. We want real Christianity.’”


Gospel message
Three times during the seven-hour concert, the Rev. Graham stepped on stage and gave a Gospel presentation, not unlike the presentations that have become hallmarks of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).

Before the first Gospel presentation, when asked what his prayer was when he got on stage, the Rev. Graham said, “That God would just use the message to touch the hearts of these kids. And the message I’m giving is not my message, it’s God’s message. That God would just use it to reach another generation.”

At the end of the evening, 966 people responded to the invitation to commit their lives to Christ. Trained counselors waited at the front of the park as kids and adults made their way to the stage. Counselors also walked through the crowd, responding to those who could not make it to the front.


Youth focus
While the BGEA and the Rev. Graham have included youth nights and other similar outreaches in the past, “Rock the River” was a new effort to target America’s youth with the Gospel.

For Dave Gibson, pastor of missions at Grace Church in Eden Prairie and member of the “Rock the River” finance committee, he believes reaching this current generation has many significant challenges. “I think we have a lost generation, a generation that’s in terrible distress, the Rev. Gibson said. “This is the future of our nation, the future of the church. We really need to reach this generation.”  

Rob Ketterling, lead pastor of River Valley Church in Apple Valley and also co-chair of the “Rock the River” executive committee, believes in many cases the church is starting from square one when it comes to reaching this generation. He says many kids today do not have a church background, which makes them even more difficult to reach.

In talking about the youth, the Rev. Graham said, “For so many their lives are upside down and in a mess and they don’t even know why.”

But that’s why the focus on music was such an important factor, the Rev. Ketterling believes.  “The music brings down the walls,” he said, “and then it opens it up to the message. Music is their (America’s youth) message.”


Culmination of four cities
The “Rock the River” event in St. Paul was the final event in a four-city tour, which started in Baton Rouge and went up the Mississippi River to St. Louis and then the Quad Cities. In the end, more than 112,000 people attended the events in the four cities and 2,871 responded to the invitation to commit their lives to Christ.

The Rev. Graham said, “I’m so excited we’ve had this opportunity to share the message of God’s love with all of these young people. It’s a chance to change thousands of young lives.”