NYPENN Franklin Graham Festival

Had a great time at the NYPENN Franklin Graham Festival in Binghamton, NY on Saturday this past weekend. I went primarily to hear Third Day in concert which was worth showing up for. Dennis Agajanian, one the fastest flat top guitar pickers in the world was also there and did great. Tree63, a band I had not heard of before was fabulous -- apparently South African rockers. Franklin was a paradox. He really doesn't do any narrative in his preaching so he was a little hard to connect with. On the other hand he was straightforward with the gospel. One of my biggest complaints about gospel presentations in our current culture is that they are so focused on "your life will be better" or "just accept Jesus into your heart" or "you need to come into a relationship with God" and then not tell people the truth about sin. Jesus didn't die so you would feel better. He died for your sins to be forgiven. You are sinner and need to be redeemed. I don't think anyone is honestly redeemed unless they repent of their sin. Franklin just hits a homerun in telling people the truth about their sinful condition but he was only moderately compelling overall. Yet a lot of people went forward and I wasn't surprised. You could just feel that God was moving in people's hearts to turn their lives over to Christ. One thing I found interesting is that the entire evening was 'screen driven'. Essentially we all got together to watch big TV's. There were components of the evening that were live, such as Franklin preaching and the music but they also used a number of video clips for commercials about Samaritan's Purse & Operation Christmas Child, an intro to Franklin and a couple of well done testimonies of youth whose lives were touched by God. The videography was extremely well done. I was seated on the floor and really couldn't see the stage well. They had cameras set in my line of view so I didn't watch the stage the whole time I was there. The festival was held at the Events Center on the SUNY Binghamton campus. A very comfortable setting and the place was full. They had overflow at the Broome County arena and elsewhere on campus. Seemed like a very well run event.