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Festival con Dios is Christian music's traveling circus. Unique in the Christian contemporary music world, it combines a festival mentality with a rock tour's mobility. A 12-band bill, motorcycle stunt shows, games, and bungee jumping attracted 108,000 people in 33 cities during last year's debut tour.

The second round of the for-profit road show began last month. Founders say the goal for 2001 was perfecting the model and building an audience. Now they hope to step up its evangelistic outreach through a partnership with the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association (LPEA).

"We hope people realize that this should be taken out of the category of strictly an entertainment ministry to believers, and viewed as an outreach to unchurched kids," said Kevin Palau, LPEA executive vice president. "We are confident this is another way to reach people."

David Olmsted, associate director of the Billy Graham Center's Institute of Strategic Evangelism, says this approach is a potent wave developing within American evangelism.

"We are in a time where we have an audience that is changing and needs exciting action events, like eye-popping stunts, to be drawn to a message," Olmsted told Christianity Today. Though this trend of "using intriguing events to set the plate for the evangelist to give the message" is not new, he believes for the next couple of decades it will "set a framework. … on how to go about the work of the proclamation."

In the mainstream market, mega-festival tours such as Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest and Van's Warped Tour receive money from corporate sponsors. With corporate backing less common in Christian tours, a festival is typically too costly for most local concert promoters.

"Everyone wants to have a festival, but you usually do it [only] once, because it will cost three times what you thought," Festival con Dios founder Wes Campbell told ct. "Festival con Dios has enabled markets to take on an all-day festival, but the cost is spread across a number of cities. It's franchised, and it arrives in a box."

Campbell, longtime manager of the Newsboys, and the group's singer, Peter Furler, designed Festival con Dios to be affordable and easy to set up. Festival con Dios provides everything from stages to concessions to a climbing wall and sloppily dressed rock bands. Tickets cost $20, and about 3,500 attended each concert. The festival made a profit from last year's operations, while other festivals folded.

Years on the road with the Newsboys gave Campbell's First Company Management experience in streamlining production methods. The festival uses hydraulic stages that only a handful of workers set up in five hours and dismantle in two. (Some traditional stage setups take days, requiring as many as 50 workers.)

Campbell, a former youth pastor, believed the event had greater evangelistic potential after he took an evangelist on tour last year. He says the event is a hip entertainment option that provides opportunities for Christian kids to engage in relational evangelism.

"Of course the vast majority will be kids from youth groups, but we know that people will bring friends," Kevin Palau said. "Only good can come from us presenting the gospel and giving it a shot."

The Palau partnership provides the tour with two independent evangelists from LPEA's training-oriented Next Generation Alliance. LPEA, which has no financial interest in Festival con Dios, also coordinates training of counselors and post-event follow-up.

LPEA switched from a crusade model to a musical festival formula in 1999. Festivals attract 10 times the crowds of previous Palau crusades. The Puget Sound Festival in Redmond, Washington, attracted 150,000 in August.

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October 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 11