Our most important choir is made up of the men and women with untrained voices who sit in the pews.
—Howard Stevenson

One of the most magnificent and impressive "choirs" I ever heard had never been rehearsed. It was the vast audience that gathered in Anaheim Stadium one night during the 1985 Billy Graham Southern California Evangelistic Crusade.

I had been selected as the chairman of the local music committee and so assisted in the recruitment and direction of a 10,000-voice crusade choir, the largest crusade choir ever assembled in North America, according to Cliff Barrows. A magnificent sea of voices stretched along the entire third-base line.

Yet as mighty and moving as that choir sounded, the most powerful music that night came not from the third-base line, but from the huge 85,000-seat stadium.

The sound still echoes in my mind, a memory that remains electrifying and overlaid with emotion to this day. As Cliff was leading the stadium in singing the gospel song "At Calvary," I slowly walked ...