Originally published in The Christian Post
Forrest Frank transformed Nashville’s GEODIS Park into a massive worship gathering on Friday night, drawing 25 000 fans for a nearly two-hour concert that featured his chart-topping pop hits, congregational worship and an invitation to a relationship with Jesus.
The June 19 stop on Frank’s headlining Jesus Generation Tour marked another milestone for the fast-rising Christian artist, who sold out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena last year before moving to the city’s largest soccer stadium for this year’s tour.
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Tori Kelly opened for Frank, performing her hits, a cover of Holy Forever and songs from the movie Sing.
Frank’s stage was designed to resemble a grassy hillside, anchored by a towering, illuminated cross at its centre, and as the sun began to set, the artist opened the tour with the tour’s title track, The Jesus Generation. Throughout the night, the singer moved between his own lo-fi pop hits, including Celebration, Amen, Good Day, Up! and Your Way’s Better, and beloved worship songs and hymns.
“Who’s saying, ‘Send me, Jesus?'” the 31-year-old artist asked the crowd early in the evening.
The audience responded enthusiastically, dancing in seats and singing along to nearly every song. Thousands of attendees, many of them young children, wore wristbands that illuminated the stadium in shifting colors throughout the night.
Later in the evening, Frank invited attendees seeking a breakthrough in their lives to raise their hands and encouraged those around them to pray.
“If you need breakthrough, would you be brave enough to raise your hand in the room?” he asked. “If you see someone with their hand raised, would you extend your hand towards them and just start praying in Jesus’ name in your head?”
Frank, who first gained national attention as one-half of the pop duo Surfaces before launching a successful solo career in Christian music, has become one of the genre’s most influential artists.
His 2024 album Child of God topped Christian music charts and crossed into mainstream success, while its follow-up, Child of God II, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums chart. In a 2024 interview with The Christian Post, Frank shared that his goal is to “put the truth of the Gospel” into his songs.
“If I can recognise the Holy Spirit in the music, then I know that He’s going to be doing the work because I don’t put any pressure on it,” he said at the time.
One of the night’s most emotional moments came when Frank reflected on the recent deaths of his grandparents and shared how they contributed to his spiritual formation from his earliest years.
“My grandad used to be the intro video at my shows, and the reason that I switched was he passed away a couple months ago,” Frank told the crowd. “It just felt like it was the right time. It felt like he had kind of passed the baton. … He loved Jesus with his whole heart. He was the spiritual role model in our family.”
“Our grandma was a prayer warrior,” he said. “I have this memory of growing up in the same neighborhood as them and getting dropped off like once a month or something. My grandmother would be putting her hand over my head and she’d be praying in this language that I didn’t understand.”
Reflecting on those memories, Frank added: “Now that I’m older and a little more mature, I understand she was speaking in a heavenly language, and she spoke that language over me every day of my life.”
“There are a lot of reasons I shouldn’t be here today and a lot of reasons you shouldn’t be here today, but here we are,” he said. “Could it be that we are here today because somebody prayed for us?”
The remarks introduced an unreleased song, Somebody Prayed, which Frank performed alongside 14-year-old artist Tate Butts.
Before launching into the song, Frank asked the audience: “Does anybody in here believe that when we pray something happens?”
Midway through the show, Frank led the audience through worship songs including Matt Redman’s The Heart of Worship, the hymn Nothing But the Blood of Jesus and Bethel Music’s Goodness of God. During portions of the worship set, Frank knelt at the base of the cross while the crowd sang along.
Near the end of the show, author and speaker Sadie Robertson Huff addressed the crowd, encouraging attendees to embrace their identity as part of what Frank has dubbed the “Jesus Generation”.
“Young worshiping God, what an honor it is to be a part of the Jesus generation,” Robertson said. “I just want to make sure that everyone here tonight knows that you are a part of the Jesus Generation.”
“This isn’t just one person. This isn’t just a couple of people. This is for everybody — every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every old person, every young person,” she added.
Citing John 3:16, Robertson, who attended the show with her mother, Korie, and young daughter, told attendees that understanding God’s love changes the way people live their lives.
“There will never be another day in your life that you will not know you are loved, that you are cared for, that you are chosen, that your breath has a purpose, that your life has meaning,” she said.
Frank also created moments of intimacy despite the venue’s size. At one point, he walked through the crowd to a secondary stage near the back of the stadium, stopping to shake hands with fans before performing songs including No Longer Bound and Thankful.
Another highlight came as Frank pulled out his laptop to show audiences how to create a song and later invited a young fan onstage to perform the rap portion of his hit Up! Later, he performed Your Way’s Better, encouraging the audience to sing the song a cappella before joining back in.
The evening concluded with a surprise appearance in the upper reaches of the stadium, where Frank emerged among fans before joining opening act The Figs to perform their collaboration Lemonade. He closed the show with Never Get Used to This.
The Nashville stop was part of Frank’s Jesus Generation Tour, which launched June 1 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and will visit 29 cities before concluding on August 1 in Arlington, Texas. The tour features support from Cory Asbury, Tori Kelly and The Figs on select dates.
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