In October, 2002, the Reverend Billy Graham kicked off his last public crusade, the four-day Metroplex Mission that broke attendance records at Texas Stadium, which at that time also was the home of the Dallas Cowboys. These records should not have been a surprise, because Rev. Graham’s career in ministry has spanned more than six decades, and over 200 million people have heard his sermons1. While many evangelists have been known to preach for as long as an hour – or even longer – once the cavalcade of musicians stopped coming across the stage, Rev. Graham strode to the pulpit. Fifteen minutes later, he was finished. The message, as it always has been, since Graham’s earliest days in the ministry, was that there is sin in the world. It has been there since the fall of man from the Garden of Eden, and it is just as strong today as it was then. There is only one solution to the problem of sin; that solution is faith in Jesus Christ, followed by obedience to His commands. Many evangelists have come before massive crowds with the same message, but none have had the enduring impact that Rev. Graham has had. Many have fallen to a wide variety of temptations, whether it is sexual infidelity or the lure of money, but he has not. He has advised American Presidents for more than fifty years, and as religious leaders go, he is without peer in American Christianity. Looking at the course of his ministry, there are clear tracks of development in spiritual and theological matters, as well as in personal growth, that would be worth following, not because they have led Rev. Graham to any particular prominence, but instead because they have helped him remain faithful to his cause, to his family, and to his Lord.
In the area of personal development, Billy Graham started out as many other teenage young men have. In fifth grade, his teacher was frustrated with him, because when she asked him questions, he would just sit there staring at her. She would yell at him to say something, anything, but he would just sit and stare. Even in college, people were drawn to his looks and charm, but he seemed unfocused. While he brought charisma to social situations, he did not seem prepared to manage an organization of any size – let alone an international evangelistic enterprise.2 As Myra indicates, it was Graham’s rejection by Emily Cavanaugh, who had initially agreed to marry him but was soon turned off by his apparent lack of drive or set of goals, and she dumped him for another person in their class. This crisis drove Graham to consult God, and to agree to follow His call to preach: as he put it, “All right, Lord! If you want me, you’ve got me. If I’m never to get Emily, I’m gonna follow you. No girl or anything else will come first in my life again. You can have all of me from now on. I will follow you at all cost.”3 This personal transformation was vital for Graham, as it has been for so many leaders in so many different fields. It is one thing to want to be great at something, but at some point you have to leave desire behind and actually make a set of goals – and set out to follow them. If Emily Cavanaugh had not broken her engagement with Graham at this point in time, his life might well have turned out much differently. As it was, the personal crisis that this rupture precipitated pushed him that last distance toward his calling, which was to preach the gospel.
However, in terms of personal development, it was still not enough for Graham to embrace his call to preach the gospel. He did find some initial success, in terms of people coming to hear his sermons, and in terms of invitations to preach. However, at the ends of his sermons, he found that his style was not persuading his listeners to make decisions for Christ. When Graham was beginning his ministry, preaching was a different form than it takes on today. The megachurch has a vastly different preaching style than old-school evangelists such as Billy Graham; today, mainstream preaching is more focused on reaching people where they are – more of a sense of relational spirituality. The focus is on meeting the needs of the people in the pews, as well as the people who no longer feel attracted to the traditional church. The sermons glide through passages from the New Testament, but they are targeted toward real-life dilemmas that people encounter, so that the sermons can seem more relevant. While this relational spirituality may seem more authentic, one could argue that it dulls people’s ability to heed spiritual matters and instead teaches them that they should only seek out teaching that they perceive as being relevant. At the end of sermons in a megachurch, or even in most mainstream churches, there is an invitation to join the church, but the opportunity to do so takes place in an office, far out of sight of the congregation. Southern Baptists are among the few denominations that have a more traditional invitation, but even many of their churches are shying away from the practice.
When Rev. Graham was beginning his career, conditions could hardly have been more different. At that point in time, many listeners expected “hard, long sermons with a couple of hours of solid exposition. Billy was giving brief little messages. They listened, but it wasn’t their kind of preaching.”4 At the end of the sermon, one would have a time of invitation; in the nineteenth century, which was the heyday of revival-style preaching, some pews would be reserved and held empty at the front of the sanctuary, called “anxious benches.” These would host people who had been so frightened by the preaching of hellfire in the sermons that they would come down, not sure whether or not they were ready either to give their lives to Jesus Christ or to rededicate lives that they had previously given to him. An invitation hymn would be playing, and often preachers would have the hymn extended by a number of verses, to give people more time to make these decisions. Early in Graham’s career, people were not responding to his invitations, and he turned to a Welsh evangelist named Stephen Olford. After spending some time praying with Olford, Graham realized the importance of spirit-filled spirituality – in other words, praying while being filled with the Holy Spirit, rather than preaching out of his own intelligence or preparation. At that point in time, as Graham recalls it, he “was beginning to understand that Jesus himself was our victory, through the Holy Spirit’s power.”5 The very next sermon he preached after coming to this realization was made to a packed house; the congregants began to file down to the empty benches at the front of the hall while he was still going; at the end, almost everyone ran down to make a spiritual decision. From that point on, the reputation of Billy Graham’s preaching would precede him, and no other evangelist in the twentieth century would approach him in terms of popularity, or in terms of the number of decisions that his preaching, bolstered by the Holy Spirit, would inspire.
Theological development is just as important as personal development, when it comes to forming the career of an evangelist. There are many evangelists out there who have filled churches and even stadiums; however, there are also many evangelists who have lost their way – if not morally, then at least theologically. Because preaching the gospel requires the surrender of the self, and because it is such an important task for the populating of God’s Kingdom, evangelists often come under significant attacks in the form of temptation, and while many of these temptations take the form of women attracted to the power and charisma of the pulpit, others take the form of easing the message so that more people will be willing to listen to it. This involves turning away from the problem of sin and toward ways to make the audience’s life better. Such movements as the prosperity gospel are designed in this way; congregants are told that their lives will improve materially if they contribute to their church, or if they are faithful enough. Other forms of this involve focusing solely on the love of God, turning the Father into more of a glorified Mr. Rogers, sitting in his cardigan sweater and waiting for us to come back another Sunday. While this takes the fear out of homiletics, it also takes away from the proper awe and reverence which God commands. It is not enough to accept God’s love to enter salvation; it is required that believers acknowledge the role of Christ in sacrificing Himself for their sins.
As Rev. Graham grew within evangelism, he also had to go through a fairly rigorous theological development. It was often his focus that drew people to him; as George Brushaber, Bethel University’s president, said, “’There was something about the central passion of his life that attracted his peopleThere’s an anointed, unique quality about him hard to describe, a transparency so people could look into his soul – his commitment to his mission was so strong and so clear. The utter simplicity of his agenda is a powerful factor.’”6 He turned down offers to act – and even a $1 million offer to host a television show on NBC; he turned that down as well. Many of the American Presidents whom he advised, including Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, encouraged him to run for President himself, or to work in their administrations, but he turned it down each time. While some leaders might have seen a transition from the pulpit to politics as a way to spread the gospel even further, Rev. Graham never saw it that way. When the Moral Majority arose in the 1970’s, though, matters became theologically more delicate. After all, no one who is an evangelist should shun morality, but he would never endorse this movement, which sought to push the conservative side of American politics in a more conservative direction. As he put it, “’I’m for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak out with such authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party of person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left.”7
The middle is a difficult place in which to stand. In the New Testament, Jesus found it a difficult place to inhabit as well. While he often castigated the Pharisees and the Sadducees for their literal hewing to the terminology of the Mosaic Law, often in ignorance of basic human need, he also told his disciples that their faith to the Law was, in a way, correct. He was able to stand in the middle, though, between those groups and those who were deeply entrenched in lives of sin, such as the prostitute who had had several husbands and was now living with someone else. Was Jesus immoral by reaching out to her? Was he condoning her life of immorality? Absolutely not – he told her to go forward from that moment and stop sinning. The irony, of course, is that he was seen as condoning her lifestyle, because he refused to condemn her, and this is the line that Rev. Graham also walked. It is certainly possible to be in favor of morality without lapsing into judgment of people who are violating your sense of morality. By refusing to join the Moral Majority, Rev. Graham stayed theologically more true to his calling. There is nothing in the gospel about judging others for their sins; in fact, several of Jesus’ parables focus on the fact that it is wrong for us to judge one another. This lack of judging, though, does not make sin the right choice, and it does not make sin acceptable; what it does mean is that God awaits us as our final Judge. Part of Rev. Graham’s theological development, over time, has been to shun associations with political leaders (after President Nixon’s disgrace in the Watergate scandal, he distanced himself visibly from Presidents, even though later Chief Executives would consult him for spiritual advice), focusing only on the simple message of the Cross.
Cultural development is another way that one can evaluate Rev. Graham’s effectiveness as a leader. While 200 million people have heard him preach, leading to millions and millions of conversions to Christianity, as well as millions more rededications of lives already pledged to Christ, one might wonder why Rev. Graham has not changed the culture even more. If his message has been so popular, why has morality plummeted in the decades since 1950? Why is so much more seen as acceptable in modern culture? Imagine a world without Billy Graham in it. What would the church’s reputation be without his presence? As the only major evangelist in the second half of the twentieth century who did not achieve fame because of negative press, even though many young people have not heard him preach, his influence is felt throughout the true church. Those who would turn religion into a vehicle for pushing their own political and moral agendas would not find an ally in Rev. Graham; rather, they would find him distancing himself from them, emphasizing the gospel instead of the added baggage that they are peddling. When he was younger, Rev. Graham made many trips to parts of the world that were suffering, such as Korea in the aftermath of the Korean War. Because he refused to attach himself to any cause other than the gospel, he remained somewhat elusive – and he was not one to seek the limelight. He always pointed away from himself and toward the gospel – and this was his contribution to cultural development. As his influence begins to wane, and as his memory begins to pass from public consciousness, as we go further into the 21st century, there will grow a vacuum in the midst of Christian leadership in this country, as among the Joel Osteens and T.D. Jakes’ and Chuck Swindolls of today, as the Holy Spirit awaits the next evangelist who is not thinking in terms of book series, but instead focused on bringing believers to the foot of the Cross – and on nothing else.
Works Cited
Martin, William. “Amen.” Texas Monthly (December 2002). Web. Retrieved 11 April 2012 from
http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2002-12-01/feature6
Myra, William and Shelley. The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham. Nashville, TN: Zondervan,
2009.
