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Billy Graham's Life Story
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William Franklin Graham, Jr., known as Billy Graham to most of the
world, was born on November 7, 1918, near Charlotte, North Carolina,
to William Franklin and Morrow Coffey Graham. Billy was the first of
four children, followed by Catherine, Melvin, and Jean. In 1919 he was
baptised by sprinkling at Chalmers Memorial Church. William Franklin,
Sr., was a successful farmer and businessman and Billy had a normal
childhood. Both parents were Christians and the family regularly
attended the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. In 1934,
evangelist Mordecai Fowler Ham began preaching at a series of revival
meetings in Charlotte. He stirred up considerable controversy with his
charges of moral laxity at the local high school. Billy attended the
meetings, partly attracted by the controversy. Graham was led, while
listening to Ham's preaching, which heightened Graham's conviction of
his own sin, to commit his life to Christ.
In the fall of 1936, the young man began attending the fundamentalist
school, Bob Jones College, in Cleveland, Tennessee. He had begun to
consider the possibility of becoming some kind of Christian worker.
However, he could not adjust to campus life at Bob Jones and left
after a few months. He transferred in January of 1937 to Florida Bible
Institute (now Trinity College) from which he graduated in 1940 with a
BTh (Bachelor of Theology degree). While at FBI, he became convinced
that he should be baptised by immersion as an adult and Rev. John
Minder, vice-president of FBI, presided at the sacrament. He began
preaching on street corners and at rescue missions and small churches.
In December, 1938, while he was leading a series of meetings at the
Peniel Baptist Church in East Palatka, Florida, he was baptized again
by the church's pastor, Rev. Cecil Underwood (a Southern Baptist), in
Silver Lake. He agreed to the baptism to be acceptable to Southern
Baptists and at this time began his life-long membership in the
Southern Baptist Convention. In February of the next year, he was
ordained by Rev. Underwood and other local pastors as a Southern
Baptist minister in the St. John's River Association. While still in
Florida, he met members of the family of V. Raymond Edman, the
president of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. They praised
Graham's preaching ability and Christian character to Edman, who then
arranged for him to attend Wheaton. Graham attended from 1940 to 1943,
when he graduated with a BA in anthropology. He became pastor of the
United Gospel Tabernacle while still a student and also had other
preaching engagements.
At Wheaton he met fellow student Ruth Bell, his future wife. She was
the daughter of the Southern Presbyterian missionary and surgeon, L.
Nelson Bell. The Bells had been stationed in China since 1916. It was
in that country and in Korea that Ruth spent her childhood. The couple
was married on August 13, 1943, after graduation. Graham's first (and
last) pastorate after graduation was at the Baptist church in the
Chicago suburb of Western Springs. He served a little over a year.
During his time in Western Springs, he took over from another
Chicago-area pastor, Torrey Johnson, the religious radio program Songs
in the Night. Graham preached on the program every Sunday evening and
persuaded George Beverly Shea, a popular Christian soloist, to join
him. The program was only a few months old, however, when Graham left
it and the church to become vice president of Youth for Christ. YFC
had grown out of the enthusiastic, unconventional Christian rallies
that were being held all over the country in the mid-forties for
servicemen and young people.
Torrey Johnson organized the Chicago meetings and asked Graham to
speak at some of them. In 1945, the local Youth for Christ
organizations that had sprung up around the country formed together to
form one organization under the leadership of Johnson. He then hired
Graham as his helper. For the next four years, Graham traveled all
over the United States, Canada, and Europe speaking at rallies and
organizing YFC chapters. In YFC, as at Wheaton, Graham created a deep
impression on individuals and large groups through his sincerity,
personal attractiveness, and vitality. In turn, both YFC and Wheaton
introduced him to many individuals who later became leaders of the
evangelical community and who would assist Graham in his evangelistic
work. Gradually, as Graham began to hold evangelistic rallies on his
own, his work for YFC tapered off, and in 1948 he resigned from the
staff, although he remained an active friend of the organization and
served on its board of directors for a time.
In 1947, William Bell Riley, who was the founder and president of
Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, met with Graham to ask him to be
his successor as head of the institution. Graham was reluctant, but
Riley persuaded him. Riley died in December of the same year and
Graham became president. Several of the staff and faculty at
Northwestern later joined the staff of Graham's evangelistic
organization.
As mentioned earlier, Graham had begun to hold his own evangelistic
rallies across the country. Usually working with him were soloist
George Beverly Shea, choir director and master of ceremonies Cliff
Barrows (whom he met in 1945), and associate evangelist Grady Wilson.
(Grady and his brother, T. W., were boyhood friends of Graham's.)
Within evangelical and fundamentalist communities in America, Graham
was quite well known. At the end of 1949, he suddenly came into
national prominence. An evangelistic campaign Graham was leading in
Los Angeles resulted in the dramatic conversion of a local underworld
figure and a prominent disc jockey, among others. The newspaper
magnate, William Randolph Hearst, for reasons unknown, ordered his
publications to "puff Graham" and other newspapers around the country
followed suit. The campaign, planned for three weeks, lasted seven.
Next, Graham went to Boston for a scheduled series of campaigns and
again the results were spectacular. He then went on to Columbia, South
Carolina, where he met publisher Henry Luce, who was impressed with
the evangelist and had articles about him written for his
publications, Time and Life magazines.
In the next decade, Graham held evangelistic campaigns in all the
major U.S. cities as well as a series of rallies in Africa, Asia,
South America, and Europe. He became something of an institution--a
symbol for religion in many people's minds. Perhaps the most
impressive meetings of his career were the Greater London Crusade of
1954 and the New York Crusade of 1957.
As Graham's fame increased, so did criticism that he was an Elmer
Gantry type, using evangelism to personally enrich himself. To counter
these complaints and to enable his ministry to run on an orderly,
business-like basis, Graham, his wife, Cliff Barrows, Grady Wilson,
and George Wilson (a co-worker from YFC and Northwestern Schools)
incorporated the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). At the
same time, Graham began his weekly radio program, [1]The Hour of
Decision.
The BGEA planned and coordinated evangelistic meetings and other
activities of Graham and his associate evangelists. The Association
eventually would have offices in cities around the world, including
Sydney, Buenos Aires, Winnipeg, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong,
and Mexico City, and was based in Minneapolis, MN. Besides its work in
evangelism, the BGEA or its subsidiaries, Grason Company and [2]World
Wide Pictures, published periodicals (the color tabloid [3]Decision
was prepared in six languages and Braille), books, phonograph records,
and audio tapes, as well as produced films and radio programs.
The heart of the work remained the evangelistic meetings. Graham
formed a team of workers who assisted each community having a crusade
in planning, holding, and following up the meetings. Most of the
original BGEA staff members were drawn either from North Carolina,
YFC, or Northwestern Schools (where Graham served as President from
1947 until 1952). Besides Barrows, Shea, Grady Wilson, and George
Wilson, important figures were public relations director Gerald
Beavan, associate evangelists T. W. Wilson, Leighton Ford, Ralph Bell,
Joseph Blinco, Akbar Abdul-Haqq, Roy Gustafson, Howard Jones, Lane
Adams, and John Wesley White; pianist Tedd Smith, organists Don Hustad
and Paul Mickelson; crusade directors Willis Haymaker and Walter H.
Smyth. In the early 1950s, the Navigators, another evangelistic group,
developed a system for following up on the Christian nurture of
converts at BGEA crusades. At first, Navigator staff members were
loaned to the BGEA to supervise counseling and follow-up, but by the
late 1950s, BGEA staff had taken over. Charles Riggs left the
Navigators to take charge of crusade counseling and follow-up.
After 1957 Graham generally held three to five crusades a year, while
the number of meetings held by the associate evangelists varied more
widely. Usually the associates led crusades in smaller cities and
towns or even in single churches. Some specialized in different parts
of the world. Akbar Haqq and Robert Cunville, for example, regularly
held meetings in India and Howard Jones in Africa. All the associates,
however, also held meetings in the United States and other countries.
From 1964 to 1976, the crusade staff, known as the team, was based in
Atlanta, Georgia. Before and after that they were at the main office
in Minneapolis. The name of this department was changed from "Team
Office" to "Field Ministries " in the late 1980s. Reports on all of
Graham's crusades and some of the associates' regularly appeared in
[4]Decision and hour long versions of several services from a major
crusade would be broadcast on television usually a few months after
the crusade close. In major crusades in large cities, both in the
United States and other countries, Graham would preach to hundreds of
thousands or even millions of people. The BGEA only held crusades in
places where they had been invited by a large number of local pastors
and laypersons, although the organization received so many such
invitations that the evangelists could virtually pick the place they
wanted to go. Staff would investigate each invitation to see if there
was wide support for the meeting and then a decision would be made
whether to accept the offer or not. For many months ahead of time, a
crusade director and other staff people from the BGEA would be working
with the local executive committee (incorporated as a separate
entity), setting up subordinate committees; recruiting choir members,
ushers, counselors, and others; making arrangements for the auditorium
or stadium; overseeing publicity; etc. In general, local volunteers
prepared for the meetings under the guidance of BGEA staff who
followed a procedure developed in hundreds of such crusades. The
services themselves consisted of singing by the volunteer choir, a
testimony from some well known person, the offering, solos by George
Beverly Shea and/or other singers, and the sermon. People who came
forward at the evangelist's invitation at the end of services to
become Christians or to renew their commitment or to get more
information were referred to volunteer counselors who would later
refer them to a cooperating pastor in their community. They also
received a workbook through the mail to help them as they began Bible
study.
In 1962, acting on the suggestions of Lane Adams and businessman
Lowell Berry, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association began to
investigate the possibility of holding seminars in conjunction with
crusades. These seminars would be aimed at seminary students and would
provide the future ministers with a theoretical and experimental
understanding of the ways and means of mass evangelism. The program
was officially organized in the Chicago crusade in 1962 when twenty
young men from seven seminaries participated. The trial programs were
enthusiastically received and the School of Evangelism became a
regular part of major crusades. The aim changed slightly over the
years as the main focus moved to pastors, although others could attend
as well. A typical school consisted of a series of seminars and
lectures on various aspects of practical evangelism. The speakers were
members of the BGEA or people closely associated with it. For many
years these schools were only held in conjunction with a crusade, but
in the 1980's, annual SOE's were held by themselves at the Billy
Graham Center and the Cove (see below) and other sites.
As mentioned above, the [5]Hour of Decision radio program was one of
the first projects of the BGEA. At first, Cliff Barrows served as
announcer, Jerry Beavan reported on Graham's evangelistic campaign,
George Beverly Shea sang, and Grady Wilson read Scripture. Then Graham
brought a brief message. Although the format and participants varied
some over the years, the heart of the program remained Graham's
sermon, which often was closely related to or took its starting point
from current events. Occasionally, one of Graham's associates, such as
Leighton Ford, would give the message. One hundred fifty stations on
the ABC network carried the first broadcast. The first year on the air
brought in over 178,000 pieces of mail and the number steadily rose
year by year. By 1970, over 1200 stations worldwide carried the
program to an audience estimated in the tens of millions. Cliff
Barrows became the supervisor of the recording of the program,
assisted by John Lenning. Lee Fischer helped with the preparation of
many of Graham's radio messages in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by
Robert Ferm and John Akers.
Besides producing a radio show, the BGEA also was associated with
radio stations in North Carolina and in Hawaii. The station in Hawaii,
KAIM FM and AM, was started shortly after World War II by the
Christian Broadcasting Association. It became affiliated with the BGEA
in 1959. The station in North Carolina was begun by the BGEA about the
same time and was owned by the Blue Ridge Broadcasting Corporation, a
BGEA subsidiary. The call letters for the AM station were WFGW and for
the FM station were WMIT. Programming included many religious shows
and was aimed at a general audience.
From 1951 to 1954, there was also an Hour of Decision television show.
This was produced by Walter F. Bennett and Company and was filmed in a
studio, with a format very similar to the radio program. The
television program also often had special guests. After taking this
program off the air, the BGEA did little with the medium until 1957,
when it broadcast one-hour programs of segments of the crusade being
held in New York. After that, it became the usual practice for the
BGEA to nationally broadcast on consecutive nights three to five
programs from the same crusade. These programs were edited tape, not
live, and were usually aired several months after the end of the
actual crusade. Several of these series were broadcast each year.
Apart from a few specials, this was the BGEA's method for using
television for mass evangelism. After each program, addresses were
given to which viewers could write for more information. Later,
telephone numbers were also given which people could call for
counseling.
Billy Graham was introduced to Dick Ross, owner of Great Commission
Films, in 1949. During Graham's Portland campaign in 1950, Ross
produced a documentary film on the crusade and its activities. The
film's success led to the Great Commission Films being bought out by
the BGEA, and the assets of the company were used to start The Billy
Graham Evangelistic Film Ministry, which was incorporated in Maryland
in 1952. Dick Ross was the company's first president. The company was
generally known as [6]World Wide Pictures (WWP), but this did not
become its legal name until 1980. The purpose of WWP was to produce
and distribute films about BGEA crusades. Many of these would combine
a fictional or true story of a person's conversion with scenes from an
actual crusade, including portions of a sermon by Graham.
Mr. Texas was the first World Wide feature film. It was made during
the 1951 Fort Worth Crusade and premiered at the conclusion of the
Hollywood Bowl Crusade. Other feature films followed, including For
Pete's Sake, The Restless Ones, The Hiding Place, and Joni. World Wide
acquired a studio and headquarters in Burbank, California. In 1970,
William Brown became the company's president, a position he held until
1988. WWP's distribution office for the films was next to the BGEA
headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1988, the studio in Burbank
was closed and all WWP operations were consolidated in Minneapolis.
BGEA offices in other countries assisted in distributing the films
around the world. Most of the films were distributed to churches and
other religious groups but sometimes also to theaters for the general
public.
[7]Decision magazine was another branch of the BGEA. Sherwood Wirt was
hired as editor in 1958. His mandate was to prepare a monthly magazine
of a few pages aimed at a general audience, which would contain Bible
studies, Christian teaching, brief news items, stories from church
history and articles about recent crusades. Robert Ferm, Graham's
personal assistant, was co-editor of the new publication and helped to
represent the evangelist's viewpoint. The first issue came out in
November 1960. Eventually, separate editions were prepared in Spanish,
French, and German as well as special Australian and British versions.
These other versions, except for the Spanish edition, eventually
became independent magazines, so that by 1988 Decision was published
only in English and Spanish. Roger Palms followed Wirt as editor in
1976. For years the magazine was tabloid size, but in 1985, it went to
a smaller format. The circulation in 1988 was approximately two
million.
Grason Company (started by Billy Graham and George Wilson) was
incorporated shortly after the BGEA itself, in January 1952. Its
purpose was to publish and distribute books, records, music and other
materials which the BGEA used in its work. It produced much of the
material given away at crusades to inquirers (including those who
responded by letter or phone to television broadcasts of crusades).
Any profits from its retail sales were given to the BGEA. Wholesale
sales were handled by another organization, World Wide Publications.
The BGEA had various offices in the United States. Except for the
period from 1964 to 1976, when the Team office was separated out to
Atlanta, Georgia, the organization's main office was in Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Organization executives by the 1980s included a director of
foreign crusades, a director for Graham's United States crusades
(sometimes the same person) and a director of the associate
evangelists crusades. The associate evangelists generally also had an
office at their homes. Also located in Minneapolis were [8]Decision,
Grason, and Wide Publications offices, as well as the counseling staff
which answered the thousands of letters Graham got every year from
people seeking advice and comfort. Here too was the staff that handled
the BGEA's massive mailing list, its financial operations and public
relations. Most of these operations were under the executive
vice-president of the BGEA, who was generally in charge of
administrative and business matters. The [9]World Wide Pictures
distribution office was in Minneapolis as well. For a brief time from
1964 to 1976, the office of the vice president for crusades was in
Atlanta. When that office was closed, the staff moved back to
Minneapolis. Another BGEA office was opened in Washington, DC in 1956,
but closed not long afterwards.
The other major office in the United States was in Montreat, North
Carolina, where Graham had his home. The staff there helped him with
his appointments, travels, sermons, and other responsibilities. His
close advisor and associate evangelist, T. W. Wilson, also had his
office in Montreat. The Montreat office had a large reference library
on evangelism and preaching.
From the 1950s on, [10]World Wide Pictures had their production studio
in Burbank,California. This was where the studio scenes in the films
were shot and where in-house editing and other technical work was
done. As mentioned above, this office was closed in 1988.
Outside of the United States, there were a number of BGEA affiliates.
They usually coordinated the showing of BGEA films in their country;
the broadcast of radio and television programs where appropriate; the
production of the national version of Decision, if there was one;
arrangements for crusades in that country, etc. At one time, the BGEA
had affiliates in Great Britain (1955), Mexico, Canada (1954), Germany
(1963), Japan (1967), Argentina, Australia (1959), France, and Hong
Kong (1972). In the 1980s many of these offices were closed down or
their activities were greatly decreased.
Besides evangelism, radio, television, and films, Graham was involved
in many literary endeavors, including the books Calling Youth to
Christ (1947), Revival in Our Times (1950), America's Hour of Decision
(1951), Peace With God (1953), The Secret of Happiness (1955), World
Aflame (1965), The Challenge (1969), The Jesus Generation (1971),
Angels (1975), and How To Be Born Again (1977), and the newspaper
column, "My Answer."
Throughout his career, Graham had critics of varying degrees of
intensity. The criticisms generally fell into four different
categories. Fundamentalists accused him of "ecumenical evangelism,"
that is, corrupting his message by accepting help and support from
pseudo-Christians. Liberal Christians often wrote that he cared too
much for evangelism and not enough for helping to ease the social ills
of society. Some also attacked the crusades for being mechanical
spectacles which moved people through emotionalism and left little in
the way of results. Some evangelists felt he was too close to rulers
and men of power who used him to increase their own legitimacy. These
criticisms became particularly persistent in the mid-1970s because of
Graham's friendship with Richard Nixon, then enmeshed in the Watergate
scandal. Graham rarely answered critics, except to state that he felt
his primary task, his calling from God, was to preach the Gospel, and
he would accept help from anyone who did not place restrictions on his
message.
Graham had always had a deep interest in education and a commitment to
training Christians in the methods of evangelism, as illustrated by
the Schools of Evangelism. Two other projects of the BGEA illustrate
this interest. As early as 1969, Graham and his associates had been
thinking about both the preservation of the BGEA's historical
materials and an evangelistic training center. Dr. Lois Ferm was
involved in this early planning process. In 1974, the BGEA agreed to
donate funds to create the Billy Graham Center on the campus of
Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. The Center included an archives,
museum, and library all dedicated to the study of evangelism, as well
as an Institute of Evangelism and various institutes intended to
assist evangelistic work in different parts of the world and among
various ethnic groups. The Center was a part of Wheaton College, but
it worked closely with the BGEA and maintained the archives of the
Association. The BGEA set up a separate corporation to hold the
endowment from which, for many years, it made yearly donations to the
Center for the maintenance of its work and for other projects.
One of these other projects was the [11]Billy Graham Training Center
at the Cove. The BGEA had acquired this property in western North
Carolina near Asheville many years before and the board of the BGEA
had long wanted to turn it into a school offering non-credit training
in the Bible and evangelism to Christian workers and laypersons. In
the early 1980s, the BGEA contracted with Columbia Bible College for
CBC to start and run the school. After a few years, Columbia and the
BGEA mutually decided to cancel the arrangement. In 1987, the board of
directors of the Association announced that the Billy Graham Training
Center would be on that site, a training Center, to quote from the
Cove's 1988 brochure, "where the laity can study the Bible in depth
and be trained to reach the lost for Christ, thereby serving more
effectively within the local church." The staff appointed in 1987
included Tom Phillips, a former crusade director, as director of
programming; Jerry Miller as director of property development and
operations; and Larry Turner as director of the facility. Franklin
Graham, son of the evangelist, became chairman of the board of
trustees for the center.
The BGEA was one of, if not the, major influence on five major
twentieth century evangelical events: the founding of Christianity
Today magazine in 1955, the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin in
1966, the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne
in 1974, and the 1983 and 1986 International Conferences of Itinerant
Evangelists. Christianity Today was started by Graham, his
father-in-law L. Nelson Bell, Howard Pew, and others to present the
evangelical viewpoint to theologically liberal Protestant pastors. The
journal evolved, however, becoming the leading voice of American
evangelicals with the major share of its audience among evangelicals.
The two Congresses, which also begat smaller regional congresses and
consultations around the world, were meetings of Protestant leaders
from around the globe who gathered to plan cooperative strategies for
spreading the Gospel and serving the needs of the Church. After the
1974 Congress, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization was
created to coordinate future meetings and continue the work of the
Congress. This committee was separate from the BGEA.
In 1980, Graham dedicated the Billy Graham Center on the campus of
Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Included in the Center were an
Archives with documents in American Protestant evangelism and missions
(and was the designated repository for the papers of Graham and the
records of the BGEA), a Library of volumes on evangelism and missions,
and a Museum with exhibits on the Gospel, the history of evangelism in
America, and Graham's ministry. The building also housed the graduate
school of Wheaton College.
In 1983, 1986 and 2000, the BGEA held meetings in Amsterdam for
Christian workers particularly involved in preaching the Gospel to
non-Christians. The first two meetings were called the International
Congress of Itinerant Evangelists 1983, and the International Congress
of Itinerant Evangelists 1986 (ICIE); the third event was called
Amsterdam 2000. A particular effort was made to bring people from the
Third World at the grass roots level, as opposed to leaders of
organizations. During the conferences, sessions were held for the
encouragement and training of the attenders, as well as plenary
sessions addressed by Graham and others. Almost four thousand
evangelists attended in 1983, more than eight thousand in 1986, and
over ten thousand in 2000. In the 1980s and 90s, television was used
to reach increasing larger, populations, culminating in the April 1996
Global World Mission broadcast with an estimated potential audience of
2.5 billion people
Since 1945, Graham and his wife lived in Montreat, North Carolina. The
couple had five children: Virginia Leftwich, Anne Morrow, Ruth Bell,
William Franklin, and Nelson Edman. In 1992 it was announced by the
BGEA that Graham had Parkinson's disease and would be easing back
somewhat on his extremely busy schedule. In 1996, Graham's eldest son,
William Franklin Graham III, was made vice chairman of the BGEA board
and it was announced he would be his father's successor when the time
came for Billy Graham to leave the ministry. In May of the same year,
Billy and Ruth Graham received the Congressional Medal at a ceremony
held at the Capitol in Washington, DC. In late 2000 Franklin Graham
was named chief executive officer of the BGEA, while Billy Graham
continued his crusade ministry.
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