It is one of modern Christendom\u2019s most familiar images.<\/p>\n\n
Evangelist Billy Graham finishes inviting his listeners to get up out of their seats and to come forward to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Then as the crusade choir gently sings \u201cJust As I Am,\u201d he steps back from the pulpit folds his Bible against his chest, closes his eyes, bows his head and silently prays while people flow down the aisles<\/p>\n\n
William Franklin Graham III uses many of his father\u2019s phrases, but his body language is totally different at this pivotal moment in a rally. He plants his cowboy boots at shoulder width, folds his arms across his chest like a cop and scans the crowd. The unspoken message: It\u2019s your decision, but God and I are watching.<\/p>\n\n
The man who built the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) never claimed to be a prophet or a brilliant preacher. But, as he aged, Billy Graham developed a gentle approach that blended his unchallenged sincerity with a flexibility that let him preach to a wide variety of saints and sinners.<\/p>\n\n
The man poised to inherit Graham\u2019s legacy doesn\u2019t even claim to be a preacher. He\u2019s more like Rocky Balboa, punching away with Bible verses and simple parables. Franklin Graham made his first call for repentance a minute after he began his May 24 sermon at this year\u2019s Washington, D.C., Promise Keepers rally and ended up including at least 12 other appeals for sinners to walk the aisle.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cListen up, men,\u201d he said, preaching to 55,000 in RFK Stadium. \u201cJesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He died and rose again so that you can say, `I am a sinner!\u2019 Franklin Graham has sinned and I asked God to forgive me. \u2026 I\u2019m asking you to do that tonight, to say, `God forgive me, I am a sinner.\u2019 Do you have the guts to stand up and do that?<\/p>\n\n
If it sounds like he keeps it simple, that\u2019s because he does.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cSpeaking is speaking and I\u2019m not a public speaker. That ought to be obvious,\u201d he said, afterwards. \u201cI haven\u2019t been to seminary and I\u2019ve never had a course in public speaking. Right now, I\u2019m learning to speak by getting up there and speaking. It\u2019s not always a pretty sight. \u2026 But I have decided that I can deliver a basic evangelistic message. I can do that. \u2026 I can\u2019t do what my Daddy has done. But I can do what I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Woven through Franklin Graham\u2019s message are threads of his own story, the archetypal tale of the rebellious preacher\u2019s kid. It\u2019s easy to focus on this \u2014 contrasting the son\u2019s stance as a sinner in the hands of an angry God with his father\u2019s spotless image. After decades of the latter, many may have forgotten that purity is not the norm for evangelists. Billy Graham\u2019s predecessors often arrived in the pulpit after visiting the ditch. There\u2019s nothing new about an evangelist shouting that God saved him from smoking, drinking and flirting with disaster.<\/p>\n\n
The question isn\u2019t whether Franklin Graham has anything to say, but whether great masses will flock to hear him say it.<\/p>\n\n
For historians, the BGEA \u2014 with its staff of 525 and 1995 revenues of $88 million \u2014 is the epitome of the modern parachurch group, the model for hundreds born in the 1950s and \u201960s. Today\u2019s rapidly growing groups are nondenominational, but stress a specific subject or audience. Focus On The Family is one example and Franklin Graham\u2019s audience in Washington was assembled by another, the Promise Keepers movement for men. Similar groups target women and young people.<\/p>\n\n
While some worry that the BGEA is becoming irrelevant, Franklin Graham said he\u2019s convinced it can retain a niche by sticking with basic evangelism.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe strange thing is that very few people are really doing what we do,\u201d he said. \u201cA decade or two ago, there were 12 or 15 people doing straight evangelistic preaching. You\u2019d turn on the radio and hear them. Now there\u2019s a void, out there. \u2026 We don\u2019t need to re-define ourselves or create some kind of new BGEA for a new day. We\u2019ll stay with the same old same old.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is one of modern Christendom\u2019s most familiar images. Evangelist Billy Graham finishes inviting his listeners to get up out of their seats and to come forward to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Then as the crusade choir gently sings \u201cJust As I Am,\u201d he steps back from the pulpit folds his Bible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n