by Billy Graham
To those virtues was added a tremendous loyalty. “George Wilson will devote himself completely to just one person,” Dr. Riley had warned. “He’s been loyal that way to me. When I’m gone, he’ll transfer that loyalty to you.” He never spoke a truer word.
George always exercised a sharp sense of stewardship over the funds God entrusted to us, meager as they might be. That made him a terrific bargain-hunter on the school’s behalf. He got twenty-three old pianos from historic Fort Snelling, outside Minneapolis, for a few dollars each. The majority weren’t worth fixing up as musical instruments; he had them made into podiums for classrooms.
When I assumed the interim presidency, George Wilson and his friend Loren Bridges, who was a sergeant in the Marine Corps and a radio expert, had already looked into the possibility of establishing a radio station at the school. The Christian Businessmen’s Committee in Minneapolis was in the process of establishing one of its own. Every time George and Loren had approached Dr. Riley, however, he had turned them down. I, on the other hand, was enthusiastic and gave them permission to proceed as quickly as possible.
Under the leadership of the dean of the school and T.W., the students were asked to give as much money as they could toward the radio station. I went out to call on some friends of the school to help raise the rest. George stayed right in the middle of the project with his tremendous enthusiasm. Not too long thereafter, radio station KTIS was established, and I had the privilege of being the first voice on the air; I spoke for fifteen minutes each day.
Funds for completing Memorial Hall were also successfully raised. On moving day, a truly memorable day, students, faculty, and staff carried all the books—each volume numbered in sequence for its respective place on the shelves—in a procession down Harmon Place to the library in the new building. The new campus was in full operation.
Faculty salaries had been raised, and finances in general were on a sound basis. To help meet expenses, we nearly doubled the tuition charge, and still enrollment expanded. But when I tried to cut expenses to stay within the budget, I almost had a faculty rebellion on my hands. How we wrestled in prayer over all our problems! We had prayer meetings at every turn—something I had learned at Florida Bible Institute. What we needed, God provided because of His grace, not because we deserved it.
As you will see later, within the next few years much happened to expand my evangelistic ministry, and I became more convinced than ever that full-time evangelism was God’s plan for me. Because of that conviction, in June 1950 I resigned from the Northwestern presidency, but the board of directors would not accept my resignation.
At Christmastime in 1951, I did an awful lot of soul-searching back home in the solitude of the North Carolina mountains. The board, faculty, and students at Northwestern were as cooperative as anyone could ask, but the school was suffering in several areas without a full-time president on duty to make executive decisions. Back home with Ruth and our three girls—Ruth Bell Graham, who was nicknamed Bunny, had been born in December 1950—I went off by myself almost every day for prayer and study. I reread and pondered the great Bible passages that had motivated me for years, in the Book of Acts and in prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel. My decision was unavoidable.
In February 1952, I tried again. This time the board accepted the resignation.
I sincerely felt that I was leaving the institution in much better condition than I found it. Our difficult progress toward accreditation was well under way. Enrollment had climbed from 700 to 1,200—the highest level in its half-century of existence; that total included several foreign students we had invited to come tuition-free as we met them in our overseas rallies. Most of them were students aflame for a world on fire, just as our school’s slogan advocated.
Admittedly, I was never completely happy at Northwestern or totally convinced that I was in the will of God. As I look back, however, I can see that many good things came of my time there, especially in the experience I gained in management and finances and in working with a board. The years there also gave me a greater understanding of young people. All of this would be valuable to me in future years.
There was some understandable unhappiness with me when I left the school. I took with me some of my friends and staff into our new organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. For example, I took George Wilson, who had been Northwestern’s business manager; Luverne Gustavson, who had been Dr. Riley’s and then my own private secretary; Betty Lowry, an administrative whiz; and Jerry Beavan, who had been registrar at the school.
During those years as president of Northwestern, was I, as some critics were quick to report, thoughtless and insensitive? Some of both, I had to admit. But the historic Los Angeles and New England Crusades took place during my tenure, and the world seemed to be opening up to evangelism in an unprecedented way. Maybe some of my decisions and actions would have been different if I had reflected longer. But things were happening so fast that there was hardly time to think. Three months after I resigned, I wrote to a Baptist editor friend. “There is no doubt that I made mistakes and I believe the Lord has forgiven. However, there were many other elements that entered in that the public probably will never know.”
The college’s new president told me that those of the old faculty he had met did not agree with all of my self-assessment. All I could say to him was, “Well, there are a lot of things that I remember that they don’t remember!”
“I am feeling the best I’ve ever felt in my life,” I wrote to my parents on June 23, 1952, in the middle of a memorable Crusade in Jackson, Mississippi. “Getting the School off my mind has been a tremendous relief.”
8
A Growing Outreach
Augusta, Modesto, Miami, Baltimore, Altoona, Forest Home 1948–1949
Following our first citywide Campaign in September 1947, in Grand Rapids, Michigan—back then we used the label Campaign rather than Crusade —we held a number of others; but Augusta, Modesto, and Altoona now stand out in my mind for various reasons, and I recall Forest Home for the most important reason of all.
AUGUSTA
It was October 1948, and we were in Augusta, Georgia, about to conclude a fairly successful two-and-a-half-week citywide Campaign. Though I had recently taken on the presidency of Northwestern Schools, I was still on the road a great deal, speaking at YFC rallies, conferences, and evangelistic campaigns.
Our Augusta Campaign clearly was not having any impact on the people in the hotel. An automobile dealers’ convention was in town that Saturday night, and around one in the morning a wild party erupted in the next room, awakening me from a deep sleep. Grady came to my room to complain.
“I can’t sleep.”
“I can’t either, and tomorrow’s a big day,” I said to him. “I’m going over there to put a stop to this.”
I wrapped my bathrobe around me and went out and pounded on their door.
“Whad’ya want?” asked the drunken man who responded to my knock.
“I want to speak to this crowd!”
I had intended just to tell my neighbors to stifle the noise, but I guess the preacher in me took over. I yelled for silence into the crowd of thirty or forty carousing men and women behind him. Startled, they quieted down.
“I’m a minister of the Gospel,” I began.
Pin-drop silence. This was a bunch of South Carolina auto dealers who knew a Bible Belt evangelist when they saw one, even in his bathrobe.
“I’m holding a revival Campaign in this town. Some of you may have read about it in the paper.”
Not a reasonable assumption.
“I daresay most of this crowd are church members. Some of you are deacons and elders. Maybe even Sunday school teachers. I know your pastors would be ashamed of you, because you’re certainly not acting like Christians.”
I got bolder: “I know God is ashamed of you.”
“That’s right, preacher,” one of them piped up. “I’m a deacon.”
“And I’m a Sunday s
chool teacher,” a woman confessed.
Well, I stood there and preached an evangelist’s sermon to that crowd. I don’t know what happened to the party after I left, but there was no more noise for the rest of the night.
That was not my usual pattern, of course, although I have endured more noisy hotel rooms than I care to remember. But sometimes an evangelist has to be bold, and sometimes he comes across as brash!
Those meetings in Augusta were part of a series of Campaigns that marked a new departure for us. My first years with Youth for Christ had been a whirlwind of activity: I spoke at YFC rallies and churches all across North America and Europe. In February of that year, for example, I spoke forty-four times for YFC in several midwestern states, not including various church services and other related events.
However, I was beginning to think and pray about new opportunities for full-scale citywide Campaigns. Some of these were youth-oriented and closely tied to YFC. Others were invitations to hold citywide Campaigns separate from YFC, targeting the whole community. The first of these not related to YFC had been in late 1947 in my hometown of Charlotte; Augusta was our second.
As it turned out, we followed several principles in Augusta that would become the established pattern for our work in later years.
The first was to work for as broad church involvement as possible. Our citywide Campaign in Augusta was officially sponsored by the city’s ministerial association—a sort of council of churches. Such extensive sponsorship never happened before; in all previous cities, a few churches, or in some cases only one church invited us to hold meetings. In Augusta we had all-out support from virtually the entire Christian community, under the chairmanship of the pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Cary Weisiger.
Perhaps an event that occurred a few months before that Campaign, in late summer, had given me a greater desire to work with as many churches as possible. I had attended the founding session of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. Christianity was taking on a new worldwide dimension for me. Dr. Willem Visser ’t Hooft, who was the secretary of the newly formed council, had invited me as an observer from Youth for Christ and had treated me very warmly.
Like many, I was concerned that some extreme theological liberals—persons who would not hold all the tenets of the Apostles’ Creed, which was my own basic creed—had been given prominence. Nevertheless, I was impressed by the spiritual depth and commitment of many of the participants. Furthermore, at the local level in a city such as Augusta, I could see a great advantage in a united effort that brought all the churches together around the preaching of the Gospel.
Second, we stressed that prayer was an indispensable element in preparation for a Campaign, and we sought to organize in advance as much prayer as possible. In the months before we arrived, I was told, several hundred prayer meetings brought people together in churches and neighborhoods to ask God’s blessing.
Third, special care was taken to avoid problems with finances. Money had to be raised to take care of Campaign expenses, but it needed to be done in a way that did not bring suspicion or hostility to the effort. Long before the Campaign in Augusta ended, audiences contributed enough to pay all the budgeted expenses. At that point, the sponsors stopped taking an offering at the meetings. At the last meeting, as was customary in those days, a love offering was gathered for Cliff Barrows and me. (Bev Shea we paid a weekly fee, and Grady Wilson did not come to every Campaign, but he received a stipend when he was able to come.)
Fourth, we learned the value of publicity and the importance of being honest and careful in talking about our efforts. The local committee had run ads in the newspaper, letting the public know the facts of time and place. (Such ads were essential, since our early Campaigns seldom rated any coverage in the news section.) How-ever, some of the ad copy concerned me, because it placed emphasis on individuals rather than on the Gospel message. “Hear These Famous Religious Workers,” one ad exhorted, greatly exaggerating our importance. Bev Shea was the only one who was famous; he had hordes of radio fans—in Des Moines!
On the other hand, we saw that systematic advertising clearly could increase interest in a Campaign. Ads announcing our theme as “Christ for This Crisis” seemed to stimulate media interest in the meetings. I wanted to let people know that the Gospel had a uniquely dynamic relevance to life as they experienced it here and now. Newspapers began to report on the meetings daily, with good summaries of the high points in my sermons. All of us had opportunities to speak on local radio programs too.
One newspaper article said that in my next sermon I would hold the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. I don’t know whether that was literally true, but it did symbolize my constant effort to show the timeliness of God’s eternal truths. In preaching the Gospel, I could also comment on everything current—the Communist threat, moral and social issues in the newspapers, Judgment Day.
MODESTO
Immediately after the Augusta Campaign, Cliff Barrows, Grady Wilson, and I drove across the country toward Modesto, Califor-nia, which was near Cliff’s boyhood home, for another citywide Campaign scheduled to begin in late October . . . and therein lay a tale.
Cliff and I had bought same-model Buicks. Cliff’s was pulling a trailer called the “Bonnie B. Special,” named for his baby daughter. Because I had a commitment in Augusta just after the Campaign, I could not leave right away. Grady decided to travel with me. We agreed to let Cliff go first, promising to meet him at a prearranged spot in Texas, where Grady would swap cars and share the rest of the drive with Cliff.
But we never saw Cliff! After waiting for a time at our scheduled meeting place, we gave up and went on without him, stopping (it seemed) at every Buick place on the road to inquire about a fellow driving a Buick pulling a trailer. At some point, we learned that he was only about six hours ahead of us, but we needed to stop for three or four hours’ sleep. Besides, the oil light on the dash told me that something was wrong; I had to get the oil pump fixed. By the time we stopped at the Buick place in Albuquerque, we knew that Cliff had to be way ahead of us. When we finally got to Cliff’s father’s home in Ceres, just outside of Modesto, we found a smiling Cliff waiting for us; he had arrived an hour before.
A large tent had been erected for the event. Right from the first, we were encouraged by the response. Some nights we had to turn hundreds of people away because of lack of space. Some of the Modesto leaders even urged us to stretch the original two weeks into three. I had to decide against it, however, due to pressing responsibilities at Northwestern.
But Modesto not only encouraged us to continue citywide Campaigns, it also provided the foundation for much of our future work in another way. From time to time Cliff, Bev, Grady, and I talked among ourselves about the recurring problems many evangelists seemed to have, and about the poor image so-called mass evangelism had in the eyes of many people. Sinclair Lewis’s fictional character Elmer Gantry unquestionably had given traveling evangelists a bad name. To our sorrow, we knew that some evangelists were not much better than Lewis’s scornful caricature.
One afternoon during the Modesto meetings, I called the Team together to discuss the problem. Then I asked them to go to their rooms for an hour and list all the problems they could think of that evangelists and evangelism encountered.
When they returned, the lists were remarkably similar, and in a short amount of time, we made a series of resolutions or commitments among ourselves that would guide us in our future evangelistic work. In reality, it was more of an informal understanding among ourselves—a shared commitment to do all we could to uphold the Bible’s standard of absolute integrity and purity for evangelists.
The first point on our combined list was money. Nearly all evangelists at that time—including us—were supported by love offerings taken at the meetings. The temptation to wring as much money as possible out of an audience, often with strong emotional appeals, was too great for some evangelists. In addition, there was little or no accountabilit
y for finances. It was a system that was easy to abuse—and led to the charge that evangelists were in it only for the money.
I had been drawing a salary from YFC and turning all offerings from YFC meetings over to YFC committees, but my new independent efforts in citywide Campaigns required separate finances. In Modesto we determined to do all we could to avoid financial abuses and to downplay the offering and depend as much as possible on money raised by the local committees in advance.
The second item on the list was the danger of sexual immorality. We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet, or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: “Flee . . . youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22, KJV).
Our third concern was the tendency of many evangelists to carry on their work apart from the local church, even to criticize local pastors and churches openly and scathingly. We were convinced, however, that this was not only counterproductive but also wrong from the Bible’s standpoint. We were determined to cooperate with all who would cooperate with us in the public proclamation of the Gospel, and to avoid an antichurch or anticlergy attitude.
The fourth and final issue was publicity. The tendency among some evangelists was to exaggerate their successes or to claim higher attendance numbers than they really had. This likewise discredited evangelism and brought the whole enterprise under suspicion. It often made the press so suspicious of evangelists that they refused to take notice of their work. In Modesto we committed ourselves to integrity in our publicity and our reporting.