by Billy Graham
Early that summer, while I was preaching at a conference led by Walter Smyth in New Jersey, Cliff and I stopped for lunch one day at a roadside diner and were greeted by a big, smiling man whose eyes grew large as he studied me.
“Hallelujah!” he shouted, grabbing and pumping my hand. “What an answer to prayer! I was just sitting here praying that I might meet Billy Graham, and in you walk! I didn’t even know you were on the East Coast.”
He introduced himself as Dr. Theodore Elsner, a preacher from Philadelphia.
“I have a great burden on my heart,” he said. “It’s a message that I believe is from the Lord. Billy, you must go on national radio. You know Dr. Maier is dead, and you’re the man God could use to touch America through radio.”
I did not know what to think.
Dr. Elsner urged me to contact Fred Dienert, his son-in-law, and Walter Bennett, a Christian who was also a radio agent. Im-pressed though I was by this abrupt meeting, I did not look up either Mr. Dienert or Mr. Bennett; indeed, I pretty much forgot the whole idea. I was so busy that I could not imagine adding anything else to my plate.
A few weeks later I was speaking at a conference in Michigan. Two well-dressed strangers approached and introduced themselves as Fred Dienert and Walter Bennett. I did not know whether Dr. Elsner had spoken with them since he had met me, but their mission was to interest me in a national radio program.
I was still president of Northwestern Schools, still active with YFC, and spinning in a whirlwind of national interest in our evangelistic Crusades. I told Fred and Walter that I appreciated their interest but simply could not do a radio program at the time. My closest advisers—Cliff, Bev, and Grady—concurred: it was out of the question.
Now, in Portland, these two extremely persistent men repeatedly lay in ambush to catch me. All they wanted, they claimed, was five minutes of my time. I got so irritated with their pestering that sometimes I took a back elevator to avoid them. I finally told Grady to let them know I was not interested in their scheme to get me into broadcasting. Leave me alone was my message.
But as I came out of the hotel one night, there they were.
“We want to say good-bye,” one of them said. “We’re leaving tonight for Chicago.”
“All right, fellows,” I said laughingly, “if before midnight tonight I should get $25,000 for the purpose of a radio broadcast, I’ll take that as an answer to prayer and be willing to do a national broadcast.”
The thought was so incredible to them that they laughed along with me before heading for the airport.
More than 17,000 people were at the meeting that night. Just before introducing my friend Bob Pierce for a brief report on his travels in the Far East, I told them about the burden Walter and Fred had for broadcasting the Gospel, and the $25,000 condition I had laid down. The audience joined in my laugh. After Bob spoke, I preached and then extended the Invitation to receive Christ. Afterward, in the little room set aside for me in the tabernacle, a number of people dropped by to greet me. Several of them said they believed God had spoken to them during the service about helping us go on national radio. They began to leave cash, checks, and pledges. I couldn’t believe it!
“Billy,” said Frank Phillips when everybody had left, “people have given us $24,000 tonight for radio!”
Their confidence and generosity were enough to make me weep. But how could this be God’s answer? It was $1,000 short. I told Grady, Cliff, Ruth, and Frank that maybe the Devil could give us that much to mislead us. We agreed to say nothing to anyone else about the funds and went out to eat.
It was our custom to have supper after the service. That night we went to a little Japanese sukiyaki place across the street. (Ruth continued to cultivate my taste for Oriental food.) We got back to the hotel about eleven-thirty.
“There are two letters here for you, Mr. Graham,” said the desk clerk.
Postmarked two days earlier, they were from people I hardly knew—businessmen Howard Butt and Bill Mead. Both said they believed we should go on the radio and that they wanted to be the first to contribute. And each enclosed a $500 check!
Stunned, I bowed my head and said a silent prayer. Emotion so overcame me that I could not think straight. Clearly, the funds had come from God. Then, when I turned to go to the elevator, who should be standing in the lobby but Walter and Fred! They had been at the airport, they said, but something had told them not to get on the plane.
I put my hands on a shoulder of each man. “Sign us up for radio for at least thirteen weeks,” I told them. “God has answered prayer. We have the $25,000. We’ll take this as a step of faith.”
I was not kidding about that, since the total estimated cost, at $7,000 per week, would be $91,000—an astronomical amount that was nowhere in sight. Not in my sight, anyway.
Walter and Fred arrived in New York on a Saturday to conclude the contract, and they found only one person in the ABC offices, a junior executive. He informed them that the ABC board had just made a decision not to allow any more religious programming on the network.
Walter and Fred protested strenuously: “You promised it. We’ve guaranteed this young man, Billy Graham, that he has a network. To change your minds now is very unfair to us. Get hold of the board.”
“That’s impossible,” he said. “They’re all playing golf.”
“Well, get them on the golf course.”
“I can’t do that,” he said, digging in his heels. “You’ll have to wait till Monday.”
“We are not coming back on Monday,” they said firmly. “We’ll sit here until this thing is resolved.”
Seeing their determination, the man finally reached one of the board members on the eighteenth hole and explained the situation. The board’s decision was reversed on the spot, and The Hour of Decision was saved.
In mid-August we signed a contract for thirteen weeks with the American Broadcasting Company to go on their coast-to-coast network, with a target starting date during our upcoming Atlanta Crusade.
That was the beginning of my lifelong friendship with Walter and Fred. The Walter Bennett Agency handled everything for us, both initially and through the years. Walter had great business ability and was very skilled in negotiating contracts for us. Fred was Walter’s partner, and over the years he not only personally handled all of our advertising and other related matters in radio and television, but also became a liaison with my publishers. On an even deeper and more personal level, he and his wife, Millie, went on vacation with Ruth and me for many years. He is in Heaven now, and I continue to miss him.
When we were considering going on radio, some people suggested that we adopt a folksy or informal format. But I analyzed the styles of those who had the highest ratings at the time—newsmen such as Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, and Gabriel Heater, as well as the late Dr. Maier, whom I admired greatly. All four were fast and intense speakers. That fitted my own natural style.
From the first, I decided to use a lot of current illustrations from national and international affairs as well as from social issues. I wanted to bring the Bible to bear on those matters, concentrating on a direct presentation of the Gospel with a clear call to decision. For a while, I even had a news Teletype machine in our house so I could keep abreast of the latest events for these messages.
Listener response immediately confirmed that we were meeting a need in people’s lives. Within two years, we were receiving three to four thousand letters a week. This correspondence was the beginning of our mailing list. The programs quickly became self-sustaining with a minimum of comment about finances. In 1954 we extended The Hour of Decision to the NBC network as well, bringing the total to eight hundred stations; that did not include foreign and shortwave.
NBC had a policy against selling time for religious broadcasting, but the network made an exception through the personal interest of NBC’s founder and president, General David Sarnoff. I met him, seemingly by accident, in Hawaii.
When we were on the ship returni
ng us from Japan and Korea in early 1953, we met a Jewish businessman named Jack Lewis. He invited us to a party he was giving, during which a woman performed a hula dance. When she found out who I was, she apologized, fearing that she had offended me. I told her I had been to Hawaii before and knew that the hula was part of their ancient culture. It turned out that she was the wife of the owner of Honolulu’s morning newspaper. After our arrival in the islands, she invited me to a dinner party at their home. General Sarnoff and his wife were there, and afterward they offered to take me back to the hotel. On the way, the general asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, sir.” I could tell he was surprised at my quick answer. “I’d like to go on NBC with my radio program.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Apparently true to his word, we soon were on NBC every Sunday evening.
Often we broadcast live from various places where we were holding Crusades, from the front lines during the Korean War to the Hollywood Bowl.
THE BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION
One final development during the Portland Crusade came about as a direct result of the money we collected to start our radio evangelism.
Grady Wilson and I had a problem.
Underneath his bed in the hotel in Portland, Oregon, was a shoebox filled with $25,000 in cash, checks, and pledges.
But what could we do with the money?
Offerings for all of our Campaigns and Crusades had always been collected by the local sponsoring committee and placed in a bank account set up by that group. But the money in the shoebox had been collected for a purpose that had nothing to do with the 1950 Portland Crusade and therefore could not be deposited in the local Crusade account. As I told the crowd that evening, the collection would go toward radio.
Needless to say, the money needed to be deposited in a bank right away. Either one of us could open a local account under his own name and deposit the money in it, of course, but he would be subject to income tax on the full amount.
The larger problem, we had begun to realize, was that we had no formal organization. We had simply been known as the Graham-Barrows Campaigns, but we had never formed a separate corporation or opened a bank account in that name. For that matter, we did not even have a board of directors. To make things worse, if we did go on the air nationwide, people would probably send us contributions to purchase more radio time. But then we would be dealing with a larger number of donors and larger amounts of money.
From time to time, we talked about establishing a separate nonprofit organization for our work. George Wilson, our business manager at Northwestern Schools, had even made some preliminary inquiries with an attorney. I called George from Portland and told him our desperate, if happy, problem. He suggested that we go ahead with formal incorporation, and almost immediately he filed documents in St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, establishing the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (often abbreviated BGEA).
George was the one who chose the name, although I protested strongly. George protested just as strongly that the new organization needed to be identified with my name, since I was the major evangelist. Forty-seven years later, I still wish my name were not so visible. It is God’s organization, not mine, and if we ever lose sight of that fact, God will withdraw His blessing from our work.
The incorporation papers required a statement of purpose. George put it in simple and direct language: “To spread and propagate the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by any and all . . . means.” That was our purpose up to that time, and since that time it has continued to be our purpose.
The first directors were Cliff Barrows, Grady Wilson, George Wilson, and myself; a few years later, Bev Shea was also added. Across the street from Northwestern Schools, George rented 620 square feet of office space, more than enough for any imaginable needs the new corporation might have. He hired accountant Mary Cook as our first employee; she and her husband had come from Portland to work at Northwestern.
I called Walter Bennett in Chicago and asked him to become our agent to buy radio time. Then I asked if he and Fred Dienert would go to Minneapolis to sit down with George and help get us organized.
Almost immediately after the first broadcast from the Atlanta Crusade on November 5, 1950, mail and donations began to pour into the Minneapolis office—although in that first program we did not even ask for donations. Within weeks we were processing hundreds of letters every day, each needing a thank-you letter and, if a gift was enclosed, a receipt.
For our broadcast time, we chose Sunday afternoons at three. In some towns, traffic at that hour was so light, we were told, that police assumed everybody was inside listening to Billy Graham.
Soon George resigned from Northwestern to become BGEA’s full-time business manager. We also added our first secretary, Lorrayne Edberg. Later, a former student at Northwestern, Esther Hawley LaDow, began working for us and served faithfully in the BGEA office as George’s executive assistant and in other capacities until her retirement four decades later. My own personal secretary at Northwestern, Luverne Gustavson, had not only a good business head but also a strong feel for Christian ethics; she too would soon join BGEA.
As far as numbers went, Portland was a successful Crusade. As the Lord said to ancient Israel, “I know the plans I have for you” (Jeremiah 29:11), and “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). That prophetic message related very specifically to Portland in a special way. I spoke to the press club there at the close of the Crusade.
“This may be God’s last revival in Portland,” I said to them. “I’m going on the basis of the fact that very few great citywide revivals ever come to a city over once a generation. I seriously doubt if the old America is going to exist another generation unless we have a turning to Christ. If we don’t have a turning to religion in this country, I do not believe that we can stand. And I would include, of course, Portland in that.”
ATLANTA
From the cool climate of the great Northwest in the summer of 1950, we headed to Minneapolis for some large rallies. Then, in the late autumn, we headed for Atlanta, a city that evangelist Dwight L. Moody had described as “harder to break for God than hard-rock gravel.”
The first thing to go wrong took place on October 26. A gunman fatally shot the general secretary of the central YMCA on Luckie Street and then took refuge in our Crusade office in that same building. He ordered our two young secretaries to call the police and to keep everyone else away from him or he would use his gun again. We were all thankful that the incident ended without them being hurt. “GUNMAN MENACES NEWSMAN AT GRAHAM CRUSADE OFFICE” ran the next headline of the Atlanta Journal.
A misunderstanding spawned another problem. It was our custom to hold a weekly private, closed meeting with the clergy during our Crusades, during which I brought a brief message to encourage them, reported on Crusade progress, and made some off-the-record remarks about the local religious scene as I observed it.
In November, as we approached the climax of the six-week Crusade, at one of those meetings in St. Mark’s Methodist Church I told 80 fellow preachers that worldliness in the churches indicated a need for rededication on the part of ministers. A retired minister present, who wrote religious reports for the Atlanta Constitution, wrote up his personal version of the meeting for the paper. One of that paper’s columnists picked the topic up and created a mild furor with the headline “BILLY GRAHAM’S ‘STINGING SLAP’ AT ATLANTA MINISTERS IS VIEWED AS REGRETTABLE.”
Although I was determined not to reply to criticisms, this was something I had to address. After all, we had been invited to Atlanta by 135 churches from many denominations, both white and black—a group headed by Dr. Paul James of the Baptist Tabernacle—and by numerous Christian laypeople headed by Charles Outlaw. Further-more, Methodist Bishop Arthur Moore was a staunch supporter of the Crusade. In a letter to the editor of the Constitution
I reaffirmed my pledge never again to “preach” at preachers in this way.
The day after the closing meeting on December 10, the Atlanta Constitution, accompanying its wrap-up story of the Crusade, printed two pictures side by side. In the first, I was grinning broadly and waving good-bye as I stepped into a car for my departure to South Carolina. In the next, two Crusade ushers, with a uniformed police sergeant between them, could barely wrap their arms around four bulging money sacks. “GRAHAM ‘LOVE OFFERING’ COLLECTED AT FINAL SERVICE,” read the caption.
I was horrified by the implication. Was I an Elmer Gantry who had successfully fleeced another flock? Many might just decide that I was.
We had already publicized one fiscal-policy safeguard. News-paperman Morgan Blake, an active Crusade worker, had published a detailed story on our audit procedures, debunking the rumor that I had demanded a guarantee of $100,000 as a condition of my coming to Atlanta. He pointed out that all collections were transported immediately to the Fulton National Bank, which counted the money the next morning for deposit in the local Crusade committee’s account.
Other Team members received an honorarium for their work out of that, but Cliff and I received nothing personally except for our living expenses while in Atlanta. Instead, as was traditional in evangelistic work, love offerings were designated for the two of us at the close of the Crusade. I received 60 percent and Cliff 40 percent.
I was embarrassed to discover that this offering in Atlanta was larger than the sum most clergy made in an entire year. Ruth and I gave away about a third of our portion. With the rest, we finished remodeling our mountain home and bought a wooded tract of land up on the mountain, where we now live.
Riding back to Montreat in the car, I promised myself that such a misunderstanding would never happen again. We had to find some other way to support ourselves than through love offerings. Cliff agreed with me.
I got in touch with a wise older friend, Dr. Jesse M. Bader, evangelism secretary for the former Federal Council of Churches. “You’ve incorporated your ministry,” he said, “so let the board put you on the payroll as a salaried employee.” The salary, he urged, should compare favorably with that of a typical minister in any average large-city church. We put his recommendation into action, and that has been our guideline ever since.