by Billy Graham
Holding the Congress in Berlin could not help but remind us that only twenty years or so had passed since the horrors of the Holocaust. Around the time of the Congress I wrote to the chairman of the board of trustees of the Jewish Information Society of America: “I cannot possibly believe that a true Christian would ever be involved in anything anti-Semitic.”
The theme of Berlin ’66 was “One Race, One Gospel, One Task.” Stan Mooneyham, Dr. Victor Nelson, and others from our staff, as well as several on loan from other organizations, moved to Berlin to organize details of the event, which was to be held in the city’s recently completed Kongresshalle. Carl Henry was the official chairman; I was designated honorary chairman.
Altogether about 1,200 delegates from one hundred countries came together for the opening ceremonies on October 26, 1966. Some of them were well known in evangelical circles, such as Corrie ten Boom, the valiant Dutch woman whose thrilling story of survival and forgiveness during the Nazi Holocaust was later put on film by our own World Wide Pictures. Others were virtually unknown, never having traveled outside their own countries.
Two attendees drew special attention. They were members of the primitive Auca Indian tribe from the jungles of Ecuador. In 1956 they and their fellow tribesmen speared to death five young American missionaries who had ventured into their forest to bring them the Gospel. Because of the subsequent witness of Rachel Saint, sister of one of the martyrs, and of Elisabeth Elliot, widow of another, they and several other members of their tribe came to faith in Christ. Now, only ten years after the slayings, they were in Berlin—barefoot still, but adding their voices to the praise of God and urging us to greater zeal for winning a lost world to the Savior.
What had happened to our Auca brothers, all of us in Berlin knew, was what God wanted to happen to every tribe and tongue and people and nation in the world. These men were vivid reminders of God’s transforming power.
We decided that we should include a well-known world leader as a speaker to call attention to the world scope of the Congress. However, we couldn’t think of anybody in that category who was an evangelical Christian, in the usual meaning of that term. Finally, we invited His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia and Protector of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church. His eloquent greeting set the tone for the Congress: “However wise or however mighty a person may be, he is like a ship without a rudder if he is without God. . . . Therefore, O Christians, let us arise and, with the spiritual zeal and earnestness which characterized the Apostles and the early Christians, let us labor to lead our brothers and sisters to our Savior Jesus Christ who only can give life in its fullest sense.”
In my opening address, I reminded the delegates of the 1910 Edinburgh conference. “One of the purposes of this World Con-gress on Evangelism is to make an urgent appeal to the world church to return to the dynamic zeal for world evangelization that characterized Edinburgh fifty-six years ago,” I stated. “The evangelistic harvest is always urgent. The destiny of men and of nations is always being decided. Every generation is crucial; every generation is strategic. But we are not responsible for the past generation, and we cannot bear full responsibility for the next one. However, we do have our generation! God will hold us responsible at the Judgment Seat of Christ for how well we fulfilled our responsibilities and took advantage of our opportunities.”
One compelling illustration of the challenge facing the Church was a thirty-foot-high clock in the Kongresshalle’s foyer; second by second it recorded the net gain in the world’s population. It indicated to us that during the Berlin Congress, the population of the world increased by 1,764,216 people for whom Christ died and who needed to hear the message of Christ before they themselves died.
On Sunday, October 30—the day before the 449th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther—the delegates joined 10,000 others from Berlin in marching from Wittenberg Square to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Co-ordinated by staff member Gil Stricklin, press coverage of that event and the whole Congress was extensive.
The Berlin Congress issued a final statement underlining its theme of “One Race, One Gospel, One Task.” That statement said, in part, “Our goal is nothing short of the evangelization of the human race in this generation.”
It went on to condemn as sin the divisions caused by racism: “In the name of Scripture and of Jesus Christ we condemn racialism wherever it appears. We ask forgiveness for our past sins in refusing to recognize the clear command of God to love our fellowmen with a love that transcends every human barrier and prejudice.”
It concluded with an appeal for a renewed commitment to evangelism: “Recognizing that the ministry of reconciliation is given to us all, we seek to enlist every believer and to close the ranks of all Christians for an effective witness to our world. . . . Our responsibility is to see that every one is given the opportunity to decide for Christ in our time.”
What was accomplished at the Berlin Congress? Beyond forging a new unity among evangelicals, the Congress served as a catalyst for a number of new efforts in evangelism. Bill Bright once told me that the Berlin Congress had given him the vision for Campus Crusade for Christ, which he had founded some years before, to become worldwide in its outreach.
Father John Sheerin, an observer at the Congress and editor of The Catholic World in New York, wrote, “I have been impressed by the broadening and widening perspectives, the obedience to the Great Commission, and the concentration on and reverence for the Bible.”
One reporter who had come to the Congress with a very negative view said later, “In spite of myself I am deeply impressed and deeply moved.”
Especially gratifying was the response from some German Lutheran leaders. In November, after the Congress, I received a letter from the bishop of Berlin, the venerable Otto Dibelius, who was a past president of the World Council of Churches. “Both the Congress and the preceding Crusade [were] challenging in the best sense of the word,” he wrote, “and most meaningful to the thousands who attended.”
Certainly a major contribution of the Berlin Congress lay in its emphasis on the theology of evangelism. The Congress papers were later collected in two volumes and widely distributed, thus extending the impact of the event beyond its original participants.
In his book The Battle for World Evangelism, Dr. Arthur Johnston summarized another result of the 1966 Congress: “Evan-gelicalism could now be seen as a significant international body, capable of even greater evangelistic exploits, in an age of technology and population explosion.”
The Berlin Congress resulted in several regional conferences, including gatherings in Singapore (1968), Minneapolis (1969), Bo-gotá (1969), and Amsterdam (1971). Local leaders provided the organization and program for each of these.
The Minneapolis event—the U.S. Congress on Evangelism—grew out of a group of delegates from the Twin Cities area, particularly several Lutheran pastors, who had begun meeting regularly for prayer after the 1966 Congress. Some 5,000 delegates from across the country attended the U.S. Congress on Evangelism.
Black evangelicals in the United States organized a Congress on Evangelism in Kansas City in 1970. This was the first such conference to focus specifically on African-American evangelism. The host pastor was Dr. John W. Williams, a prominent black churchman who for many years until his death was a valued member of the BGEA board of directors and a distinguished leader in the NAACP.
The European Congress on Evangelism in 1971 drew 1,000 carefully selected delegates from thirty-six countries to Amsterdam’s RAI Center for a thorough examination of the theology and practice of evangelism and the challenges facing the churches of Europe.
LAUSANNE
The impact made by the Berlin Congress caused some people to urge us to consider a second international conference. They felt that we must not lose the momentum built up by Berlin. I was reluctant to consider such an event. The Berlin Congress had involved a great deal of work, drawing staff time an
d effort from our Crusade ministry; furthermore, I knew that the difficult task of raising finances over and above our regular budget would fall mainly on the BGEA. And yet there were compelling reasons to convene another conference.
One reason lay in the debates raging in some religious circles, particularly within the World Council of Churches (WCC), over the precise meaning of evangelism. Many prominent leaders in the WCC sought to uphold a biblical understanding of evangelism, but the ecumenical movement by and large was moving in another direction. For example, in contrast to Berlin, the 1968 Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in the Swedish university city of Uppsala—an assembly that I attended as an observer—tended to redefine the good news of the Gospel in terms of restructuring society instead of calling individuals to repentance and faith in Christ.
A 1973 Bangkok conference sponsored by the WCC’s Com-mission of World Mission and Evangelism carried the process further, focusing even more strongly on social and political justice to the exclusion of the redemptive heart of the Gospel to a lost world. Implicit in much of the discussion at that conference was the assumption that Christ had already given salvation to every human being (a belief known as universalism), so that there was no need for humans to repent or believe in Christ in order to be saved. Such a view not only cut the nerve of evangelism, it also rejected the clear teaching of Scripture. This trend alarmed evangelicals, who found themselves grasping for a more thorough understanding of a biblical theology of evangelism.
In January 1970, I called together a group of 15 Christian leaders from various parts of the world to meet in Washington, D.C., to consider the advisability of another world Congress. Our feeling then was that the time was not right.
In December 1971, I called together a slightly larger group in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to consider the question once again. I also sent a letter to 150 influential evangelicals throughout the world, asking for their advice. This time the consensus was different: we felt that the Holy Spirit was now directing us to sponsor another conference.
In subsequent meetings, various committees were set up, and the decision was made by the BGEA to hold a world Congress in the summer of 1974. Particularly important was the appointment of a committee to plan the conference. Care was taken to make it as representative as possible; the days of white, Western paternalism had to end. A committee of 28 people from sixteen nations was finally appointed; about half were from the Third World.
I asked Bishop Jack Dain of Australia to act as executive chairman and Dr. Donald Hoke, veteran missionary to Japan and president of Tokyo Christian College, to be coordinating director of the conference. Paul Little of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship took the assignment of program director, working closely under the program committee, which consisted of Leighton Ford as chairman, Victor Nelson, Harold Lindsell, Samuel Escobar, and Don Hoke. Warwick Olson from Australia was named director of communications. I was designated honorary chairman, with the understanding that no statement would be issued from the conference without my approval.
Our preference was to hold the conference somewhere in the Third World. Unfortunately, our staff discovered that there simply was no facility in the Third World that could host such a large and complicated gathering. At the suggestion of Dr. Robert Denny, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance (which held its worldwide assemblies every five years), we then focused on Europe.
After careful study, we selected the Palais de Beaulieu conference center in Lausanne, Switzerland. The conference center had auditorium space for 4,000 people as well as facilities for simultaneous translation, and there were ample rooms for the dozens of small groups and workshops we were planning.
Advisory committees were set up in each country to nominate delegates, following guidelines set forth by the executive committee. Among those guidelines was an emphasis on younger leaders, who would have a lifetime of ministry ahead of them.
The planning was not without its problems. Well-known businessman and Christian lay leader Maxey Jarman from Nashville undertook the task of raising special funding for the event. In spite of his energetic efforts, however, many people could not grasp the strategic significance of the conference. In the end, the BGEA had to fund three-fourths of the budget.
As the conference date approached, costs began to soar, in large part because of the Arab oil embargo and skyrocketing plane fares. At one stage, I was on the verge of canceling the Congress. Ruth, however, persuaded me otherwise. “Don’t cancel it,” she urged. “You may never be able to have a conference like this again. Go forward, even if you have to borrow the money.”
Don Hoke and Jack Dain were both very able men, but both were strong-willed and with different cultural backgrounds. Occa-sionally, when things got too strained between them, I had to ask Victor Nelson to intervene. From time to time, I had to fly over myself to work on numerous policy decisions that had to be made! I was concerned to involve the executive committee as much as possible.
Inevitably, other problems arose that we couldn’t possibly have envisioned. A few are worth mentioning here.
One speaker threatened to pull out when we placed the Brit-ish intellectual and writer Malcolm Muggeridge on the program. Muggeridge, a fairly recent convert to the Christian faith, was not as versed on theological distinctions as this speaker felt he should be. And yet Muggeridge gave a brilliant analysis of the intellectual climate of the world in which we lived and received the only standing ovation of the Congress.
There also was the delegation who, when they arrived at the Palais de Beaulieu, refused at first to enter because the flag of a country hostile to them was flying on one of the many flagpoles outside.
One day during the conference, the food was so indigestible that Jack Dain took a plate to the caterer, who was not part of the Palais de Beaulieu staff, thrust it under his nose, and bluntly said he wouldn’t feed that stuff to his dog. The food improved immediately.
And then there was the personal problem I faced when I arrived in Lausanne. Ruth and I were taken to a spacious suite in the most palatial hotel in the city, overlooking the lakefront. I knew it was being provided without cost to the conference. (I assumed that the hotel was offering it as a courtesy for the business the conference was generating; later I discovered that an American businessman was actually paying for it.) But I felt very uncomfortable there, since most of the delegates lived extremely modest lives and would be staying in far simpler hotels. A day or so later Ruth and I moved to a much smaller hostelry.
Nevertheless, given the scope of the conference, we were very thankful that the problems were not greater. One reason, I was convinced, was that the prayer committee, working under Millie Dienert, had organized strong prayer support in virtually every country.
The conference—officially designated the International Con-gress on World Evangelization (or ICWE), but commonly called Lausanne ’74—was held July 16 through 25. The theme was “Let the Earth Hear His Voice.” There were 2,473 official delegates from 150 countries, with another 1,300 people participating as observers, guests, or consultants; in addition, several hundred journalists attended. With only two days to prepare, Maurice Rowlandson, director of our London office, managed to organize the entire registration process and train the several hundred young people who had volunteered as stewards or ushers.
In my opening address, I noted the uniqueness of the Con-gress: “Never before have so many representatives of so many evangelical Christian churches in so many nations and from so many tribal and language groups gathered to worship, pray, and plan together for world evangelization. Assembled here tonight are more responsible leaders, from more growing national churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, than have ever met before.”
In that keynote address, I also tried to set forth the reasons for the Congress. I traced its lineage back to other historic conclaves dealing with missions and evangelism, and I noted the pressing need to develop evangelistic strategies for our generatio
n. I outlined also why some evangelistic movements of the past had lost their cutting edge. “If there’s one thing that the history of the Church should teach us,” I said, “it is the importance of a theology of evangelism derived from the Scriptures.”
In addition, I reviewed the challenges that evangelism was facing in a world often gripped by crisis. I likewise underlined the single focus of the Congress: “Here at Lausanne, let’s make sure that Evan-gelization is the one task which we are unitedly determined to do.”
Because of our conviction that our lives and our thinking must be shaped by God’s Word, every morning session began with a devotional Bible study led by various Bible teachers.
Many of the plenary addresses explored the Bible’s teaching on evangelism, including such topics as the nature of God, the work of Christ, conversion, the uniqueness of Christ, the lostness of humanity, the mission of the Church, and the authority of the Bible.
Workshops dealt with everything from evangelizing people living in high-rise apartment buildings to evangelizing in the midst of government hostility. Delegates from each country hammered out strategies for evangelism within their own society. All addresses and reports were edited by Dr. J. D. Douglas of Scotland and printed in a volume that ran fifteen hundred pages.
What was the impact of those ten days in Lausanne?
As had happened after the Berlin Congress, reports began pouring in of new movements and new strategies that were helping Christians reach out to others with the Gospel. Two years after Lausanne, Don Hoke reported that at least twenty-five new evangelistic organizations or missions were formed in Europe alone as a direct result of that conference. I heard of one tribe in Bolivia that had twenty churches in 1974. Those evangelists involved in reaching the area put into practice some of the things they learned in Lausanne, and by 1980 the number of churches grew to one thousand.