by Billy Graham
Some years ago, a university student from Berkeley flew down to attend one of our meetings in Los Angeles. At Invitation time, he came forward to accept Christ. “I became convinced that you had something I wanted,” he told us later, “when I saw you on Woody Allen’s show.”
SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY
With the advent of satellites that could take a signal from one country or one continent and broadcast it instantly to another, our television ministry took a significant leap.
In 1985 we used satellites for the first time, to simultaneously broadcast our meetings from Sheffield, England, all over Great Britain (which generally does not permit the purchase of time for religious programming on television and radio). We were building on the pattern first established three decades before with the landline relays during our London Crusade. Those 1985 telecasts went to all kinds of venues, from theaters and civic auditoriums to parish halls. In each location, a portable satellite dish received the signal, and the images were projected on a large screen.
From time to time, we had already used a similar pattern of sending a television signal to auditoriums and halls across a country if it was possible, using normal television relay methods such as cable and microwave. For example, during the Euro ’70 Crusade (April 1970), our meetings in Dortmund, Germany, were relayed live to thirty-six cities across the continent. However, satellite technology now made it possible to relay images from a meeting to an almost infinite number of locations.
After the Sheffield meeting, our staff drew up an ambitious plan to extend our ministry across the world through simultaneous live satellite links. I struggled with that decision almost more than anything else in my ministry. On the one hand, the idea of preaching the Gospel instantly to hundreds of millions of people was very appealing. On the other hand, the projected cost was enormous. As I relate later, in 1987 our board decided to put it on hold. (God gave project director Bob Williams and his staff added grace to cope with the frustration of this period.) In retrospect, I believe we made the right decision.
In the next few years, satellite technology leapfrogged. In 1989 we extended the outreach from our Crusade meetings in London through satellites, reaching two hundred and fifty locations in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Three of the services were relayed by satellite to almost three hundred locations in thirty countries in Africa—some by simultaneous transmission, some by delayed broadcast. As part of this effort, we inserted testimonies and musical segments that were indigenous to Africa, and my message was dubbed into eight languages.
Subsequent satellite outreaches from Hong Kong in 1990, Buenos Aires in 1991, and Essen, Germany, in 1993 covered thirty countries in Asia and the Pacific, almost all of Latin America, and the continent of Europe, respectively. The statistics were mindboggling. The Hong Kong telecasts, for example, were translated into forty-eight languages and reached an estimated 100 million viewers each night. A spinoff was a separate program for India in 1991, using eleven thousand sets of videotapes interpreted into twenty-three languages and dialects that were circulated all over that nation. Yet all of these were setting the stage for an even greater outreach using satellite technology.
GLOBAL MISSION 1995
In March 1995, we went to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a Crusade in Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Next door to the stadium, in a huge indoor arena, our staff oversaw the installation of a dazzling array of technical equipment to transmit the meetings via satellite to venues in one hundred and eighty five countries and territories. One network executive from a major international satellite corporation said that our project was a more complex undertaking than the broadcasts his organization had done of the Winter Olympics from Norway the previous year. It may have been the most extensive single evangelistic outreach in the history of the Church.
Skilled interpreters in booths at the arena translated the messages simultaneously into forty-eight languages. Musical portions and testimonies appropriate for various areas of the world were inserted into the regional programs. For example, the Mandarin language version featured Chinese Christian musical groups and a testimony by tennis star Michael Chang. Some broadcasts went out on a “silent channel”—that is, with silence during the time my message was being interpreted into Spanish in San Juan, so that local interpretation into other languages could be added.
Thousands of places around the world were set up to receive the telecasts through small, inexpensive satellite dishes or by means of videotape; the signals were then projected onto large screens. Settings ranged from theaters and sports palaces in the former Soviet Union to the refugee camps of Rwanda and the rain forests of French Guiana.
In one African country that had recently undergone serious political turmoil, the meetings took place in the main city square. One local church leader said, “Three years ago we would have been arrested for suggesting religious meetings like this.”
In the capital of one eastern European country, the meetings were held in the building formerly used by the Communist Party for its annual conferences.
South Korea had one hundred and twenty locations. One large Presbyterian church there trained every one of its 17,000 members to be counselors in the effort.
An estimated 1 million attended the meetings in South Africa, with 50,000 commitment cards returned afterward.
A student at one of the satellite meetings in Kazakhstan told her counselor, “I’ve tried everything, and now I turn to God as the last hope. . . . Something happened for which I’ve waited all my life.”
A prostitute in Mexico who had consistently abused her children came forward in one meeting to confess her sins and give her life to Christ in the presence of her children.
Later, videotapes of these Global Mission programs were rebroadcast over national television networks in many countries, extending the audience by additional tens of millions. In some countries with a strong non-Christian tradition, we did not advertise the programs in order to avoid problems for the local sponsors; but we still heard many stories of people who came to Christ in those places. We were particularly surprised that the door opened in India for a specially prepared program that made extensive use of music and drama before the message.
Subsequent efforts have added new dimensions to our outreach by satellite technology. In December 1996, for example, a Christmas television special, taped in advance and including my message on the meaning of Christmas, was beamed by satellite in thirty-three languages to thousands of locations in over two hundred countries and territories.
TELEPHONE COUNSELING
In recent years, our television ministry in the United States has extended its impact through another use of technology. In 1980 we introduced a telephone-counseling service for viewers, which was in operation when our telecasts were being aired. Victor Nelson and the Reverend Noble Scroggins, our director of spiritual counseling at the time, saw it as a way to extend our ministry to people who otherwise might never talk with someone seriously about their spiritual or personal concerns.
Whenever we plan to air a television broadcast, several telephone-counseling centers are set up across the country, usually in churches or colleges that offer us their facilities. Local volunteers are trained by our staff to handle calls from people who want to discuss a spiritual problem or to commit their lives to Christ. Each center might have as many as a hundred telephones. Calls often continue many hours after the telecast is over. The caller pays the cost of the telephone call if it’s long-distance, a policy that has cut down on frivolous calls. At no point are the telephones used to solicit funds.
Terry Wilken, our present director of the telephone ministry, estimates that half a million people called in during the service’s first ten years of operation. One-fourth of those indicated a desire to commit their lives to Jesus Christ. Some calls came from people who were lonely and simply wanted someone to talk to; others came from individuals with deep personal problems. Calls were relayed to a telephone counselor at ra
ndom, but time after time God’s sovereignty was seen in linking a caller to a telephone counselor who had a special ability to speak to that person’s need.
In one recent series, a man called to receive Christ, then went on to share that he was an epileptic whose problems were made worse by his weakness for eating too many sweets. His counselor revealed that she too was an epileptic and had struggled with the same problem. She shared with the caller how she had found help with her self-discipline through Christ.
Another caller spoke of her spiritual quest, which had led her into a particular cult. Her telephone counselor had been involved in the same cult before coming to Christ and was able to lead the woman to a saving faith.
The potential of new technologies can hardly be overestimated. True, the best witness for Jesus Christ will always be the personal witness of one individual to another. But vast sections of the world today still have little or no indigenous Christian witness. God has given us new tools to reach this generation. For centuries the preacher’s audience was limited by the distance his voice could travel—a distance measured at best in tens of yards. Now that distance has become limitless.
EVANGELISM TRAINING
Evangelism has always been the heartbeat of our ministry; it is what God has called us to do. But for many years, I have been concerned about training others to carry on the work of evangelism. No one person or organization can do everything that needs to be done, nor did God intend it to be that way.
As I noted in Chapter 31, this concern led to our Amsterdam conferences for itinerant evangelists in 1983 and 1986. But evangelism takes place in all kinds of ways, not just through itinerant evangelists. The training of counselors in our Crusades, for example, has equipped a host of men and women for more effective personal evangelism. Time after time we have been told that even if a Crusade never took place, the training that went on ahead of time would have been more than worth the effort.
But early on, we were confronted with another question. Did God want us to train people for evangelism in a more systematic way? We sensed that the answer was yes, and this led to several extensions of our ministry, especially in recent years.
Schools of Evangelism
In 1957 California businessman Lowell Berry attended one of our meetings in Madison Square Garden. Although he was already an active church member, his life was particularly touched by the New York City meetings. “All of a sudden, I realized that many ministers weren’t making the Gospel clear to their congregations,” he said.
During the 1958 San Francisco Crusade, he approached me with the idea of some type of training program for pastors. Teachers for such a program could very well be our own staff and any pastors who had skills in evangelism. I told him it sounded like a good idea, but we were involved in so many other things that I soon forgot about it.
Some time later he tackled me again on the subject.
“Lowell, that’s a good idea,” I responded again. “But this would cost a lot of money.”
Lowell looked me straight in the eye. “Well, I have a lot of money,” he replied.
After talking with others and praying about the matter, we became convinced that God was leading us to develop such a program. I asked Victor Nelson and Bob Ferm to begin planning. After a couple of limited efforts, we started our first full-scale program during the 1967 Kansas City Crusade. A thousand pastors and Christian workers enrolled.
For years the schools were held only in conjunction with our Crusades. A school during our 1967 Japan Crusade, for example, brought 3,000 pastors together for specialized training in that largely non-Christian nation. As we were finding in all of our Schools of Evangelism, those who attended not only benefited from the training but also were greatly encouraged by their fellowship with pastors whom they never would have met otherwise.
We eventually expanded our schools to places where Crusades were not being held, such as Africa, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Malaysia, as well as cities in the United States and Canada. Under Norm Mydske, our director for Latin America, dozens of schools were held throughout Central and South America.
Lowell was true to his word, generously underwriting the program during his lifetime and after his death providing for continued assistance through the Lowell Berry Foundation. To date, 100,000 pastors and Christian workers have attended a School of Evangelism under the leadership of John Dillon and, in recent years, Larry Backlund.
The Cove
Many years ago, Ruth and I came to the conviction that a large number of Christians, particularly laypeople, needed a greater understanding of the Bible. But relatively few of them had the opportunity to study the Bible in a systematic and practical way. Even those who had gone to church all their lives often had only a scattered, piecemeal view of the Bible and its parts. We were also concerned about men and women of high visibility who were coming to Christ. They had no place to go to learn the Bible and be discipled quietly and without interference. Most of these laypeople didn’t have the time to get involved in an extended program of study, let alone to enroll in a Bible college or seminary.
As we prayed about this problem and discussed it with others, Ruth and I came to believe that a series of seminars and programs, lasting anywhere from a weekend to a month or more, should be taught by the finest Bible teachers in the world. Our stated goal became “training people in God’s Word to win others to Christ.” Thus was born the vision for The Billy Graham Training Center.
What came into focus was something between a conference center and a Bible school. We began to explore a number of properties throughout the United States. An extensive but bankrupt hotel complex in Wisconsin. A venerable but aging resort in Asheville. And so on.
One day my brother, Melvin, discovered a pristine piece of property right under our noses. It was less than a dozen miles from our home in Montreat. A beautiful cove surrounded by heavily forested mountains, it comprised some fifteen hundred acres, now complete with an exit ramp from the interstate highway. Ruth and I hiked as far as we could over the property. The only structure on it was a caretaker’s cabin. Praying as we walked, we sensed that this was the place God had preserved for a Bible-training center.
When we inquired, we learned that the property was about to be snatched up by developers. We moved quickly, and in 1973 we were able to complete the purchase of the whole property at a fair price. But we could not move ahead immediately with such a large project; we already had made heavy commitments for the Lausanne and Amsterdam conferences.
When we were finally able to turn our attention to the property again, we decided to make it available to a Bible college we believed had the skills to put together a comprehensive, Bible-centered program for training laypeople. As time went on, though, it became clear that the financial commitment was beyond the college’s capability, especially in light of their own institutional needs. Accord-ingly, in 1987 the BGEA board approved the development of the project under our own auspices.
The first director of The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove (usually shortened to “The Cove”) during its early stages was one of our senior Crusade directors, Larry Turner, with Tom Phillips as program director. They were followed by Jerry Miller, a dedicated Christian layman who had been a vice president with Texaco in Houston. He took early retirement from his position, at a considerable sacrifice in salary, to come with us. He brought in highly experienced land-use planners and specialized architects, and he oversaw construction. My son Franklin was asked by the BGEA board to be chairman of the committee that would monitor The Cove’s development.
Parenthetically, our treasurer, George Bennett, very wisely suggested that for every $1 we put into building and construction, we put $1 into endowment. We have attempted to carry out that plan over the years.
The first new building to be completed was the chapel. Donated by the Chatlos Foundation of Miami, it is one of the most beautiful in the Carolinas. The stones for its walls were quarried on the property. The next structures were t
he training center building itself and two hotel-style inns, Shepherd’s Inn and Pilgrim’s Inn. Under The Cove’s present director, Neil Sellers, other buildings are in the planning stages, although it is not our goal to become a large facility.
A youth camp on the property also serves hundreds of young people each year, challenging them to a commitment to Jesus Christ and giving them the practical tools to teach them how to live for Christ and build their lives on His Word.
The only textbook at The Cove is the Bible. Everyone has an opportunity not only to study one or more books of the Bible but also to be trained in personal evangelism.
The Wheaton Center
Some years ago, we were approached by a major eastern university, and then by the Library of Congress, asking what we planned to do with the archives—the old letters, files, and so on—of our organization. I had never given a thought to it and I was surprised that anyone would be interested in them, but the Library of Congress urged us to make definite plans (whether we involved the Library or not). As with The Cove, once we accepted the need for such a facility, we investigated a number of possible sites. The city of Charlotte urged us to house our archives there; a civic group offered to purchase a tract of land near the new campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
But Dr. Hudson Armerding, president of Wheaton College, and the chair of the board, Dr. Ken Gieser, strongly urged us to consider a site on their campus. An academic setting was best suited for the archives, they argued, and what better place than the college from which Ruth and I had graduated? Furthermore, Wheaton College was widely known for its high academic standards; in fact, it was often called the “Harvard” of the evangelical world. Not only did they promise a site, but Wheaton College agreed to raise the necessary funds.
Although some of our board members had questions, I supported the decision to place the project at Wheaton, and the BGEA board gave its approval. In time, plans were expanded to include within the same building not only the archives but a library and museum devoted to evangelism, seminar facilities, and space for the Wheaton College Graduate School. (I have always had a special interest in the graduate school; as a member of the college’s board when it was considering a plan to close the graduate school, I was among those who spoke against it.) The name finally chosen—and approved by everyone but me—was the “Billy Graham Center.”