A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  As Graham and his team always graciously admitted, the trip down the aisle is just one segment of a journey on a path that many others have helped prepare and on which the seeker had already started to walk. “I am not sure I have ever led a soul to Christ,” he has said. “There are so many factors—a mother, a Sunday school teacher, a preacher who has been slugging it out for years. I simply come along as a way-shower. I say, ‘Do you see that door? That’s the way in.’” Of those who made first-time decisions in Graham’s crusades, a small minority—but still a substantial number—were doubtless truly won to Christ from a stance of antagonism, indifference, or apathy, as a sampling of the mail received in Minneapolis clearly reveals. For the majority, however, particularly in America, the decision they made is one they would have made at some point in their lives even if Billy Graham had not come to town—when they reached a certain age, when peers in their Sunday-school class responded, when pressure from their spouses reached a sufficient level, or at a revival held by a lesser evangelist. Similarly, some “rededicators” were genuine reprobates, dragooned into the stadium against their will or perhaps come to scoff and moved instead by terror or love to repent and turn from their evil ways. Far more were people of tender conscience who feared they had not done all they might to win souls, or who were more concerned with their own affairs than about their Father’s business, or who felt guilty because they sometimes daydreamed during the pastor’s sermon. But, like the decision to attend college or to marry, a decision to say “I am now ready to assume the responsibility of living as a Christian” was not less momentous simply because it was an expected part of one’s life agenda. Similarly, if a substantial number of church folk whose light had begun to dim were plugged back into their systems on a high-voltage line, the crusade performed an important function for both the individual and the systems in question.

  While the great stadium crusades remained the hallmark of his ministry, and while he drew crowds to them for a far longer period than any other evangelist has ever managed to do, it is indisputably the case that Billy Graham magnified his voice and multiplied his words tremendously by his ability and willingness to use modern mass media. To the end, he made use of the two media that served him longest: print and radio. In 1990 his “My Answer” column ran in over a hundred newspapers, but that was far below its peak during the 1950s and 1960s. Aides insist he tried to check them to approve of their content, but conceded, as the column itself noted once each year, that staff members did the actual writing. No one seemed to think the column was living up to its potential. Even Fred Dienert, who was usually relentless in his determination to put a positive spin on anything connected with the ministry, admitted that “something should be done. There’s an opportunity to handle it in a way that meets the needs of people today. For example, if you talk about divorce, you’re talking about the whole country. It’s in every church in America. Families breaking up, loneliness, singles, people who are hurting and crying. You can’t just give them a verse about casting all of your cares on Jesus because he’ll take care of you. It would probably take a full-time crew to do a better column, but it could grow again, because nobody has the audience Billy has.”

  Rather than wait for a newspaper squib to hit upon their particular problem, those who wanted a fuller and more satisfying answer to a specific question could write directly to Graham at his Minneapolis headquarters. Correct spelling and a precise address were unnecessary. The letter collection contains missives sent to “Belly Grayem, Menihapuls, Menisoldiem”; “Rev. Billy Graham, Many Applause, Many Sorrow, Los Angeles”; “Mr. Belly Graham, Baptist Church’s Preacher, will you find him out, please, NY”; “Billy Graham (World Citizen), care of American Government”; and “The Rev. Billy Graham—Dear Mr. Postman, I don’t know the address of Rev. Graham, but please try and get this letter to him. It really is important. Love, Linda.” In marked contrast to other well-known media ministers who not only claim to read every letter they receive but authorize responses in which a computer has slugged in the correspondent’s name in a display of ersatz intimacy, Graham freely admitted he did not and could not read more than a tiny fraction of his mail. Moreover, the responses were signed by the people who actually prepared them.

  Prepare is often more accurate than write. Ralph Williams, director of BGEA’s Christian Guidance Department, explained how his staff of approximately twenty-five men and women handled most of the more than 200,000 inquiries people addressed to Billy Graham each year. Large notebooks contained standardized responses on a host of subjects; each sentence and verse of Scripture were numbered, so that a mail counselor could construct an appropriate response simply by typing the proper codes on a computer. Most of the topics were routine, of the sort a secular therapist might face: Anxiety, Bereavement, Birth Control, Drugs, Jealousy, Marriage, Smoking, and War. Others made it clear that this was a religious enterprise: Age of Accountability, Bible Translations, Daughter Wants to Marry Non-Christian, Frequent Writers (“We keep a file of people who just write to us again and again, so we can refer back to previous letters”), Heaven (Description of), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ministry (Call to), Non-Christian Friends for Children, Parents (How to Deal with Child’s Waywardness), Perilous Times, Poem Acknowledgment (“We get a lot of poems”), Purgatory, Sabbath, and Witnessing. The responses were not quotations from Billy Graham, but Williams felt they were “pretty much abreast of how Billy feels. We’ve built them up over the years and feel we’re in tune with him and his thoughts and position on these topics, whether it’s in the area of theology or social action or whatever.” When a topic loomed large in the public consciousness—for example, abortion, AIDS, cults, herpes, or as in 1987, television evangelism—the counseling department typically prepared a few paragraphs, a special letter, or even a complete pamphlet on the subject. Sometimes such letters called for a delicate balancing act. “We are inclined to be a bit ambiguous on AIDS,” Williams noted. “We feel it’s important to give a sense of hope. While some are saying AIDS is a judgment from God, we just say that our sin as a nation brings its own harvest.”

  When an inquiry was too complex or sensitive for a prepackaged response, it was forwarded to an “advanced counseling reader,” typically a minister or counselor with more experience than the first tier of readers. Advanced counselors also had notebooks to draw on but could adapt the responses to fit a particular situation; regular counselors were not permitted to deviate from the printed responses. When it appeared that correspondents needed something more than a one- or two-page letter, the counselors could refer them to specialists near their homes. “We have a list of ‘helping people’ around the country,” Williams explained. “We know something about their background, their specialty, and their staff, so that we are sure they have a Christian perspective. It may be a church or a pastoral counselor or a Christian who specializes in crisis intervention. There are so many people who are without purpose, who don’t know why they should live and think they don’t want to live, who are just awash in life, and can’t find help from pastors who believe the answer is simply to tell them to have more faith.” In August 1987 BGEA’s operations chief John Corts noted that 27 women in the mail division had answered 17,000 letters during the previous 60 days. “The people who wrote don’t know those ladies,” he admitted. “The only name they know is Billy Graham. They write because they want him to tell them whether they should buy a house or move into a rest home down the street, or whatever. We can’t answer all those questions, but at least we can go back to them with some kind of love, care, and concern.”

  Decision still rolls along as the world’s most widely distributed religious magazine, with two million copies mailed to subscribers in 163 countries, and Graham continues to reach millions through his many books. In 1972 the Saturday Evening Post quoted him as saying, “I do all of my own writing.” The quote may have been accurate, but the reality was not, and Graham was said to be quite sensitive about his extensive reliance on researchers an
d ghostwriters. That sensitivity ebbed noticeably, so that he became quite open about the help he received from others, maintaining only that he participated actively in his writing projects and, at the least, carefully examined anything that went out under his name to make certain it accurately represented his beliefs and opinions. John Akers, who helped with several books, explained that Graham provided the essence of his books and others helped fill in the outlines, “including Ruth, who has a great gift for illustration.”

  The Hour of Decision was still being aired weekly over 690 stations in 1990 (including 151 international stations broadcasting six foreign-language versions of the program), but the Graham team had come to view it less as a prime evangelistic tool than as a vehicle for keeping the ministry’s “prayer partners” informed as to what the evangelist is doing. In addition to its radio program, BGEA also owns and operates two radio stations, one near Montreat and one in Honolulu. “We didn’t want to be in that business,” Graham said, “but we are in it. It’s never really been an interest of mine, and I don’t give it top priority.” T. W. Wilson, who monitored the stations, agreed with that assessment. “When a station’s going real good,” he said with a chuckle, “it’s our station. When there are problems, it’s T’s station.” Graham apparently had a similar lack of passion for making films. According to John Akers, “The film ministry has always driven him crazy. Basically, it’s an exercise in deficit financing.” World Wide Pictures became the largest producer and distributor of Christian films in the world: An estimated 150 million people have seen at least one of the films and at least 1.5 million have made decisions for Christ at film showings. (Expense and concern over diminished effectiveness led to a 1988 decision to close the Burbank studios and relocate production facilities in Minneapolis.) Caught, a 1986 film about drugs and a boy’s search for his natural father, did not draw well in the United States, but worldwide more than 600,000 people saw it during the first two months after it was released—far less than had been expected, but not an insignificant number—and Dave Barr, World Wide’s international representative, ventured that “this one may do for the international program what The Restless Ones did for the United States. We think it is going to be a great blessing.”

  Radio gave Billy Graham his first truly national exposure, and films legitimated the use of that medium by people who regarded cinema as the devil’s tool, but it was television that kept him in the public eye. Other preachers appear on television more often, but none used the medium more efficiently and effectively than Graham. One key to his success was the decision not to attempt a weekly Sunday-morning program. As years of Nielsen and Arbitron ratings have demonstrated, the audiences for his programs, usually aired in groups of three on a quarterly basis, were far larger than those for the syndicated Sunday programs of other religious broadcasters. This larger audience also appeared to contain far more unchurched people than did the Sunday shows. The 1978 Gallup study, The Unchurched American, for example, discovered that 11 percent of the 61 million unchurched in this country said they had watched Billy Graham on television. The only other preacher to attract more than 4 percent was Oral Roberts, then also using prime-time specials in addition to his Sunday-morning program. The audience of the Sunday programs produced by Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and their colleagues appeared to be composed primarily of faithful church members, which is why most of the programs aired before ten o’clock; if they came on later, their audience would be in church. If a program was geared to teach, nurture, and encourage believers, early Sunday morning would be the best time for it. If it aimed to reach the lost and the lukewarm, it would be hard to think of a less promising time slot. Since Graham’s compelling mission was to present his message to people who are not already hearing it several times a week, he chose to run his programs during prime-time early evening hours.

  Despite the success Graham’s quarterly specials enjoyed and the near-automatic ease with which they could be produced, there had been in creasing pressure to modernize the format in the later years. TV director Roger Flessing put the matter bluntly: “We have a Good News show with an hour on the anchor man. I’d like to see more graphics, file footage, other things that would illustrate points Mr. Graham is making. Jesus was a visual teacher—- ‘Look at the lilies,’ ‘Look at the fisherman,’ ‘Look at the farmer,’ ‘Look at the . . . Look at the. . . .’ With television, we have the capacity to look but we’re not doing it. We’re right here just looking at the preacher. And we can’t even be as visual as we’d like with what we’ve got.” Pointing to a shot of the choir on one of the monitors arrayed before him on the control panel in the television truck, he said, “Most church choirs look better than this. We don’t really try to shoot ‘tights,’ because when you zoom in, these people don’t know what they’re singing, or they’re three beats off, or one person is just gung ho and the person next to her doesn’t even know what’s going on. A church choir is more disciplined.”

  Ted Dienert—Fred’s son, Graham’s son-in-law, and TV producer beginning in 1982—agreed with Flessing. Sitting in a hotel restaurant one morning during the 1987 Columbia crusade, he said, “There’s a constant effort to try to figure out what will hook the secular audience. The crusades haven’t changed for twenty years, and the TV format has been virtually the same. We are integrating new elements into that format because the viewer’s taste and sophistication has changed, and we need to keep up with that. At times maybe I get a little avant-garde for the ministry, but my job is to see if we can get the job done more effectively. I don’t care whether I like it, or Cliff likes it, or even whether Billy Graham likes it. We want to be sensitive, of course, but my goal is that audience out there.”

  To create a more appealing product, Dienert and Flessing altered the old practice of filming only three crusade services and hoping for the best, with editing limited to cutting a few dead spots here and there to squeeze the program into a one-hour time frame. They began to film all the services and used only those segments they felt would make the most effective package. A few weeks after the Denver crusade, for example, the two men and other members of their crew, armed with stacks of film and thick notebooks, met at Third Coast Studios in Austin, Texas, to piece together the master videotape they would send to a duplicator, who would make 350 copies to be distributed to television stations in the United States and Canada.

  With seven or eight nights of entertainers and testifiers, it was relatively simple to come up with a good mix that fit the time constraints for a particular program and to edit out anything that might be jarring to the viewing audience. On this occasion someone noted that the sky was dark while Bev Shea sang but light when Graham got up to preach afterward. “We try to keep the songs with the night of the sermon,” Dienert explained, “but Bev blew the words that night,” and his segment was taken from another service.

  When it came time to plug in Graham’s sermon, Dienert and his technicians referred to notebooks that contained transcripts of every word spoken on the videotape, with a precise indication of the time each sentence took. The evangelist’s “misspeaks” were always excised. “Either we or someone else points out mistakes, and we clip them,” an assistant producer explained. “If he misquotes Time magazine or says the King of Spain died last week, that comes out. Or anything controversial—that comes out.” Jokes and stories Graham had repeated for years also came out, as did meandering trips down what the TV crew called “rabbit trails.” The editors might also cover up such minor irregularities as reference to “my fourth point” when no third point was ever made. After the sermon’s obvious errors and weak spots were eliminated and its length set, it was strengthened even further by skillful use of reaction shots of the crowd that could be matched with various parts of the sermon. By the time the program aired a few weeks later, Billy Graham had become a better preacher than he actually was on the night he delivered the sermon in person, and those who watched the program could see that he held the crowd in the palm of hi
s hand.

  Graham’s policy of appearing quarterly instead of weekly may have won him a larger audience, but it also saddled the Dienerts with a tougher task than that faced by the media representatives for other television ministers. Instead of negotiating long-term contracts for a regular weekly time slot, the Dienerts and other Bennett company agents had to wrangle anew with station representatives every time they wanted to put Graham on the air. Partly as a measure to save money, the Bennett company moved Graham’s programs onto UHF stations in many cities and in some markets dropped local stations entirely, relying on the Turner cable network to provide a sufficient audience. Economic pressures also led to a dropping of the foreign-language programs that were once a standard component of Graham’s television outreach. Despite these cutbacks, there was no sign that Graham or his colleagues had serious misgivings about television’s efficacy as an evangelistic tool.

  A major advantage of television, of course, is that it enabled Billy Graham to do what he could not possibly do in person. Larry Ross elaborated on that obvious but important fact. “Television,” he said, “enables Mr. Graham to reach more people with less demands on his time and energy as he gets older. We try to maximize a limited resource that has been blessed by God over the years and try to maximize his effectiveness in his remaining years.” Ross was not implying that Billy Graham had gone into semiretirement and planned to sit at home in Montreat, talking to television cameras and playing out the string. At that time, early in 1988, the team was actively engaged in setting up Mission World, a project that would carry crusades originating in London, Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires to satellite centers in hundreds of cities throughout the world. In underdeveloped nations or away from major cities, the satellite signal would be picked up by low-cost portable receiving dishes that could be transported in a case the size of a golf bag, then unfolded like a fan and made operational in eighteen minutes. In more remote spots, the program would be videotaped and shown in small villages a day or two later on portable VCR equipment. “Mr. Graham is not afraid of the technology at all,” Ted Dienert insisted. “He welcomes it. He wants God to use him until it is all over, and he is willing to take the necessary risks. It would be easy for him to stay in the same pattern, but he is a visionary man, and I feel that God has really honored that.”