The many obits testify to the millions he preached to and the thousands who walked the aisle to “Just as I Am.” Do you know anyone who was saved at a Billy Graham crusade? Perhaps yourself? He was a confidante of presidents and world leaders, he counted all races and nationalities among his friends, his name consistently appeared at the top of any “Most Admired” list. But did he make a difference?
Because, as Ross Douthat shows in Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, the postwar surge of religiosity that made Billy Graham a household name in the fifties abruptly reversed in the sixties and seventies. Sporadic revivals since then have flamed out. The clear, basic gospel he preached has been cherry-picked, watered down, synthesized, and syncretized to an extent that GenXers and Millennials barely know what it is. Atheism is cool, or cooler than it used to be. On a popularity scale, Evangelicals rank somewhere between used car salesmen and the U. S. congress—the only constituency, besides Catholics and rednecks, it is safe to mock.
So, looking around the blasted cultural landscape, you have to wonder: what long-term effect did those massive assemblies and altar calls produce?
God’s pattern is no pattern: the Holy Spirit moves where He wills.
God’s pattern is no pattern: the Holy Spirit moves where He wills. We can get some indications from the history of the early church as recorded by Luke. No modern “crusade” was as effective as Peter’s sermon on Pentecost: 3000 souls cut to the heart and crying out for salvation. Afterwards, a thousand here, a thousand there: a church of almost 10,000 in a matter of months, or even weeks. Jesus Christ and his people as highly regarded by the public as they were in the 1950s.
And then Christians started getting killed. Stephen, who showed such brilliance and promise; James, one of Jesus’ inner circle—cut off! Hot times in Jerusalem for the Christians, who scattered under pressure. But seeds were planted. Everywhere they went, they preached, making unlikely converts. And the unlikeliest convert was made by Jesus Himself.
Saul, later called Paul, went from threatening the church to planting churches—dozens of them. But he never conducted large outdoor meetings with massive responses. Arguably the most consequential preacher in history, he probably never spoke to more than a hundred people at a time (except for one occasion in Acts 22, that didn’t end well) and we have no contemporary record of when, where, and how he died.
Seeds were planted, and the rest is history–though God’s history is different from ours.
But seeds were planted. The rest is history, though God’s history is different from ours. Revivals and Awakenings sometimes leave tracks in the human record. But the work of the Kingdom mostly goes on in secret: the yeast working through the dough, the sprouts uncurling just below the surface, the wanderer who sees a light in the darkness guiding him home, the innumerable cups of water given in Christ’s name.
The visible church has failed spectacularly over the years. The invisible church has not, because Christ is continually building and reforming it. At times the visible and invisible intersect as they did at Pentecost and the Great Awakening and the Billy Graham crusades. What difference did they make? In the wider culture, not much.
But seeds were planted: some scattered, some eaten, some strangled. And if you look closely you can spot the ones that took root: green shoots that push above ground and grow and mature and drop more seeds: ten- or a hundred-fold. The news from the culture front is discouraging, but be not dismayed: by God’s grace, Billy Graham made a difference.
By God’s grace, we all do.
