A Thought For The Week Of February 19, 2018

"But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." (2 Timothy 4:5) In September of 1998, while I was serving as minister of the Sundridge Pastoral Charge, I had the chance to be involved with a Billy Graham Crusade held in nearby Burks Falls. Well, to be more precise, it was a Crusade organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, but it featured an Associate Evangelist named Ross Rhoads – but many of the BGEA people who came to help run it had worked at various times with Billy Graham himself. I had only been serving in Sundridge for about a year at the time but I was asked by the local ministerial group to take on the position of “Follow Up Chair.” From that vantage point I became very impressed with the organization. I had seen “crusades” on television – because there was a day when Billy Graham was such big news (and when society wasn’t quite so secular) that his crusades were actually broadcast on network television. And I always wondered – what happens to the people who go forward? As Follow Up Chair I found out that every single person who came forward at the Burks Falls Crusade would be given the chance to be linked to a local church. And I was impressed by the ecumenism of the whole thing. The BGEA would only agree to come if there was a wide cross-section of local churches involved. It couldn’t only be one or two, it couldn’t only be the evangelicals. So we had liberal churches, mainline churches, evangelical churches, and charismatic churches involved. All those churches worked together and their members and pastors built relationships with each other. A lot of walls were broken down during the several months that we all partnered on this initiative. We learned that while we may have differed on some significant issues, we all had a basic commitment to following Jesus Christ. And people were, indeed, filtered into local churches. My own church gained a handful of very faithful members as a result. And whether or not new people came into the church, the experience of being involved (I well remember the amazing mass choir made up of singers from all of these diverse churches, of which my own Choir Director was recruited as director) was a blessing to all who participated. It lifted us up, it inspired and encouraged us. It was an experience I have never forgotten, and one that influenced me. Billy Graham died just a few days ago at the age of 99. I did not agree with Billy Graham on a lot of issues. His theology was far too conservative for my tastes, and his interpretation of the Bible far too literalistic. He said hurtful things at times about Jews and the LGBTQ community. He was certainly a product of his times in many ways. He was not perfect – but of course, neither am I, and neither are any of us. And yet, he became a supporter of the Civil Rights movement in the US, and a friend and partner of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was also certainly ecumenical in his approach and even believed in the possibility of salvation for non-Christians. And, most importantly to me, he was authentic. I always believed that he was doing his work for the sake of Christ and not to enrich or glorify himself. There was no pride or arrogance in him. There was an integrity to him that many “evangelists” today do not, unfortunately, seem to possess. I believe Billy Graham’s legacy is a positive one overall. I am not an evangelist. That is a particular gift of the Holy Spirit that I do not possess. But all of us – individually as Christians and collectively as a church – are called to do the work of evangelism: to reach out with the gospel, to serve as Christ served, to love as Christ loved, and, in the words of an old hymn, to “stand up for Jesus.”