Local pastors planning Billy Graham Crusade

Billy Graham

What does Auburn have in common with Taipei, Belfast in Northern Ireland, Villahermosa in Mexico or Timisoara in Mexico? The answer might be a Billy Graham Crusade, if the work of local pastors comes to fruition.

Early last month, ministers from a number of area churches met with representatives from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) to discuss the possibility of a local crusade or festival, said the Rev. Mark McCarty of Pine Grove United Methodist Church in Opelika.

"After discussion and lots of questions, there was a consensus among

those gathered to continue to prayerfully pursue this," McCarty said. "We formed a steering committee that is meeting today at East Alabama Medical Center, and the Billy Graham representatives will be with us again for a second informational meeting with a much larger group."

This won't be the first time the Billy Graham organization has set up its tent in Lee County. Billy Graham himself came to Auburn on April 27, 1965, in what was then Cliff Hare Stadium on the Auburn University campus.

The aging, charismatic Billy Graham is now retired, but his son Franklin and grandson Will are carrying on his work. Franklin Graham recently led a crusade in Knoxville that filled up the University of Tennessee's basketball arena, McCarty said.

"Obviously the number of people depends on the city and the venue," McCarty said. "In Lee County we have a smaller population than Knoxville, but we want to impact the region."

In fact, a festival at the University of Alabama in 1999 drew some 50,000 people, so organizers would want to line up a venue that could hold several thousand people at a minimum, McCarty said.

Billy Graham was known as the king of the "altar call," and during his long career led the way in using technology to communicate the Gospel. His lifetime audience, including radio and television broadcasts, is estimated to have topped two billion people.

Graham, an evangelical Christian and Southern Baptist minister, led his first crusades in 1947 in North Carolina and Michigan. Since that time, he has been called the spiritual adviser to several presidents.

Graham's son Franklin—a teenage rebel who once drank, smoked, got into scrapes and led police on high-speed chases—now heads the Billy Graham organization. Franklin Graham detailed his troubled history in the book "Rebel With a Cause: Finally Comfortable Being Graham."

He became a Christian at the age of 22 and became involved in his father's ministry in 1989 as the young head of Samaritan's Purse, a worldwide humanitarian relief organization that now works in more than 100 countries to provide aid to victims of war, disease, disaster, poverty, famine and persecution.

Since 1989, it is estimated Franklin Graham has preached to more than three million people himself. In 2002 he was named BGEA president and now participates in eight or nine evangelical festivals every year.

In the "altar call," the minister urges audience members to step forward, make a public decision to accept Jesus Christ as their savior and be "born anew."

McCarty said, however, that the service is nondenominational, and those participants who show an interest will be referred to either the denomination with which they have been affiliated in the past, or the closest church to them geographically.

"If you look at the steering committee, it's a beautiful cross section of all the churches in Lee County," he said. "We're still working on that, but if you look down the list, it's a beautiful rainbow that will continue to grow."

In fact, if the crusade becomes a reality staff members from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will move to Auburn and live here for a year, organizing the crusade and training volunteers from all the participating churches.

"They'll provide very in-depth training that goes well beyond the event," McCarty said. "This has the capacity to really strengthen the body of Christ in this area."

The effort to get a crusade in Auburn started last March, when McCarty attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. After the session, he talked with Bob McDermott, who is in charge of festival development for BGEA.

On June 5, McDermott and Tex Reardon, the BGEA vice president of crusades, visited Auburn to visit with the group of ministers meeting at Lakeview Baptist Church. Today, they return to meet with a larger group.

"They're both speaking very favorably about this, and we are excited about the possibilities," McCarty said. "A decision will probably be made in August, and we'll make a public announcement, form an executive committee and lease an office in the area."

From last month, McCarty said, it could be 15 to 18 months before a crusade becomes a reality. Franklin Graham or his son, Will, might conduct the crusade.

"It's a lengthy process, but worth the effort," McCarty said.

He said the ministers involved in the effort hope to accomplish several things.

"First, we want to use this to strengthen the local churches in the area, because it would be a blessing to every church," he said. "We want to reach out to people and hopefully get them plugged into a local body where they can grow, and we hope to strengthen the local churches in their own individual efforts.

"Typically, when churches have a common goal, it is a beautiful way of creating an atmosphere of unity among churches that in the past didn't have anything to do with each other."