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Had Billy Graham and BGEA done nothing beyond sending 13,000 fully charged and freshly prepared evangelists back to their homelands, the results of the Amsterdam conferences would doubtless have affected hundreds of thousands of individual lives before the wheels set in motion there finally rolled to a stop. But the model developed in these gatherings has been emulated in dozens of smaller gatherings throughout the world, giving similar training to tens of thousands of evangelists. Indeed, it is plausible that the answer to the oft-asked question, "Who will be the next Billy Graham?" is not any one man or woman we now know, or indeed may ever meet or hear of, but this mighty army of anonymous individuals whose spirits have been thrilled by Billy Graham's example, their hands and minds prepared with his organization's assistance, and their hearts set on fire by his exhortation that became the ringing slogan of the Amsterdam meetings: Do the Work of an Evangelist!

Undergirding all these achievements, of course, has been Billy Graham's success—and phenomenal fame—as a proclaimer of Good News. Simply but irrefutably put, no one has ever come close to matching him in the categories that make the box scores in big-league evangelism, and everyone knows that. For 45 years, the signature enterprise of his ministry has been and remains the great arena crusade, organized by an experienced team along lines proven to be effective, involving the cooperation of tens of thousands of church members from most of the Christian churches in Greater Wherever, and culminating in a series of services in which Graham calls men and women to Christ and then, chin rested on right fist, elbow cradled in left hand, eyes closed in prayer while hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands, come just as they are, without one plea. Many of them have come before, to be sure, and many of the "first-time decisions" would eventually have come even if Billy Graham had never visited their city. But the fact that multitudes of people have made or renewed a commitment to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives, and that additional multitudes have been stirred to greater commitment by their participation in the preparation, execution, and postcrusade activities has had an immense, if ultimately immeasurable, impact on local churches, on American and world Christianity, and on millions of individual lives.

Though he has often made a point of distinguishing himself from the band of preachers known as "televangelists," and though most of his television broadcasts have been formulaic in the extreme—consisting of little more than a film of a crusade service—no evangelist has used television and other mass media as efficiently, effectively, and creatively as has Billy Graham.

Apart from an early and nonmemorable televised version of the Hour of Decision, Graham's first significant use of television came in 1957 when, at ABC's invitation, he began airing the Saturday night services of his Madison Square Garden crusade. After a Gallup poll taken that summer revealed that 85 percent of Americans could correctly identify Billy Graham, and that three-quarters of that number regarded him positively, "Christian Life" magazine cautiously observed, "Undoubtedly, this fact will affect Graham's ministry."

In the intervening years, production values have improved, Graham has adjusted his speaking style to the smaller screen, and programs are taped and edited rather than aired live, but the basic elements of those first telecasts—Cliff Barrows leading a huge chorus, George Beverly Shea singing "How Great Thou Art," a celebrity or two testifying to the power of Christ in his or her life—are still the hallmarks of the programs.

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November 13 1995, Vol. 39, No. 13