“I’m going to ask you to do something you may never have done before,” evangelist Billy Graham told his Essen, Germany, audience on the opening night of ProChrist ’93 in March. “But it is something your grandparents and parents, your relatives and friends may have done many years ago.” As he continued to give the “invitation,” 333 seekers crowded to the front of the auditorium.
It was 1960 when Graham first preached in Essen in Germany’s industrial Ruhr valley. The chair of the local committee took his advance team to visit the venue for the crusade, a soccer stadium in ruins from bombing raids during World War II. There were no seats there, no electric power.
Aghast at the prospect, the advance team arranged for a tentmaker who supplied Germany’s famed autumn beer festivals to sew several beer tents together. And when the evangelist pitched his outsized canvas tabernacle and switched on the power generators, a nightly average of 22,000 persons came to hear him preach the gospel.
Now, 33 years later, the aging evangelist has returned to a modern exposition center with a 7,000-seat auditorium with an overflow capacity.
Evangelistic bean-counters should not jump to conclusions about this year’s opening night attendance of 10,500. In 1993, Essen serves as a “studio” for ProChrist ’93—a made-for-satellite evangelistic crusade aimed at 317 venues across German-speaking Europe. The live, opening-night broadcast had an audience of 193,000. And when combined with the satellite transmission of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Mission World effort to 55 countries in 42 European, Asian, and Middle Eastern languages, the estimate of the first sermon’s congregation was close to 1.8 million—perhaps the largest audience Billy Graham has ever addressed.
ProChrist audiences are to be found listening attentively in cinemas, city halls, shopping centers, military bases, an airport, and even in prison. The video aspect of the mission may, in a way, help to personalize the message. A 28-foot screen lends an overwhelming sense of the evangelist’s presence.
Big hearts for evangelism
Billy Graham’s German hosts are clearly excited by ProChrist ’93. International crusade director Larry Turner says, “They have a heart as big as you can imagine, which is equalled by their mental capacity to make the gospel relevant.” And, Turner says, they are “theologically precise”—perhaps to a fault. But this is not only the land of Luther and Melanchthon, but also of modern theologians Bonhoeffer and Küng and Moltmann as well.
Graham may be partly responsible for the heart for evangelism. “American Christians have no idea how much events like the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization [convened under Graham’s leadership in 1974] have influenced us to value evangelism,” ProChrist director Ulrich Parzany told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Graham’s influence may be responsible for the introduction of mass evangelism into Germany. (See “Evangelism in the Land of Luther.”)
But despite such enthusiasm, the hour of decision regarding this particular German crusade was slow in coming. Two major issues dominated—and nearly paralyzed—the discussions: leadership and finances.
“All the major church leaders in Germany agree to the importance of evangelism,” says Hartmut Steeb, the general secretary of ProChrist and of the German Evangelical Alliance. “But none of them would step forward and head a mission.” This created a situation in which, if plans for a Graham crusade were to move forward, it was not clear who would have the authority to make decisions. Eventually, representatives from 60 church and parachurch organizations decided to re-extend an earlier invitation to Graham and to form the ProChrist organization to plan and coordinate the mission. The working leadership was drawn from such organizations as the German YMCA and the Evangelical Alliance.
While mainline churches have not taken the lead, they have opened their checkbooks, contributing $1.1 million from church tax revenues. Another $119,000 came from England and Scotland. “We haven’t had such support for evangelism from England,” says Steeb, “since they sent monks here to Christianize us in the seventh century.”
The official support, but lack of leadership, from mainline churches has probably been a blessing, for ProChrist has brought about an unprecedented level of interchurch cooperation in Germany. “We must not forget the spiritual value of all the churches working together,” says Johannes Neudeck, “and also the picture it presents to the public.” Neudeck, who has traveled across Germany to coordinate the local committee, adds that the Graham mission is the first occasion for joint church efforts in many cities.
While ProChrist’93 is Graham’s first crusade in a united Germany, it is being held in that country’s far West. Many would have liked to hold the crusade in Berlin or another major eastern city, both for symbolic value and as a way of encouraging the long-oppressed churches there. But the churches of Berlin could not agree among themselves on key aspects of hosting an evangelistic mission, and the rest of the East lacked sufficient numbers of active Christians to do the necessary work.
Down a block-long corridor and past three security checkpoints from the hall where Graham preaches, beats the human heart of the technical effort that sends the evangelist’s face and message far beyond the borders of Germany. Here are 42 booths, each holding two translators, who re-preach Graham’s message each night. They watch his image on video monitors and hear his English, but their audio signal blocks out the German translator’s voice, and in those pauses a jumble of voices breaks forth, as each translator places Graham’s message into his own mother tongue for his own people. This tumult is, however, not Babel, but Pentecost.
Further crusades are scheduled (Columbus and Pittsburgh this year; Tokyo next January). During ProChrist, Graham told his Essen audience that physicians say he probably has five to ten years of active ministry ahead.
However long he chooses to continue, what remains constant is Graham’s message of grace and the call to decision. Ultimately for Graham, all problems are sin problems: rain forests are destroyed because of greed, and ethnic tensions arise because of pride. Salvation and renewal through Christ are the only solutions. That, for Billy Graham, has not changed—and will not change.
By David Neff in Essen, Germany.
