Three times this weekend, Billy Graham, the 86-year-old veteran Crusader, will take the microphone in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York, and deliver the message that he committed himself to as a teenager seventy years ago. No longer does he deliver that message with the rapid-fire cadences and the energetic gestures that characterized his preaching when he first caught the attention of New Yorkers during his Madison Square Garden meetings in 1957. But his message has lost none of its power.
After more than sixty years of preaching, that's remarkable. Preaching in outdoor settings is not exactly like preaching in a church. It's more demanding.
I've done just enough outdoor speaking to admire those who can pull it off. But not near enough to do it well. Trying to deliver a sermon, a testimony, or even an announcement in a public park or on a beach or street corner is not for the timid or easily distracted.
Speaking in a church, you enjoy "home field advantage"—an audience that knows what to expect, and an environment reasonably conducive to communication. In an outdoor public venue, a lot more variables come into play: the weather—whether hot or cold, rain or wind or bright sunshine; the constant movement of people wandering in and wandering out; the traffic in the distance and aircraft overhead; the incessant sounds of the city.
The last time I heard Billy Graham speak in New York City, that's what impressed me—his ability to communicate clearly and directly despite the surroundings. In fact, he turned the surroundings into a powerful communication aid.
It was September 22, 1991, when some 250,000 people descended on Manhattan for what was billed "An Afternoon in Central Park with Billy Graham." That year, New York City, with its 500,000 registered heroin addicts, and 2,245 homicide victims the year before, was hardly a natural worship center.
Central Park was a marketplace of competing ideologies. Pamphleteers and protesters seem drawn to such gatherings. As I walked to the event, people thrust leaflets into my hands pushing environmental awareness, various brands of mysticism, baptismal regeneration, and militant Calvinism (a tract called "The Myth of Free Will"). Others carried signs protesting Billy's ecumenism.
A small army of police officers and paramedics was stationed around the park. Hot dog, ice cream, and t-shirt vendors had set up shop. I wondered what effect all this would have on the preaching of the gospel.
The Graham team had worked hard to spread word about the event. Promotional brochures had been distributed in 16 languages. Large ads in newspapers proclaimed: "You're born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there's a loophole." They went on to invite people to hear Billy Graham's message of hope.
Prominent New Yorkers, including John Cardinal O'Connor and Mayor David Dinkins endorsed the event. Various ethnic radio stations agreed to broadcast the event live, providing simultaneous translation in Spanish, Korean, and three Chinese dialects. The music ranged from country to pop to black Gospel to a Korean children's choir.
When it came time for Billy to preach, he looked about at the crowd, some in chairs, thousands sitting on the grass, others standing expectantly, others just milling around or buying from the vendors. His message was characteristically simple, based on John 3:16.
"People get increasingly irritable and pushy in their effort to guard their own turf," he said, letting the surroundings lend their own impact to his words. "There's little space for others, let alone God. To be without God in New York is to be terribly lonely."
In contrast, he offered something that's always in short supply. Hope. Based on an eternal relationship with God, who knows and loves each one of us.
As I walked away from that event, I was struck by how he had taken a setting filled with distractions and competing ideologies and turned it into a communication aid.
I don't know what the weather or setting will be like for Billy's meetings in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, but I'm praying that Billy's presentation of the gospel will be as apt as ever in applying the gospel of Jesus to our deepest needs.
Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership and co-author of The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham to be released by Zondervan in July.
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