November 7 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Baptist evangelist BILLY GRAHAM. This brought a couple of stories to my mind.
The first is a personal story – one concerning my dad, A. JASE JONES, who served for 22 years (1/1/57-1/1/79) as Midwest Area Director with the Interfaith Witness Department of the Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board.
From 1962 to 1974, Daddy’s home base was Kansas City, Missouri, where he also served on the staff of the Kansas City Baptist Association. In September 1967, Billy Graham held his 10-day Heart of America Crusade in Kansas City Municipal Stadium, the home of baseball’s Kansas City A’s (who moved to Oakland only a month later) and the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League.
Daddy’s colleague PAUL LAMBERT, Superintendent of Missions for the Kansas City Baptist Association, served as the local chair of the Heart of America Crusade. He asked Daddy to give the invocation on Military Night at the crusade, in full uniform in his role as a chaplain in the Army Reserves (Daddy had served in the European Theatre during World War II; following the war, he served in the Reserves until retiring with the rank of Colonel at age 60 in 1973).
Before the service, Daddy was sitting quietly on the podium when he heard footsteps coming toward him; he looked up to find Billy Graham extending his hand in welcome – “Chaplain, we’re glad to have you tonight.”
During the service, Daddy sat next to CLIFF BARROWS, who led the choir and hymn singing for the crusades all those years. As Graham preached, Barrows held his microphone cord, letting it out and reeling it in as the legendary evangelist paced from one side of the podium to the other. Toward the end of the sermon, Barrows turned to Daddy and whispered, “I need to go get the choir ready for the invitation hymn. Can you take this for me?” as he handed Graham’s microphone cord to Daddy. (By the way, as a 16-year-old member of my church’s Youth Choir, I was singing in that Crusade Choir that evening.)
Daddy always loved to tell this story, ending – with a wry twinkle in his eye – “So, for the next 10 minutes, I had Billy Graham on a leash!”
The second story is one I heard only a few months ago from a man who worked with Graham in the mid- to late 1970s. He told this story at a lunch gathering of several old friends, most of whom are Baptist preachers who have been in ministry for 40 or 50 years or more. Yet none of them had ever heard this story about Billy Graham before.
He began by reminding us that, back in the 1960s, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) had produced several relatively high-quality dramatic films that they showed in churches and movie theaters. I remember attending at least one of these – titled The Restless Ones – as a teenager. They didn’t charge admission to the films, but they did request donations.
As our friend tells it, over the years the BGEA had deposited all donations from these films into a designated account and just left the money there. Year after year, the account grew as the funds were never spent. This account continued to grow, without anyone really paying much attention to it, until someone finally noticed – in the late 1970s – that it contained several million dollars. When Billy Graham was informed of the amount in the account, he expressed disappointment that this money had sat in that account for so long without being used.
So he called our friend in and gave him a task – find worthy recipients and use this money to do some good. To Graham’s mind, it seemed sinful to have such resources and not be using them to do God’s work. Over the next few years, our friend began to spend these funds. We asked him for examples of how they spent them. He replied that they gave some money to refugee camps around the world that were helping feed, clothe, house, and resettle refugees; food banks for the hungry around the world; some money went to various missions efforts, church planting, etc.; and numerous others in need.
As I mentioned earlier, none of us had ever heard this story before. Billy Graham just wasn’t one to publicize such a ministry as a “photo-op” to burnish his image. Neither was he one to use such funds to pad his own bank account. His priority was to build the kingdom of God.
(And I imagine he and my Daddy have enjoyed reminiscing in heaven about that Kansas City crusade.)