From The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham, I learned a new appreciation for his life, his leadership, and his legacy. Even though I’ve read both his autobiography (published in 1997) and biography by John Pollock (published in 1966), I gained a lot more insight from this volume.
Identifying Billy Graham as a level five leader, the authors point to Billy’s “extreme personal humility” combined with “fierce resolve.” This combination enabled him to establish and lead multiple organizations, maintain evangelism as his top priority, keep a team together through nearly seven decades, serve as chaplain and confidant of presidents and world leaders, and maintain his personal integrity through it all.
Like many Americans of my generation, I grew up with regular exposure to Billy Graham. Even as a teenager, I recognized something in Billy Graham that helped me identify more with him than with others of his generation. Perhaps it was the fact that he started wearing his hair longer in the early 1970’s. I can remember my dad being rather appalled that one of his peers (dad was born in 1916, Billy Graham in 1918) would want to “look like a hippie.”
Reminding my dad that “Jesus had long hair” proved to be a rather ineffective strategy as he reminded me that, “Jesus walked everywhere he went, too. He didn’t ride a motorcycle.” I jumped on my Yamaha 175 Enduro to take a ride in the hills and think about it.
I wondered why my dad didn’t think more like Billy Graham did. Both were raised on a farm in pretty humble circumstances. But my dad had pretty much stayed on the farm and had a worldview that didn’t extend far beyond the fields he had plowed most of his days. Billy Graham had left the farm years ago, traveled the world and was friends with the President.
That didn’t mean I necessarily thought Billy Graham was cool, because I don’t think teenagers ever think old people are cool when they try to look like teenagers or copy their styles. But I did appreciate that he seemed to have more of an understanding of the “generation gap” than my own father did. The fact that Billy Graham at least tried to understand the younger generation made a pretty big blip on my radar screen. And even though I didn’t verbalize it back then, I think I understood that to be a sign of leadership. At least it helped me respect him as a leader.
As much as my dad (and a lot of others of his generation) detested change, protested change, and resisted change, Billy Graham seemed to accept change. His acceptance was not just passive apathy, but reflected an actual embrace of change when change was necessary and beneficial to the advancement of God’s kingdom.
Growing up as he did in the racially segregated south, Billy Graham must have had a difficult time going against the tide of racial prejudice. But he did. Early in his ministry, he had followed local custom by preaching to integrated audiences in the North and to mostly segregated audiences in the South. The authors point to one 1952 incident in his Jackson, Mississippi crusade when he made a stand and exhibited courageous leadership:
Walking toward the ropes that separated blacks and whites, Billy tore them down. Mystified and uncomfortable ushers tried to put the ropes back up. Billy personally stopped them. This symbolically powerful gesture marked a major ministry watershed. He never again led a segregated campaign.
“There is no scriptural basis for segregation,” he said. “The ground at the cross is level, and it touches my heart when I see whites standing shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the cross.”[1]
I wish I could have witnessed that night. “Humility blended with fierce resolve” seems an appropriate description of his leadership that evening. He was humble enough to admit that the old ways he grew up with and had gone along with were wrong, and resolved to make a difference, even at the expense of alienating some of his constituents. More than a decade before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that riveted the nation’s attention on racial inequality and galvanized the civil rights movement, Billy Graham’s vision paved the way to make the dream a real possibility.
Billy Graham was a visionary leader. Some examples cited in the book include:
· His use of the term “team” years before it came into vogue in the business world and his actual practice of teamwork.
· In the first and only church he pastored, he changed the name from “Baptist Church” to “Community Church.”
· His consistent practice of turning his critics into coaches by asking them how he could improve. He understood the maxim, “The more influential you are, the harder it is to find people who will tell you the truth.”
· His practice of contextualization of his message. When preaching in New York in 1957, he used the titles from theater marquees as titles for his messages.
As a Pentecostal, I was once again reminded of the emphasis Billy placed upon the power of the Holy Spirit. Although I’d read about it years ago in Pollock’s biography, I was touched by the author’s description of Billy’s powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit in the early days of his ministry.
His first night speaking in Wales brought a small, passive, unresponsive crowd and showed no indication of the success Billy had achieved in America. Billy was hungry for the power of the Holy Spirit as the great Welch preacher Stephen Olford had described his own experience of Spirit baptism and coached Billy to seek after the same.
As Billy wept, they knelt to the floor and cried out to God. The description of what followed would rival any description of a Pentecostal outpouring:
“I can still hear Billy pouring out his heart in a prayer of total dedication to the Lord,” said Olford. “Finally, he said, ‘My heart is so flooded with the Holy Spirit!’ and we went from praying to praising. We were laughing and praising God, and Billy was walking back and forth across the room, crying out, ‘I have it! I’m filled. This is a turning point in my life.’ And he was a new man.”
That night, when Billy preached, “for reasons known to God alone, the place which was only moderately filled the night before was packed to the doors,” said Olford. “As Billy rose to speak, he was a man absolutely anointed.”
Members of the audience came forward to pray even before Billy gave an invitation. At the end of the sermon, practically the entire crowd rushed forward. “My own heart was so moved by Billy’s authority and strength that I could hardly drive home,” Olford remembers. “When I came in the door, my father looked at my face and said, ‘What on earth happened?’ I sat down at the kitchen table and said, ‘Dad, something has happened to Billy Graham. The world is going to hear from this man.’”[2]
As this applies to my own ministry context, I want to be sensitive not to discount someone else’s experience with the Holy Spirit, particularly when there are observable results. In Billy Graham’s case, the anointing upon his preaching, power to witness, leadership dynamic and fruit of the Spirit have been evident and readily acknowledged. I should not discount the work of the Spirit just because it doesn’t seem to fit into my theological box or personal comfort zone.
Perhaps the greatest lesson learned from Leadership Secrets was the tremendous potential of seemingly small decisions. Shortly before the Los Angeles crusade that launched him into the public spotlight, Billy conducted a much smaller crusade in Modesto. One afternoon of that crusade, he met with his young team and asked them to go back to their rooms and think and pray about all the things that had become stumbling blocks to evangelists in years gone by, write them down and come back to discuss the issues.
The results of that meeting became known as the “Modesto Manifesto.” In comparing their lists, they found the results strikingly similar and included these points:
1. Shady handling of money.
2. Sexual immorality.
3. Badmouthing others doing similar work.
4. Exaggerated accomplishments.
In a solemn time of prayer, the team members agreed to hold one another and their organization accountable for these things. As a result, Billy Graham personally and organizationally has never been subject to the scandals that have rocked the evangelical world. At the end of his life, his character and integrity remain intact, and it is largely due to the decisions and agreements made in 1948 in a Modesto hotel room.
Credibility is a precious commodity because it is short on supply and greatly in demand. Although I cannot hope to attain and achieve the stature of Billy Graham, I can learn from his leadership characteristics and godly example as a humble, but fiercely resolved follower of Christ.
[1] Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley. The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. p. 139.
[2] Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley. The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. p. 23-24.
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