The evangelist’s six-city tour was his most effective effort in that country.
The outlook for England’s churches has been dire. Only 9 to 14 percent of the population attend church regularly, and many church buildings sit empty.
However, Christians in England are speaking of renewed optimism, and evangelistic zeal is returning to many of that country’s 35,000 churches. Nowhere was that zeal more evident than at a series of Billy Graham crusades over the summer. Covering six cities from May through July, some 5,000 churches officially participated in the meetings. Graham’s crusades made up the second phase of a three-year interdenominational evangelistic emphasis called Mission England.
“There’s been a harvest gathering for years, but nobody’s been able to reap it,” said Nigel Walker, an Anglican clergyman working with Mission England in the Liverpool area. “Billy Graham is still the man to reap what I believe in this country is a great harvest.”
Statistics bear out Walker’s conviction. After three months of meetings, 1,026,600 Britons had heard Graham in person. Nearly 97,000 responded to his invitation to receive salvation through Christ. The rate of response exceeded 14 percent at one meeting in Sunderland. The response rate for all the meetings (called “missions” in England) averaged more than 9 percent, roughly double the usual response in the United States.
Graham was overwhelmed by the crowds that jammed six soccer stadiums to hear him preach. “It has gone so far beyond what … any of us had anticipated,” he said. “In fact, it’s beyond anything we have ever experienced in England in the many years we have been coming here.” In 1946 and 1947 Graham and Cliff Barrows held 360 meetings in Britain, and they have returned many times since. A large number of the clergymen who participated in this year’s crusades were converted during earlier Graham meetings.
The evangelist said prayer was the key to the success of this summer’s crusades. At least 30,000 English Christians each prayed for the salvation of three non-Christians. Even before Graham held the first meeting in May, many of the persons being prayed for had become Christians.
Churches prepared for the crusades for months. Some 50,000 Christians attended classes designed to help them share their faith. About 30,000 received training to assist with nurture groups. The groups are designed to help new converts become grounded in their faith and to become part of a church.
As a result of the churches’ preparations and Graham’s preaching, new converts are plentiful in England. Hundreds of buses brought Christians and their unchurched friends to hear the evangelist’s straightforward proclamation of the gospel. On one night of the Liverpool crusade, buses lined both sides of a two-mile stretch of road. In Bristol, Birmingham, and Liverpool, the soccer stadiums could not hold the crowds. Thousands in those cities had to watch Graham on a giant screen set up in nearby parks.
Those who responded to the evangelist’s invitation ranged from punk rockers to news reporters and wealthy businessmen. A member of the British royal family, Princess Alexandra, attended one of the Liverpool meetings.
On the first night of his Ipswich crusade, Graham encouraged new converts to tell someone about their decision to follow Christ. The next day, Graham’s wife, Ruth, saw a woman handing out Christian literature. When Mrs. Graham stopped to talk, the woman told her she had become a Christian the previous night at the crusade.
In another city, a boy at the crusade wanted to walk on the field where his favorite soccer team plays. When he stepped onto the field, a counselor met him and led him to faith in Christ. At another meeting, a group of pickpockets walked onto the playing field during the invitation. Instead of taking wallets they asked for counseling.
In addition to those who attended the crusades, 210,000 Britons so far have seen Graham on videotape. Several meetings were taped and shown in numerous cities and towns. As a result of the “video missions,” some 8,000 persons responded to the evangelist’s call for repentance.
Mass media coverage during the summer was more extensive and more positive than during any of Graham’s earlier crusades in England. Several of his sermons were broadcast on television and radio. The BBC’s world radio service transmitted one of his Sunderland sermons live to a global audience estimated at 60 million.
Before the crusades began, controversial newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch, owner of tabloids in England and the United States, called a meeting to introduce his London editors to Graham. The following month, one of Murdoch’s papers and England’s largest, the Sun, editorialized that Graham would make a “wonderful” bishop “and an even better archbishop” in the Church of England.
After preaching at 41 meetings, Graham left England for South Korea where he helped celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of Protestant Christianity there. This month the 65-year-old evangelist is scheduled to preach in several major cities of the Soviet Union. He plans to return to England next year for a crusade in Sheffield.
RON LEEin England
World Scene
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