Editor’s note: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of our publisher, Christianity Today International, we offer these insights from our founder, Billy Graham, from the book The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham (Zondervan, 2005).
Billy Graham’s first executive committee chair, Bill Mead, told us about Billy’s taking him along on trips to the White House. “Billy has that presence and humility. He commands respect from presidents, from Ike, Johnson—all of them!”
We were in Fred Smith’s home, interviewing both Smith and Mead. Fred said, “Billy was humble but not intimidated.”
We wondered how someone could be humble and handle the ego while becoming such close friends with presidents.
“The ego must be redeemed,” Fred replied.
“Meaning, you must have a strong ego to lead, but something must happen to it?”
“Absolutely. And you can tell when someone allows God to redeem his ego.”
The mix of Mead’s words, presence, respect, and humility, seemed oddly juxtaposed. Having the charisma to command respect at the highest levels and the ability to turn hostile reporters into advocates would naturally inflate anyone’s ego. Yet it’s not only Mead and Smith who reference Billy’s humility. As we interviewed many colleagues and friends, his humility became a constant theme.
Redeeming the ego. What did Smith mean? What has transpired in Billy Graham’s psyche and spiritual life that has melded him into such a blend of world-class, driving visionary and meek, unassuming student?
One of the many brushstrokes in this picture is the way Billy views himself. We sat in Charlotte with Graeme Keith, treasurer of Billy’s organization and a lifelong friend. Graeme got around rather quickly to Billy’s natural humility. “I was on an elevator with Billy when another man in the elevator recognized him. He said, ‘You’re Billy Graham, aren’t you?’
“‘Yes,’ Billy said.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are truly a great man.’
“Billy immediately responded, ‘No, I’m not a great man. I just have a great message.'”
From those who have known him best emerges the picture of Billy’s unfeigned belief that he was simply God’s ambassador, carrying a message of love to the world. His oft-repeated remark that “my lips would turn to clay if God took his hand from me” gave him a sense that he was, to use Mother Teresa’s description of herself, “God’s pencil.”
At the same time, his driving purpose added to the force of his personality and his commanding presence.
Billy titled his autobiography Just As I Am. It’s the title of the hymn sung during his invitations to receive Christ. Those who have experienced the gentle, soul-searching sounds of thousands of voices singing the invitational hymn know its probing power and abject humility, “Just as I am, without one plea … “
In choosing that title for his own life story, Billy identified himself with every convert walking to the front and confessing sin and weakness. By that title he says that he too is the recipient of grace, and God has done all the work. “Most of all,” he says in the book’s introduction, “if anything has been accomplished through my life, it has been solely God’s doing, not mine, and He—not I—must get the credit.”
This is no act. Through the centuries the deepest and most perceptive seekers of God have concluded that those who draw closest to the Almighty have the strongest sense of their own unworthiness. When Billy deflects the glory, it’s not an “aw, shucks” kind of modesty but a sense of being “a brand plucked from the fire by a holy God”—who calls him his beloved.
We see his self-perception of being a simple workman with a huge mandate, like an ambassador in wartime carrying gold bullion to people desperately needing it. He’s the conveyer of the most important goods in the world, and he believes all is lost or won depending on how he carries the message and how he responds to God’s initiatives.
With this perspective, he’s not remotely “triumphalistic,” a term sometimes used by academics to describe evangelicals who seem so certain of their stance and importance that they come off as arrogant. Yet the perspective drives him to do his very best in the eternal war between good and evil, heaven and hell. He openly admits to struggles with his inadequacy for such a task that is loaded on him as a mere mortal. That’s one reason it’s painful for him to hear long, adulatory introductions. He feels humble laboring under the magnificence of God. In fact, his feelings can be quite intense. In the groundbreaking ceremonies for his new headquarters, Billy said, “Jesus must increase, and I must decrease. I cringe when I hear my name called in something that has been the work of God through these years.”
Redefining meekness. In our research we’ve come across vivid metaphors that observers have created to describe this paradoxical Billy Graham. But an image we noticed in a poem by a Franciscan nun, Mary Karr, published in the Atlantic Monthly, struck us as perhaps the most fitting. In it, she describes meekness in an arresting way. To understand the Bible’s use of the word meek, she says, we should picture a great stallion at full gallop. At his master’s voice, he “seizes up to a stunned but instant halt.” Karr then eloquently describes the stallion holding its “great power” in check, listening for the next order.
“Blessed are the meek,” said Jesus. When we hear this, we are likely to think of a Caspar Milquetoast and certainly not a magnificent creature racing against the wind with rippling muscles and flying hooves, full of spirit and confidence. But the blessedness and meekness blend in the powerful stallion’s response to the master.
In the same way, Billy has power, charisma, and a dynamism that has made businessmen say, “He could have been a billionaire,” and Hollywood send contracts to make him a star. But meekness is power under control. As he runs his race, when Billy hears his Master’s voice, he listens—and at times “seizes up to a stunned but instant halt.”
Billy contrasts the realities of the imperfect human condition with the magnificence of the Creator. He recognizes his is only a small part in a vast creation, and he has a sense of wonder and awe that he has been chosen.
After we had written this chapter, we came across the same image of the stallion in one of Billy’s own writings, published long before the Atlantic poem. “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth,'” Billy wrote. “Nowhere in Scripture does this word carry with it the idea of being spiritless and timid. It carries the idea of being tamed, like a wild horse that has been brought under control.”
Billy was the spirited horse, always listening intently for the whisper of the Spirit.
Billy is not humble in the simplistic sense, but he has made himself vulnerable to the Spirit to redeem his ego. That’s what has made possible the image of the stallion, full of power and vitality, racing against the buffeting wind, but instantly alert to the Spirit’s check.
The tensions and pressures of both external and internal forces are not insignificant. As Carl Gustav Jung has said, “Fear of self-sacrifice lurks deep in every ego.” If Billy, “mere mortal,” can carry such weight and respond so sensitively to the Spirit, so we can at least aspire to sharpen our ears. The process of redeeming the ego is a lifelong one, but absolutely essential to leadership.
From The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham by Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley (Zondervan, 2005). Harold Myra is CEO of Christianity Today International, and Marshall Shelley is editorial vice-president and editor of Leadership journal.
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