ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040079
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
A few weeks ago, I was engaged in one of my favorite evening activities - driving my family nuts by channel surfing during a commercial break.
As I skipped along, there was an old, familiar, comfortable face - Billy Graham.
The sermon he was delivering had been taped in June during a crusade in Minneapolis, the headquarters city of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association since its founding 46 years ago.
This has been a season of farewells, in a sense, for Graham, as he has conducted crusades in Minneapolis and, last week, in his hometown of Charlotte, N.C. Realizing that his Parkinson's disease - and age - are making it increasingly difficult for his body to endure the rigors of the crusades, the 77-year-old Graham acknowledged that he was going to have to curtail these activities.
So, as I paused to watch a few minutes of Graham's TV sermon, I was already thinking ahead to the crusade I was planning to attend in Charlotte.
And I was a bit shocked.
A year ago, I saw Graham in Atlanta, where his physical deterioration had been noticeable in his activities off the stage. But once he strode to the pulpit, he seemed to invigorate before one's eyes, growing taller and straighter, his voice still strong, if somewhat more mellow than it was 30 years ago.
But this televised sermon from Minnesota made me wonder if Graham would make it to Charlotte.
He was stooped at the lectern. We could hear his amplified voice echoing around the stadium where he was preaching, yet it still sounded frail and weak. It was such a dramatic change that I was a little bit sorry that he felt he still had to keep giving so much of himself when there appeared to be so little left.
I recalled the words of the editor of a Christian satire magazine, who wrote a column a few years ago suggesting that it was time for Graham to retire gracefully and let someone else take the stage.
That editor was not the first to make the suggestion - though perhaps he did so more boldly than others - but you'd have thought he had proposed a wholesale rejection of Christianity. The letters to the editor were swift and direct:
"Don't mess with Billy," they said.
At the time - that was a few years ago - I didn't particularly agree with the author of that suggestion. It seemed premature.
But, watching Graham on the television screen, it seemed to me that the time had come for him to step down before he became an object of further pity.
Which just goes to show how much I know.
Riding with a busload of Western Virginians to Charlotte for Graham's crusade there, it was obvious that these 50 people were expecting something special - a blessing - just from being able to hear Graham's words in person.
We were there for "youth night," which emphasized the music of dcTalk and Michael W. Smith ahead of Graham's preaching. But Graham would preach a sermon and offer an invitation to a life following Christ.
After the music - which had rocked Ericsson Stadium's predominantly teen-age crowd - Graham got a standing ovation as big as any rock star's.
And once again I witnessed a transfiguration.
He hugged some of the musicians who had preceded him, then turned to the crowd. And, to my surprise, I heard the strong, silky drawl of my native state.
Oh, it wasn't exactly the voice I remember from my childhood and youth, but it still carried a mysterious power to reach inside, seeking attention from the soul.
And he was still trying to make the message relevant to his youthful audience.
I've mentioned in this column before how my respect for Graham - which had slipped a little as a I became a young adult - grew when I was in college and heard him on the radio fielding questions from a college crowd. Someone asked if there was sex in heaven. Graham's off-the-cuff answer was that, "If there's not, I'm sure there's something better."
It wasn't the reply I had expected, but in the throes of the "sexual revolution," it struck me as a great answer.
In Charlotte, Graham again was trying to be relevant. He quoted the lyrics of a hit by Smashing Pumpkins, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings." The song describes the despondency of feeling that "Despite all my rage, I'm still a rat in a cage. Then someone will say what was lost can never be saved."
"But that's not true," Graham insisted as the crowd roared. No one is beyond salvation, he said.
I'm fairly sure that Graham didn't pick up those lyrics as he was listening to some rock station while he worked on his autobiography at his mountain home in Montreat, N.C. But even if a staff member helped find and prepare that quote about a pop group, Graham's willingness to use it was evidence that he still wants to connect with that part of his audience young enough to be his grandchildren - or great-grandchildren.
And more than 7,000 of them came forward at his invitation to become Christians or renew their Christian commitment.
Surely, more than a few were like the 12- or 13-year-old girls behind me in the stadium, who decided to go down just because "it will be fun to go down on the football field and play."
But they seemed to be the exception, not the rule.
And I realized I had been wrong to think Graham was losing his impact. He's still doing what he was born to do. And someone else will have to decide when the time has come to bring that lifelong crusade to an end.
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