A hug from
Just Billy
one night when the board was
meeting in Fort lauderdale, i went
down for a swim. There were two
chairs on the beach. Billy was with a
secretary, dictating. he asked the secretary if she would mind going to get
us a cold drink. i sat down. he started
asking me questions all about my life,
my wife and my children. i would
have liked to do the reverse. so many
times you would run into him and
all he would want to do was find out
about you. Everyone else wanted to
tell me about themselves. Billy never
wanted to do that. when you praise
him he is embarrassed. all the praise
he wants is from God. i remember
walking into a hotel in minneapolis
for a funeral. you need to know that
Billy is a person who likes to hug
people. i walked through a revolving
door with my head down and all of a
sudden i was enveloped. he had me
so enveloped i didn’t know who it
was. it was just Billy.
–Don McCarthy,
original board member of
the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association of Canada
Kick-start for
newspapers
during the mission in Vancouver,
I sat at the press table and talked
with the media who were there.
There had been a reference in
the sermon to Nebuchadnezzar,
and a reporter asked me how
to spell it. I couldn’t remember.
There was someone 10 feet away
with a huge Bible under his arm.
I borrowed it and told him how to
spell it. A photographer snapped
a picture of me holding this big
Bible, looking as if I were counselling the religion and ethics
writer from the Vancouver Sun. It
was during that period, in 1982,
when what is now BC Christian
News started. I think it’s fair to say
that Billy Graham’s people were
closely linked to the starting of
that paper. Ultimately there were
a fair number of newspapers in
the United States and Canada
that got their start or were helped
along the way by the coming of a
Billy Graham mission.
–lloyd mackey,
veteran journalist
Billy Graham preached in several Canadian cities over the
years (clockwise from above):
ottawa in 1998, his last Canadian
crusade; winnipeg in Canada’s
centennial year; Calgary in 1981.
Pho Tos: Billy Graham EvanGElis TiC assoCia Tion
ministry. I keep hearing my name. For the next
three days I don’t want to hear my name. I want
to hear the name of Jesus.’”
McCarthy says he looked around and all he
saw were people crossing things out on the papers they were yet to present. “Humility is an
incredible part of him and, with his acclaim, it is
really amazing.”
That humility went beyond Graham’s personal character to the institutional level – in the
way his ministry interacted with the local culture
to which the ministry had been invited to preach.
Any crusade Graham did (“They don’t call them
crusades anymore,” muses McCarthy, “they call
them all kinds of funny names”), including the
Canadian ones, were in response to an invitation
by a carefully constructed committee that had
to be representative and inclusive of the broader
church culture in that city.
If it wasn’t, Graham would politely decline.
Once an invitation was accepted, things
really started to happen, including a Billy Graham
staff person moving (often with family in tow) to
the community at least a year ahead of time. An
integral part of the preparation was the creation
of a briefing document to introduce and update
Graham on local culture, national and municipal
events and anything else Graham should know
about the city and country he was preaching in.
Lloyd Mackey is an Ottawa-based journalist who helped prepare the Vancouver report
for the 1984 crusade. “Graham was always
very good about understanding the culture he
was going to. He understood there was a difference between Canada and the United States.”
Mackey was given a copy of the Edmonton
report to use as a model for his own research
and writing. “And it was written by Preston
Manning,” remembers Mackey.
Later, listening to Graham speak, Mackey
says: “You could tell as he was preaching when
he was referring to [the local report]. He didn’t
quote it, but we knew he had read it. Not only
that, he thought about it and absorbed it. That
is one of the reasons why I think he tended to
be accepted in all kinds of cultures. He recog-
