Graham takes a cue from MTV

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-Evangelist Billy Graham hopes to reach his largest audience ever with a one-hour program aimed at viewers who would not normally watch religious programming.”The Billy Graham World Television Series”features a message from Graham intercut with fast-paced videos of Christian music celebrities and ordinary people in a one-hour program that will […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-Evangelist Billy Graham hopes to reach his largest audience ever with a one-hour program aimed at viewers who would not normally watch religious programming.”The Billy Graham World Television Series”features a message from Graham intercut with fast-paced videos of Christian music celebrities and ordinary people in a one-hour program that will air on or around April 14. Graham’s ministry estimates that it will reach more than 2.5 billion viewers in more than 200 countries.

The program, the theme of which is”Starting Over,”is dramatically different from the typical Billy Graham crusade telecast, which usually features a performance by a choir, a testimony, and Graham’s sermon. Rather, it is an”MTV style”program with glimpses of the drama of everyday life-from a man committing suicide to a woman leaving her husband to military tanks in a war zone.


Robert L. Williams, the international ministries director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said the program is aimed to the average viewer who is”cynical about the Gospel”and has both high expectations of television entertainment and a short attention span.”While we will not compromise the Gospel … we need to wrap the message into a program that’s going to hit him between the eyes and keep him listening,”said Williams, in a phone interview from the ministry headquarters in Minneapolis.”We were striving to take Billy’s message and visually, musically and dramatically amplify it.” The production, which cost about $7.5 million and will be interpreted into 48 languages, is being called a”series”because in some countries one or two evangelistic films produced by the association also will air during the month.

Officials of the Graham ministry expect the production will have an even larger reach than last March’s”Global Mission,”in which a Graham crusade in Puerto Rico was transmitted by satellite to 30 million people attending meetings in 185 countries. The ministry estimates that more than 1 billion people viewed a prime-time telecast of the crusade by satellite, video or at one of those meetings.”On April 14, the day we will have the widest satellite coverage, we expect that more people will hear the Gospel than on any previous day in the history of the Christian church,”Billy Graham told his supporters in a monthly letter dated March 1996.

On that day, the program will air on about 250 television markets in the United States and via two intercontinental satellite networks in Asia and Europe. In addition, the program will be broadcast sometime during the month of April in more than 160 countries. All of the broadcasts are scheduled for prime time.

The series was scheduled around Easter because countries such as India only allow broadcasts of an”overt Christian”nature during Easter and Christmas, Williams said.

The focus of the program will be a sermon given by the 77-year-old evangelist at a 1994 Atlanta crusade. The program also features brief appearances by former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young and singer Glen Campbell, who testify about their faith. It is narrated by Sir Cliff Richard, a longtime British recording star, and includes music of Christian artists dc Talk and Michael W. Smith. Graham’s son Franklin, who will succeed his father as head of the ministry, also appears in the show.

The ministry hopes to extend the program’s evangelistic message by encouraging supporters to invite friends and family to watch the show with them. Ministry supporters will invite non-Christian guests to convert to Christianity after watching the program. Some will videotape the program so they can have additional”video house parties.” Stephen Winzenburg, a communications professor who has studied the Graham ministry for 16 years, said there is no way to measure how many people will actually watch the program, but the effort is more significant than the numbers.

Winzenburg, who teaches at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa, said Graham was an innovator when his ministry used television to spread the Gospel in the 1950s and has again taken advantage of recent technological advancements in the last decade.


Although ministry officials won’t say this is the climax of Graham’s career, Winzenburg said”certainly it is one of the peaks.”If he finds that he’s not able to do as many crusades as he’d like anymore this will be one of the final big events for him,”he said.

Graham, who has been plagued with recent health problems, is planning to preach at crusades in Minneapolis in June and Charlotte, N.C., in September. He and his wife Ruth Graham, who has been hospitalized with spinal meningitis, are scheduled to be honored with a Congressional Gold Medal on May 2.

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