c. 2000 Religion News Service

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands _ At the close of each day’s program, Debra Brown headed to the train platform outside the conference center here to wish thousands of Christian evangelists from all over the world a good night.

“I feel like this is a home that I’ve built and I have 10,000 guests that come each day,” said Brown, the associate director of arrangements for Amsterdam 2000, the evangelists’ conference organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “I don’t feel like my job is done until I see my guests off, so I go to the end of the train line and wave goodbye.”

Brown’s dedication to creating a home for participants was part of the reason this nine-day school of evangelism unfolded so smoothly. The conference concluded Sunday (Aug. 6) with a massive communion service.

Despite obstacles, such as the last-minute cancellation by the ailing Billy Graham, the staff of Amsterdam 2000 worked to make the conference a model of efficiency and Christian hospitality.

With 10,000 evangelists from 209 countries, the challenges were huge. Yet lunch was distributed in 15 minutes. Sessions were interpreted in 28 languages. And escalators were programmed to go up or down depending on whether people were entering or leaving the building.

With the possible exception of the Olympics, few gatherings have allowed people from so many countries to eat, sleep and co-exist for nine days without chaos or strife.

Participants said there’s more to it than simply dedication.

“Everyone here is a servant of God and they’ve made themselves available to him,” said Elaine Funderburk of Raleigh, N.C., a participant who leads a Bible study back home. “They’re not doing it for recognition. They’re doing it for God. They want to be a good witness.”

Two years of planning, and $40 million, also helped.

The conference was the brainchild of Billy Graham, who at 81 wanted to round out his international preaching career with a teaching event intended to pass on to younger evangelists the standards he set for Christian ministry.

His association rented five city trains to shuttle participants back and forth from the conference center on the southern edge of Amsterdam to the 7,000-bed dormitory it set up 25 miles away in Utrecht. It shipped five, 40-foot containers with everything from headsets and Bibles to sheets and towels. And it reserved 630 desk phones, cell phones and radio lines to help the staff in Amsterdam and Utrecht communicate with one another.

One key to the smooth operation here was the color scheme. On arrival, each participant received a hospital-like wristband with one of five colors. The colors corresponded to the sleeping arrangements.

Participants with purple wristbands, for example, had purple carpeting in their dorm, purple tablecloths at their breakfast table, and purple signs that lead them to the train platform. People with purple wristbands also spoke related languages, either Spanish or Portuguese.

“We are amazed to see these kinds of arrangements,” said Thangamuthu Johnson, an Assemblies of God pastor from Madras, India. “Everything is systematic. Everything is clear. Everything is well arranged.”

Of course, no event on such a scale is flawless. Due to a thunderstorm, there was a five-minute electrical blackout on one of the trains and the doors would not open. And one participant and one staff member were sent home after they experienced something approaching a nervous breakdown. But organizers said that on the whole there were few problems.

Some of the credit, they said, goes to the more than 700 volunteers, called “stewards,” who helped keep order and direct traffic.

“Our job is to serve these servants of God and to step into the background and be invisible,” said Brown, the arrangements director who trained the stewards. “We want to do our job so participants can focus on the one thing that unites us: Jesus.”

By the end of the conference, most participants had heard dozens of lectures on the basic Christian message of salvation through Jesus Christ. They learned how to communicate that message clearly, how to invite others to convert, and how to lead by example.

From the start, the conference was intended to focus on areas of the world where evangelical Christianity was spreading fastest: Asia, Africa and Latin America. Participants from poor countries on these continents paid an average of $150 to attend.

William Conard, the director of the program, said he was repeatedly told by John Corts, the president of the association, to invite a diverse set of lecturers.

“I remember going into Dr. Corts’ office with a list of potential people and he asked me, `Bill, how many do you have from Africa? How many do you have from Asia? How many do you have from Latin America?’ We wanted a genuine rainbow of God’s creation.”

That international flavor was impossible to escape as men and women in Western clothes mingled with people in brilliantly colored robes from Africa or Asia.

“We need to learn how to get along,” said Funderburk, the Raleigh Bible teacher. “This will prepare us for heaven.”

DEA END SHIMRON