c. 2000 Religion News Service

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. _ On a recent evening just after evangelist Billy Graham spoke, Judy Wolfensperger sat at a computer terminal in a lounge of Alltel Stadium, marveling at the range of people who had responded to his crusade message.

One of 60 people gathered for data-entry duties, the Presbyterian woman rejoiced at the 73-year-old woman and teen-aged girl who had filled out the follow-up cards whose data she was typing on her keyboard.

“Billy Graham isn’t just here for tonight,” said Wolfensperger, 53, who works as a secretary for a general contractor. “He’s here because he wants to make a difference in the community for a long time.”

Wolfensperger is just one cog in the massive evangelical machinery that makes the crusade _ which concluded Sunday (Nov. 5) _ far more than a four-day opportunity to hear a famous preacher and sing along with celebrated Christian artists.

Committees meet for more than a year ahead of time. Choirs rehearse in the days ahead. Individual seats are prayed over. Counselors are trained. And thousands of volunteers from more than 650 churches and 51 Christian denominations take part in the detailed planning process.

Ginger Soud, crusade chair and member of the Jacksonville City Council, said the work began in the summer of 1999 when an invitation committee began meeting, invited Graham to hold a crusade here and created additional committees once the evangelist accepted the invitation.

“There’s such a myriad of details,” said Soud, a Southern Baptist. “The beauty of the process is that great attention is paid to including individuals from every conceivable group.”

More than 7,000 choir members from churches ranging from United Methodist to Church of Christ filled the bleachers behind the south end zone of the stadium.

Outfitted in royal blue T-shirts, they sang from matching “Jacksonville Crusade Choir Songbooks,” which included hymns and worship choruses such as “How Great Thou Art” and “Bless His Holy Name.”

“This is the largest choir I’ve ever been part of, this side of heaven, I’m sure,” said tenor Steve Bowersox, associate pastor of music at an interdenominational church in the Jacksonville suburb of Ponte Vedra Beach.

When the choir finished singing and Graham ended his message for the night, those who came forward met with the counselors, who had been trained for five weeks. Each night between 3,000 and 5,000 of the counselors offered paperback copies of the Gospel of John and Bible study aids to help those newly committed to a Christian life. Some stood by signs that let the crowd know they could converse in such languages as Russian, French or Tagalog.

Before, during and after each of the four nights of the crusade, clergy and lay people prayed for those who would attend.

“I prayed for every single seat in section 437,” said the Rev. Barbara Shope of Jacksonville, a member of a charismatic Episcopal congregation.

The Rev. Ted Corley, chairman of the pastor and prayer committee, said 114 people spent the three days before the crusade praying in the parking lots, entrances and before each of the 83,412 seats in the stadium. An Episcopal priest anointed each entrance with oil.

“We just believed that it was important to consecrate the seats of the stadium for the Lord’s presence here,” said Corley, noting that the arena was the site of a college football game known as the “world’s largest outdoor cocktail party” the weekend before the crusade. “We asked for the Holy Spirit to reside on each seat, for him to open the hearts and the ears of all that would sit in the seat, that lost people would be saved and believers renewed.”

About 25 men and women continued to pray during each night of the crusade at an on-site prayer room, just off the lounge where tables and computers were set up to respond to those who came forward at the end of the evening.

On the stadium floor, card collectors stood ready to take the completed cards filled out by members of the crowd and turn them over to a “card collecting captain.” The bundles of cards then arrived at the 10,000 square-foot lounge area of the stadium.

First, they were reviewed by the statistics section, where volunteers checked off blue and pink pieces of paper to note how many men and women responded and whether they accepted Jesus, rededicated their lives to him, felt assured of their salvation or inquired about the Christian faith. Once that information _ designed to help shape future crusades and keep accurate archival information _ was tabulated, the cards were shuttled by runners to tables where sorters divided the completed cards from the incompleted ones.

Two women hovered over one terminal, trying to use computerized phone listings to determine the zip code of a 7-year-old who left that information blank on his card.

In the end _ sometimes after midnight _ volunteers filled boxes headed to the post office with letters from Graham for those who came forward and notices to pastors of participating churches about the names, addresses and ages of persons they should invite to their churches.

“We ask them within 72 hours to go and visit this person,” said Art Bailey, assistant crusade director and coordinator of counseling follow-up. “Their hope is to get this person involved in the church.”

Graham began the follow-up process in 1952, and it has advanced with available technology. But Bailey said the process always has depended on relationships, especially between local Christians and the friends they invite to attend the crusade with them.

“Most people associate Billy Graham with mass evangelism,” said Bailey. “We don’t believe in mass evangelism. We believe every person comes to Christ one at a time, but we do believe it can happen in a mass setting.”

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Soon after the four-day event concludes, the local committees that organized it are required to legally dissolve, but the joint efforts for prayer and evangelism will continue, said Soud, the crusade chair.

“When the crusade ends, the work begins,” she said. “It’s like a Christian obstetrics department birthing all these new believers and it’s like an emergency room reviving those who have lost their way. … So now our challenge as individual churches and collectively is to allow God to use us to take care of these two groups.”

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