TACOMA, Wash. -- Evangelist Billy Graham stepped to the podium at the Tacoma Dome Sunday for the first session of a week-long crusade after months of planning aided by computers, hundreds of churches and a $523,972 budget.
The elaborate preparations were expected to bring 24,000 Christians and non-believers to the new covered stadium each night for a 90-minute service of prayer, congregational singing and alter calls.
'I'm lucky enough to have a lot of guys around me who do all the work, so all I have to do is preach,' Graham said at a news conference last week.
'The crusade doesn't rely on Billy Graham for attendance,' said Tom Phillips, the crusade director who heads a permanent staff of four from Graham's Minneapolis headquarters. 'The crusade relise on Operation Andrew, and then we are grateful for Billy Graham being our spokesman.'
'Operation Andrew,' named after apostle Andrew who introduced his brother Peter to Jesus Christ, is the code name for the Graham organization's recruitment program, the purpose of which is 'to bring the unconverted and unchurched to the meetings.'
'I work with the invitational committee,' Phillips said. 'The invitational committee in turn developes a group called the ad hoc committee. The ad hoc commitee in turn develops a nominating committee. The nominating committee in turn nominates an executive committee, which is the functioning, local working group.'
The local group was headed by Tacoma businessman Bob Benoy, who approved the original budget drawn up by the Graham people. Volunteers from local churches then began the major work of calling on the community.
'We come in and break the region down by ZIP codes,' Phillips said. 'We're trying to get approximately the same number of churches in every region. What were trying to do is to get down to the grassroots leve, because a crusade is grassroots.'
The highlight of Graham's crusades is always the 'invitation,' or alter calls to new believers who are ready to declare their allegiance to Christ. It is a dramatic moment during which members of the audiance walk to an area on the stage to declare their faith.
Phillips described the human movement as 'a great river that begins as a little trickle and grows to a great swell.'
But the contact with the Holy Spirit, as Graham refers to it, only begins with the alter call. Each audiance member is greeted by one of 3,400 trained volunteer counselors who are matched with the converts by sex and age.
Counselors fill out cards for each 'inquirer,' and the information is given to local churches.
'Usually, information regarding each inquirer is in the hands of the pastor the following day,' says a crusade handbook for local churches.
'We have a tremendous follow-up program,' Graham said. 'Never in the history of evangelism has there been a follow-up program such as we have, but the real follow-up agent is the Holy Spirit.'
Of 434,100 people who attended Graham's 1976 Kingdome crusade, some 18,136 came forward to the alter. Time magazine later reported that only 1,200 of those said they were involved in a local congregation a year later, but Graham disputes the report as 'inaccurate and unscientific.'
The evangelist said his own survey showed that 83 percent of the inquirers said three years later that the experience had a positive impact on their lives. 'Even is just 1,200 lasted, I would be very happy,' he said.
