The Billy Graham Center on the Wheaton College campus is not a monument to the famed evangelist, as it might appear to someone who drives past the imposing four-story colonial-style building with six huge white columns at its main entrance.
Yes, there are exhibits about Graham`s ministry and thousands of records chronicling the 70-year-old evangelist`s four decades of preaching.
But more than anything, said director James Kraakevik, the center is a place for serious study of evangelism and missions, where scholars and churchmen from throughout the world gather for information and inspiration to help proclaim more effectively the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible.
The center`s ”most public face,” as Kraakevik terms it, is the museum with its exhibits depicting the history of evangelicals-those who seek to lead people into accepting Jesus as their savior. The museum is a major tourist attraction in Du Page County, with 30,000 visitors annually.
Not so visible are the archives, with 450 collections of documents of religious organizations, ministers and missionaries, and the library, with 180,000 titles on evangelism and missions.
In addition, there are conferences, their subjects ranging from ministries in communist countries to prisons, attracting participants from all over the world. The multifaceted programs are designed to carry out a mission outlined by Graham in his 1980 dedication address of the center:
”I hope and pray that this center will be a world hub of inspiration, research and training which will glorify Christ and serve every church and organization in preaching and teaching the Gospel to the world.”
One key function is to fill a void in historical perspective for evangelical Christians.
”Traditionally, evangelicals have been so busy doing that they have seldom taken the opportunity to study, or even to record, the exciting story of God`s working,” said William A. Shoemaker, a former center director.
”Part of the center`s mission is to gather, maintain and disseminate details of the story.”
For the general public, that void is filled in a visit to the center`s museum.
Exhibits depict the history of evangelism in the United States going back to colonial days. Visitors can view snapshots accompanied by audio of 26 preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody.
There is a presentation of Graham`s ministries, first with a re-creation of the Sept. 9, 1949, Los Angeles tent meeting, the beginning of a crusade that catapulted the evangelist into national prominence. Other exhibits show the development of the ”Hour of Decision” radio program, ”Decision”
magazine and World Wide Pictures, three other ministries of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The Graham headquarters are in Minneapolis. Through the years, millions have heard the evangelist say on radio and television: ”Write to me, Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota. That`s all the address you need.”
His offices receive 4.5 million letters a year, primarily seeking help with spiritual decisions and answers to personal problems. A museum display shows some letters to Graham with unique addresses that somehow found their way to the Minneapolis offices.
Among them are such versions of that city`s name as ”Many Apples and Many Soilder”and ”Many Happyness and Many Soda.” Another letter was sent to ”Billy Graham. American Pope.”
A museum visit continues with A Walk Through the Gospel, with Biblical verses etched in white walls along a path leading to a cross mounted on a wall symbolizing the crucifixion of Jesus. That`s followed by a scene of clouds against the backdrop of a blue sky with triumphant music depicting the ascension of Jesus into heaven. Visitors can pause in a chapel for prayer and meditation before leaving.
Two floors above the museum, scholars in the archives may be poring over original documents of organizations and individuals as they study firsthand the evangelical heritage and history. There are huge collections of records, correspondence, journals, manuals, pamphlets, phonograph records, minutes of meetings and newspaper clippings. One of the unique features is the expanding service of taping interviews with missionaries about their years of service;
these now number more than 100.
On one man alone, Billy Sunday, a scholar can spend hours reading about his preaching. Sunday was an early 20th-Century evangelist who first gained fame when he was a major-league baseball player with the Chicago White Stockings, a forerunner of the Cubs. When he turned to religion, his vigor and strong opinions roused both enthusiasm and fury in meetings held in temporary wooden structures he called tabernacles.
One small slice of the extensive Sunday collection is an original copy of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from February, 1928, reporting on his crusade in that city. The newspaper devoted four full columns every day, reporting colorful language that today no longer is heard in a proper suburbaby shimmying in his version of the then-popular Black Bottom dance. There were admonitions such as this from Sunday:
”Love is the divinest gift of God to man and woman. Some of the noblest women in the world have been old maids. They are simply ladies in waiting. But I tell you, girls, I would rather be an old maid with dogs, cats, furniture and bric-a-brac than be yoked to a profane, cigarette-smoking, cursing, whisky-soaked jug handle for a husband.”
The flamboyant language of Sunday surfaces repeatedly in the archives`
collection. But there is also the journal of Jim Elliot, in his own handwriting, that left a reader with chills running up and down his spine.
The slaying of 29-year-old Elliot and four other missionaries by the Auca tribe in Ecuador in January, 1956, was reported worldwide. His widow, Elisabeth, later lived with that same tribe.
She gave the archives many of his writings, including four journals with his private thoughts from high school to a few days before his death.
Elliot describes how he and a pilot flew over the jungle where Aucas lived, dropping gifts in hopes of conveying they were coming as friends. One day six weeks before he and the others were murdered, he wrote how a tribesman waved to him from the ground, which he interpreted as a friendly signal to come down.
They did, established a camp and a week later were dead. Aucas told Elliot`s widow they killed the missionaries because someone named George said the white men were coming to eat them.
The work of Sunday and Elliot are examples of the past, but hundreds come to the Billy Graham Center every year to prepare themselves for the future.
The center has established six institutes, each to pursue a special target for spreading the Gospel. Scholars and churchmen are invited to seminars to share their knowledge and experience.
One example is the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Marxism. Its goals are to help Christian workers and scholars understand Marxist approaches to church-state issues and to educate and train people on the challenges of proclaiming the teachings of Jesus to populations with a Marxist background.
Seminars last summer focused on the church in the Soviet Union, theological issues in Eastern Europe, Russian history in the 20th Century and communicating with the Soviet people.
