Digital Billy Grahams

If you know Christ, if you have been born again, you have the Spirit of God on the inside of you, and He will prompt you and give you the opportunity and boldness to proclaim God's truth. In Colossians 4, we find that Paul writes:
3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.
4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.
5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.
6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Because of what Jesus has done in you, you have a message, a message of transformation, of experiencing new life and all that brings.  And, you have a mouth, in order to proclaim what God has done in your life and to share who Jesus is and how someone can come into a saving knowledge of Him.  Those are powerful components, and we can trust God for open doors, as Paul wrote in Colossians 4:3, for a means and method to share this life-changing message.

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As Paul wraps up his description of our spiritual armor in Ephesians 6, he encourages the readers to pray for him; we can read these words:
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
18 praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints--
19 and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel,
20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

Not too long ago, I introduced you to Cristina Baker, who has acquired quite a following on the social media platform, Tik Tok, releasing daily 60-second messages of encouragement in the Lord.  She was a guest on The Meeting House from the Summer 2022 Christian Product Expo in Lexington. A few months before, worship leaders Stephen McWhirter and Jason Clayborn visited with me at the 2022 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville.

McWhirter has ventured into Tik Tok himself - he's a worship leader, so his activity on the platform is - wait for it...leading worship!   The God Reports website, in a recently-published article, reported:

During live broadcasts on TikTok led by singer songwriter Stephen McWhirter, more than 3,000 viewers on the short-video sharing site made decisions to follow Jesus. The born-again former drug addict said the regularly scheduled posts on his TikTok account (@stephenmcwhirtermusic) began a month ago.

Now, it’s a revival… and it’s on TikTok.

McWhirter, whose ministry includes touring churches in the United States and internationally, said he has never seen the kind of “harvest” he is seeing now.

“I’m seeing a real longing and a better conception of what repentance means,” he told Think Eternity. “What I’m seeing when I say revival is not superficial. You know, it’s like real repentance and people really turning to Jesus.”

The article relates that, "McWhirter said that about three weeks after attending the Digital Billy Grahams conference in Kansas City in May he decided to "really commit to TikTok.'"

What does he do?  Since that first broadcast, in which he led worship, shared his testimony about coming to the Lord after being a drug addict, and invited people to follow Christ, he says:

“I started going live every Monday through Friday[now Thursday] at 9pm Eastern Time. We do worship [music]. I have people engaging in praying together. I’m asking for this [TikTok live] to not be a spectator thing. And then I’ll share the gospel and then I’ll give people a chance to give their life to Jesus. That’s a typical Monday night through Friday night at 9pm,” he said.

“But then also in the day, at around 3:30pm Eastern Time I’ll just read. I’m reading through the Gospel of John right now. And we’re just reading the Gospel. That’s it. Reading the Bible, doing a little talking about basic things. I try not to make it political. I’m not trying to do a theology class. I’m just trying to get people in the Word and keep them connected to Jesus. I also do an altar call.”

McWhirter relates: 

“This is like this crazy man. And it’s just really simple. Real interactions with people. It’s growing exponentially and we’re trying to figure it out. Revival is happening. It’s harvest time and it’s real, digital Billy Graham kind of stuff. We’re just doing the best we can with where we are because we don’t want to stop just because everything’s not perfect yet. That’s never going to happen.”

There was an article at the Think Eternity website about that Digital Billy Grahams conference, which was co-hosted by Think Eternity founder Matt Brown, who said: “There was a strong emphasis on the need for personal evangelism, and a clear evangelistic impetus from our ministries,” adding, “We are not called to simply have influence, but to point to the need for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every person’s life that we impact.”

One of the pastors who attended the gathering, Sam Kim, said: “The church now has a historic opportunity to usher in a Gospel movement unseen since the Jesus Movement (also known as Jesus Revival),” adding, “The harvest is plentiful, but workers who understand the heart of the culture are few. The church does not need more innovative or cool missiological schemes, but a return to simplicity."

Speaking of "Digital Billy Grahams," digital evangelism has been a major emphasis of the organization that bears the late evangelist's name, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Faith Radio partners with the BGEA by providing a link to the PeaceWithGod.net website, through which someone can explore a relationship with Jesus.

The Association's Internet outreach just celebrated its 10th anniversary a few months back.  A conference was held at The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove in North Carolina. There, according to BillyGraham.org, "over 300 online evangelists and ministry coordinators from at least 14 countries came together...for the Search for Jesus (SFJ) Conference. Another 460 volunteers connected to the conference online..."
 

At the conference, Dr. Graham's grandson, Will Graham, identified one of the Internet's first to be considered a "digital Billy Graham..." The article says that Will told the crowd that "Back in 1993, Billy Graham himself became the first internet evangelist of the ministry when, in his Montreat office, he started to answer questions that came to him through the newly publicized internet."

The article goes on to say:

By 2011 PeacewithGod.net became available as a website that presented a broad explanation of the Gospel. In 2012, Search for Jesus was launched as a ministry of the BGEA where visitors could not only find the truth of the Gospel, but also interact with trained volunteers in order to ask questions or be discipled.

Ten years later, the ministry has expanded to seven different languages, 45 websites, 24 social media pages and around 1,400 trained volunteers.

Two weeks before the conference, Search for Jesus (SFJ) received the 100 millionth visitor in one of its websites. 

The article relates how Billy Graham stood before a crowd in Amsterdam in 1983 and identified who would replace him; he pointed to the crowd and said, "You!" He also said, “God has raised up an army of evangelists, all over the world … and you will do greater things than I ever thought of doing, because you will have new electronic things at your fingertips to reach the world, [things] that we never dreamed about!”

You may not consider yourself to be a Billy Graham. You may not have a worldwide digital ministry like Cristina Baker or Stephen McWhirter. But, if you know Jesus, you have a story, a testimony, and you have a mouth. You can share what God has done in your life. 

You have a message, you have a mouth, and you can trust God for a means or method to share the message of hope through Jesus Christ.  Of course, one-on-one is the gold standard, and doesn't depend on anything other than a person's willingness to engage in conversation.  From there, the possibilities are endless - we can depend on God for the divine opportunities, the open doors in order to proclaim His truth.