In gratitude for Billy Graham, a new BD course, SPATS and bats...

We were asked to take a bat-eyed view of the Bible this morning in Chapel. It was a wonderful Holy Communion service rich with Pacific music and insight; the communion bread served from freshly woven baskets and covered with banana leaves. 

The Gospel was this....

Mark 8.34-38. He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 

....and our preacher, Associate Professor Rev Dr Upolu Lumā Vaai from the Methodist Church in Samoa, began by recalling growing up in the village with fruit bat colonies in the trees either side of the house, their comings and goings and squeakings like that of extended family. 

Bats take an upside down view of the world, we were reminded. For them, earth is sky and sky is earth. The followers of Jesus needed a certain 'bat-like' approach to life if they were ever to enter into the alternative world of the cross in which, paradoxically, life has to be relinquished in order to be gained. Members of the crowd and closer disciples were all given the challenge to take up their own crosses. Not to carry the cross that Jesus carries: that is his and help to bear that load will come from outside the inner circle. A disciple's cross will be risky, costly allegiance to Christ - a choice which, at that time, defiantly opposed empire. 

And what of today's empires in government, politics, institution, family and Church? We were encouraged to think on those things. A timely question anywhere in the world and a sharp one for issues of power and rule in Pacific life. Serious, cross-carrying disciples are likely to find themselves viewing a lot of things alternatively and needing to operate accordingly, if they want the powers to fall. Top down is bottom up for the bat. 

It would have been better to hear Dr Upolu preaching it really. Never have the video camera running when you need it...

Billy Graham has died. What an extraordinary ministry. I thank him and want to honour him in this post, first by reproducing some of his final words. You can click on the blue links to see more.

Billy Graham’s Final Column: How He Wanted to be Remembered
BILLY GRAHAM·FRIDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2018

Editor’s note: Before his death on February 21, 2018, Billy Graham approved the following response as his final ‘My Answer’ column.

Q: Mr. Graham, how would you like to be remembered?

I hope I will be remembered as someone who was faithful—faithful to God, faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and faithful to the calling God gave me not only as an evangelist, but as a husband, father and friend.

I’m sure I’ve failed in many ways, but I take comfort in Christ’s promise of forgiveness, and I take comfort also in God’s ability to take even our most imperfect efforts and use them for His glory.

By the time you read this, I will be in heaven, and as I write this I’m looking forward with great anticipation to the day when I will be in God’s presence forever. I’m convinced that heaven is far more glorious than anything we can possibly imagine right now, and I look forward not only to its wonder and peace, but also to the joy of being reunited with those who have gone there before me, especially my dear wife, Ruth. The Bible says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

But I won’t be in heaven because I’ve preached to large crowds or because I’ve tried to live a good life. I’ll be in heaven for one reason: Many years ago I put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to make our forgiveness possible and rose again from the dead to give us eternal life. 

Do you know you will go to heaven when you die? You can, by committing your life to Jesus Christ today.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Put your trust in Christ today.

There's a short section in my doctoral research 

https://ptc.academia.edu/RevDrValOgden/PhD-thesis

which recalls when the Revd Dr Colin Morris interviewed Billy Graham for a BBC 2 documentary in 1984. I re-read it after the news broke and share it below, hopefully  for your interest. It was made shortly after Colin had interviewed a variety of the powerful 'electronic preachers' of the day: the new breed of TV evangelists that were all over US media and possibly heading to the UK.  What comes across from Billy Graham in this exchange is a spirit of humility and ability for self-critique; a looking back which is able to see where emphases in his own preaching and theology had changed and own that without defensiveness or arrogance. I feel so glad to have reflected that briefly in the thesis so it's preserved. See for yourself.

6.3.7   Billy Graham

Not long after making God in a Box, Morris interviewed Dr Billy Graham in the days before his ‘Mission England’ rallies of 1984. [1] Together the two preachers cover extensive ground, including conversation about Graham’s latest book on the end times, Approaching Hoofbeats. [2] Morris reflects back to Graham some of the questions he posed and explored with the electronic evangelists and that comparative material merits brief consideration.

Graham receives no special treatment from Morris who quizzes him, as he did with others, about mass evangelism being less costly in terms of personal disclosure and response, lacking the eyeball to eyeball communication Jesus would have had with his followers. Graham has evidence through correspondence and conversation that even in a mass audience, individuals are able to connect with his message personally. But television is changing the rules, suggests Morris, and now it is images more than words that matter. Graham responds that ‘faith cometh by hearing’, a premise he never rejects, and that the Word of God has its own power to connect whether through word or image.

Morris then presents the comments made about Graham by the evangelists he had recently met. In the first place they were, without exception, deeply admiring and appreciative of him and his integrity above anyone else in the field. But in communicating with Christian conviction into the current times, they articulated concerns.

CM: They felt you had lost the initiative because you had now become ‘fuzzy’ on certain of the issues they think are very strong and sharp. They mentioned the Bible, they mentioned the whole business of nuclear deterrence, they mentioned abortion, they mentioned a number of things. Do you think that’s fair?

BG: Not quite…I don’t think I’ve become fuzzy… on the thing God has called me to do, and that’s to proclaim the Gospel. If I became fuzzy on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the fact that he died for our sins, that he rose again, that we must repent of our sins and receive him by faith as Saviour, then I would say that they are justified. Now some of these other issues in which there are all kinds and shades of views; for example on abortion, or on even the death penalty, some of these things that they take strong positions on, all of these things I have not taken strong positions on. I have taken a position – but not the type of position they would like to see me take. And I think that’s where they think I’m fuzzy, and in that sense, I never had the initiative in those areas. 

Morris asks Graham how he feels he has grown in faith, ‘because everybody does’. Where does he think his theology has changed? Graham is sure that the basic theology and message of the Gospel that he is preaching (as at 1984) has remained consistent and unchanged, but…

BG: …I have learned a great deal about discipleship. I have learned a great deal about what it costs to follow Christ. I no longer preach, what I probably did in my early days, what I would call, as Bonhoeffer did, ‘cheap grace’. Because there’s a cost to discipleship that must be declared by the evangelist. We must not tell people, ‘Receive Christ and all is well’, because you receive Christ and that’s the beginning, it’s being a Christian to me.

CM: Do you think that in mass evangelism there is a danger of magnifying the moment of decision and underestimating the cost of discipleship?

BG Yes! Yes I do. And I have tried to correct that in recent years in my own ministry and my own preaching. Whether I have corrected enough or not, I would not be able to say. But I do believe that in the early period, of my so called evangelism, that the cost of discipleship was not as strong as it should have been and as strong as it is today in my preaching.

As mass evangelist at gathered rallies and frequently a communicator to millions via the global broadcast mass media, Graham in 1984 brings a far more measured, nuanced, self-critical and certainly not fundamentalist approach to the communications task, in conversation with Morris.

---

[1] Colin Morris, I Know I’m Going to Heaven, interview with Billy Graham before the 1984 Mission England rallies, broadcast on BBC 2 in Holy Week 1984. [CMC 866].

[2] Billy Graham, Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. 2^nd ed (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985).

Yet another BD course has hit the shelves at PTC Education by Extension and we're immensely grateful to global New Testament scholar and Methodist minister Revd Dr Caroline Wickens [picture right] for producing the material. Caroline has taught courses in Old and New Testament, Greek and Hebrew at the United Church of Zambia's Theological College and was Senior Lecturer and Head of Biblical Studies at St Paul’s United Theological College, Limuru, Kenya. At this large ecumenical college (now St Paul’s University), she taught BD courses in New Testament, Greek, women’s theologies and a range of courses exploring the interface between the Bible and contemporary culture. The course she's offered to PTCEE is An Introduction to the Study of Letters Attributed to St Paul and it's a great addition. 

The PTCEE Online option is gathering pace and all sorts of enquiries are coming in. Here's Nisha helping Keleni to drop her assignment in the right Moodle box!

Revd Rusiate Tuidrakulu, General Secretary of the South Pacific Association of Theological Schools, came by to have a look at developments and we were grateful for his kind encouragement. Vinaka, Talatala Rusi!

Dave Carpenter cartoons