n the 1960s a journalist asked Billy Graham the question: “If you were a pastor of a large church in a principal city, what would be your plan of action?” The evangelist’s answer is well worth considering today. And his answer to this question is recorded in a book I am very interested in reading.
I think one of the first things I would do would be to a get a small group of eight or ten or twelve people around me that would meet a few hours a week and pay the price!
It would cost them something in time and effort. I would share with them everything I have, over a period of years. Then I would actually have twelve ministers among the laypeople who in turn could take eight or ten or twelve more and teach them.
I know one or two churches that are doing that, and it is revolutionizing the church.
Christ, I think, set the pattern. He spent most of his time with twelve men. He didn’t spend it with a great crowd. In fact, every time he had a great crowd it seems to me that there weren’t too many results. The great results, it seems to me, came in this personal interview and in the time he spent with his twelve.
Rev. Billy Graham
Amazon.com offers The Master Plan of Evangelism, by Dr. Robert F. Coleman. This quote from Rev. Billy Graham came from that book [currently selling for $5.99 at Amazon].
Product Description
For more than 40 years this classic study has shown Christians how to minister to the people God brings into their lives. Instead of drawing on the latest popular fad or the newest selling technique, Dr. Robert E. Coleman looks to the Bible to find the answer to the question: What was Christ’s strategy for evangelism?
I think it would be a very good time for the churches in America to buckle down and get back to the work of evangelism—spreading the gospel to the nation and to the world. It is well past time for us to leave our infatuation with programs, styles of music, bible versions, and dress codes and get back to the task Jesus gave to us—going into all the world to preach the gospel.
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