Billy Graham isn’t finished preaching yet

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He’ll be 95 in November, but Billy Graham still isn’t finished preaching.

His hearing and eyesight faltering, Graham is not up to any more stadium-size crusades. But he can still talk into a camera. And that’s what he’s been doing during the past six months, speaking about Christ, the cross, and America in his mountaintop Montreat, N.C., home.

The Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association plans to share his filmed comments in November — on TV, DVD, and the Internet — as part of a new nationwide evangelical effort called “My Hope America with Billy Graham.”

Expect a quieter Graham than the forceful figure of earlier times.

“It won’t be a sermon and it may not be his last (public) words,” BGEA chief of staff Ken Barun said. “But it’ll be an all new message from Mr. Graham about today.”

With cameras turned on, Barun said, Graham has mostly been fielding questions in his home posed by his visiting pastor, the Rev. Don Wilton of First Baptist Church-Spartanburg.

Plans call for mixing these new clips with old ones from a 1985 crusade in Sacramento. They’ll then become part of a video series to be shown in U.S. homes. BGEA will buy TV time on commercial stations, offer it to Christian TV outlets, get volunteers to show it at home gatherings, and stream it on www.billygraham.org.