The Great Commission & The Graham Family Legacy

Will Graham is certainly a chip off of his grandfather both in physical appearance and in gifts of preaching. Growing up in Blowing Rock, NC, Will’s parents sheltered him from the pressures and fame Franklin experienced as the child of Billy Graham.

Will experienced a “normal” life and was allowed space to establish a personal relationship with Christ. While Franklin attempted to keep him from feeling the pressures of going into the ministry, Will had a strong desire to tell people about Christ. Will was in a pastoral role for about eight years before starting work with the BGEA. He loved the church he was pastoring and was happy there. But God was working in ways he did not see or understand at the time and that were preparing him to join his father and grandfather in the ministries He had established through them.

Now years later, Will is experiencing the grace and power of God in meetings called Celebrations, similar to his grandfather’s Crusades and his father’s Festivals. While it can’t be easy to walk in your calling while being compared to a legend, Will humbly holds his own, even making current in-roads in China.

Our impression as Americans is that China controls religious thought and expression. According to the nonpartisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations, while the Chinese constitution allows “freedom of religious beliefs” and the government is atheist, tolerance of religious activity has increased over the past 40 years.

Will has been given great freedom to speak at his Celebrations, both evidence of religious tolerance as well as evidence of the country’s reverence for Will’s family, going back as far as his great-grandparents who served as medical missionaries in China, only to flee in 1941 due to the anti-Christian sentiment of the fledgling Communist Revolution led by Mao Tse Tung.

It was during that time that Mao Tse Tung combined his Communist Army with the Nationalist government to help defeat the Japanese in World War II. He became the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, ruling as Chairman Mao from 1949 until his death in 1976. Chairman Mao is now regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history.

Though Mao successfully modernized China and built it into the world power it is today, he shed much blood in the process. Religious groups were regarded as a potential threat to his new government, therefore his army either repressed or controlled religions in China, including Christianity.

Will shared with The Journey his experiences in China: “This was my fourth trip to China. I was preaching in churches there who had invited me to come. There is a misconception about China that is rooted in the past, but my personal experience has been that China is very much open to religion.

“China recognizes five religions. That means they work with five different religions and they regard Catholicism and Protestantism as two different religions. To be honest, I can’t tell you what the other three are. I think Muslim is one and Hindu and Buddhist are the others. So China recognizes Christianity and they even help support it in some ways.

“China believes in freedom of religion. You have a right to worship any way you want. That is the first thing people need to know because here in the West you don’t hear that. In China you have the right to freedom of worship, but here is the other side of the coin that complicates that: you have freedom of religion, but your neighbor has the right not to hear you. So, in other words, there’s the freedom from religion. That’s where it gets complicated.

“Therefore, in the same way that there are places in the U.S. that are supportive of Christianity— like what we call the Bible Belt here in the South—

China has good parts and bad parts in relationship to Christianity. Beijing, the federal government, will tell you that they’re pro-religion and that they’re trying to get some of these places more aligned with that.

“Where I go in China is called Jiangsu Province which is where my great-grandparents served as missionaries for 25 years. In 2015, when I first went to this area, it was the 99th anniversary of my grandparents’ mission work there. I preached to some of the churches in the Province, including the church where my grandmother would have gone when she was still in China.

“Unlike places here in the U.S. who sometimes have tried to restrict what we can and cannot say, China has never tried to restrict anything I’ve said or wanted to say. Now, I’ve been advised by a friend of mine what not to speak about, which is Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen Square. Well, I’m not preaching on these three things anyway; I’m there to preach the gospel.

“So, I have had the privilege of getting to preach and see people come to know Christ in China, and I’ve done that three years in a row. This last time, I was preaching in Suzhou at an open-air evangelistic crusade. This was a little bit unique because they’ve got this massive church on a lake with a huge park. The park was packed with all these people having weddings in the park and coming to look at all the beautiful flowers that were blooming there.

“The church building was a gorgeous cathedral and it was Protestant. In China, they don’t have denominations like we do here but the churches we went to do have certain denominational tendencies in accordance with the missionaries that served those areas. This church was simply named Lakeside Church and the people [in the park] were free to come hear what I had to say if they wanted to, and I was free to preach as the Holy Spirit led me to.”

As evidenced in Will’s words, BGEA is experiencing great freedoms in its China outreach. God’s bigger plan and faithfulness has been shown through the freedom Will has experienced 99 years after his own grandparents planted seeds in a country that rejected their efforts. Will has experienced the power of God’s love being poured out in China in ways his great-grandparents probably never experienced. But, we know that the work they started and the prayers they prayed even after leaving China has paved the way for Will and his ministry to flourish there.

Will has had the pleasure of seeing Chinese worship services with hundreds of people coming to the altars in response to his invitations to receive Christ as Savior. I encourage you to go to the BGEA website to view some of the footage from the Celebrations Will has led in China. God is using him in powerful ways.

Will recalls, “As I look back, I see the calling of God in my life and the first instance was in Blowing Rock Elementary about the 2nd grade. The teacher said to draw a picture of what you want to be in life. I drew a picture of David Clark headsets that aviators

used in their airplanes and I drew a picture of an open Bible. I wanted to fly around and tell people about Jesus. I wanted to be like my dad. Fly in an airplane and go around and tell people about Jesus. I didn’t feel like it was a mission field, I didn’t feel like I was going to be an evangelist. I just wanted to go tell people about Jesus.”

Two thousand years ago Jesus gave His followers this command known as The Great Commission: “‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20, NIV).

He also prophesied that His Church would take His good news “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV). I’m grateful for ministries like the BGEA, WMM, and Samaritan’s Purse who join their imperfect human efforts with the Lord’s presence and power to obey His Great Commission and to reach the ends of the earth with the God’s love!