Franklin Graham

Well, it's been several weeks since Franklin Graham (Billy's boy) came through town. He carries on the ministry of his father by holding "festivals" (not crusades, please) in various cities. The festival here in Winnipeg was composed of four sessions: two regular sessions (Friday and Sunday evenings), a session for kids Saturday morning and a session for youth Saturday night. The regular session was composed primarily of what, in church circles, is known as contemporary praise and worship music for nearly two hours, followed by a 20 minute sermon by Franklin and the signature altar call. The apparent purpose of the festival is to provide Christians with an excuse to invite their non-believing friends to an evangelistic event. The following are some of my thoughts on the festival.

First off, in the run up to the festival, there were some parts of Winnipeg's Christian community that were not keen to have Mr. Graham come to town because of his support for the US invasion of Iraq and his comments regarding Muslims following 9/11. In Winnipeg's Mennonite community, which is traditionally a "peace church", many were uncomfortable with such open support for violence. Many, in fact, felt that Mr. Graham's stance was in direct contrast to the Gospel, so were unsure whether he was the best person to be presenting the Gospel. Like Franklin Graham, Mennonites wish to present the Gospel to the world (ie: evangelize). This provided for interesting discussion. How much in common do we (Mennonites) need to have in common with someone in order to collaborate with them? In the end, the Mennonite conferences in Winnipeg ended up supporting the festival, though I believe they did write Franklin informing him of their concerns.
Second, in the context of evangelism, is a "festival" like this an effective method of introducing people to Jesus? A number of people in the Christian community felt that events such as this were not worth their price tag (1.4 million big ones in this case). There was some sense that people don't respond to such crusade-type events as they did in the past, thus the money may be better spent on other things. I attended the Sunday evening session here in Winnipeg out of curiosity. One of the speakers asked how many had been to at least one other session over the weekend and a considerable number of people responded. More than likely, most of these were Christians, and I doubt that they brought friends to each the sessions they attended. Thus, the festival was, to some degree at least, an event for Christians by Christians rather than an outreach event.
Thirdly, and most disturbing to me as a Christian, was Franklin's sermon. He characterized Christianity primarily as an "escape route" from God's judgement. While I believe that judgement, in some sense, is certainly a part of the Christian message, for this to be the way the message of Jesus was characterized I thought was unfair. In the Bible, the Gospel is rarely presented as something to "scare" people into the kingdom. The escape route characterization creates a Christianity where saving one's bacon is the primary motivator, rather than love of God and others. This is not, generally, how the Gospel was characterized by Jesus and the authors of the New Testament. In addition, such a message all but ignores the "earthly" component of the gospel message. In my opinion, Graham's characterization of the Gospel was very incomplete at best, and inaccurate at worst.
I'd love to hear some comments, especially from those un-believers among you.