he called him up to Montreat one day and said, “Leighton, I’ve
been thinking and praying about this. I think you ought to develop
your own team and go to Canada, your native country, and evan-
gelize across Canada. We’ll support you if you want to start your
own organization, or you can be part of our organization.”
Leighton bought into the idea and said he’d prefer staying
with the BGEA. “I put together a little team. Billy encouraged
that, but he didn’t tell me how to do it.” Leighton developed a
strategy to minister coast-to-coast across Canada, which they did
the next half decade with Billy’s full support. “But we developed
it in our own way, in our own style.”
Why this initiative from Billy?
“He saw at that point, I think, that I shouldn’t just stay ‘under
his wing’ but to move out on my own. He encouraged me to do
that, and it was a very major thing.”
We pushed Leighton to share a little more about that.
“Perhaps he saw I had potential to be more than an assistant
to him; maybe it was for both my sake
and to avoid possible conflict down the
years—if I grew impatient with a lack
of scope. It was a lot of foresight on his
part.”
Empowering and mentoring happen in a flowing stream of
emerging opportunities that change strategies.Broaden, but Keep the Sharp Edge
Leighton once was asked at Duke Divinity School how he had
seen Billy Graham change over the years. The question was new
to him. He made a few stabs at it, then this image came to mind,
and he said, “Billy Graham has been like an arrowhead. An arrow
has a very sharp point. He has the sharp point of the gospel. He’s
kept that sharp edge. But then, like the base of an arrow, he’s
grown in understanding how the gospel affects every area of life.
He transcended his roots of a rural, segregated upbringing to a
much broader understanding of the kingdom of God. Racial jus-
tice, poverty, nuclear warfare, unity among Christians—all of
Igniting Other LeadersLeadership is stirring people
so they are moved from inside
themselves.
FREDERICK R. KAPPEL