A man was commissioned to write a slogan for a soap com-
mercial. He read everything he could about the product, where
the rare materials originated, how it was manufactured, its unique
qualities. He visited the factory; he talked with employees; he
thought long and hard. The owner handed him a check for
$10,000 in payment but complained that it seemed like a lot of
money for very few words. The writer’s apt retort? “You’re not
paying me for those few words. You’re paying me for the thou-
sands I’ve rejected.”
A whole lot of groping!
For years IBM’s slogan was, “Think.” It became synonymous
in people’s minds with the company. It’s often been said about
Billy Graham that he has the capacity to “think big.” Where oth-
ers saw limitations, he saw possibilities. His business manager,
George Wilson, once said he came up with “programs that just
don’t seem feasible,” yet “you know that whatever program he is
going to project, the Lord has led him to it in the hours of the
night.”
From his earliest days, Billy was good at identifying the core
issues. Bill Martin told us that at a time when many conserva-
tive Christians didn’t believe in going to movies, “Billy showed
movies in churches. A lot of people thought movies were wrong,
and Billy Graham said, ‘It’s not the fact that it’s on the screen or
moving, it’s the content that’s important.’ Which, of course,
makes perfect sense—but you have to remember he was a pio-
neer in that.”
Billy kept his entrepreneurial attitude. For instance, unable to
attend and chair a CTI board meeting in the mid-1980s, he sent a
telegram typical of this spirit, “This is a new day,” he challenged
the trustees, “calling for new means of effective communication.”
A couple of decades later, Billy encouraged Sterling Huston to take
the point on partnering with many organizations, such as CTI, to
develop Internet evangelism initiatives.
Whatever our age, blending the spiritual and creative and pay-
ing the price of long and intense “imagining” can result in break-
throughs that previously seemed unrealistic.
Innovating