peace.. .” The Graham team often expressed great wonder that
they were included in those promises. Instead of dutiful drudgery,
they saw giving everything to the cause as a source of high priv-
ilege.
George Beverly Shea, Billy’s featured soloist for more than
fifty-five years, perhaps captured this best of all with his signature
song, “The Wonder of It All.”
There’s the wonder of sunset at evening;
The wonder as sunrise I see.
But the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul
Is the wonder that God loves me.
That spirit among the Graham team lifted them to want to
share that love as the driving purpose to which all else was
secondary.
So where does that leave the rest of us who have not expe-
rienced the spiritual chemistry of the Graham team? Most of us,
looking deep within, recognize that love for others does not come
nearly as naturally as love for ourselves. If we want to pursue
this phenomenon, this receiving wonder,
joy, and love and integral forces of our
leadership, we must look beyond the
pragmatic. The transcendent sources—
writings of the mystics and saints, Shake-
speare and Pilgrim’s Progressand the Bible—the vast wealth of
spiritual challenge and empowerment can be studied through a
leadership lens.
Among the greatest expressions of all literature is the soaring
pinnacle of the apostle Paul’s writing, the love chapter of 1 Co-
rinthians 13. It calls for the agapelove Martin Luther King Jr.
spoke about. To apply it to our own challenges, we might apply a
leadership lens on a few portions of it this way:
If I lead others like an angel from God,
but have not love,
I am a clanging cymbal.
The Leadership Secrets of Billy GrahamIt is not how much we do,
but how much love we put
into the doing.
MOTHER TERESA