The questions are especially intriguing in light of the era in
which the team was formed. In recent years the words teamand
participatory managementare givens. But when Billy was getting
started, hierarchy was the traditional structure. After all, this was
the period when Peter Drucker did his study of General Motors,
which disappointed its leaders because he revealed how people
were not being empowered. Drucker went on over the decades
to write brilliantly about leading others, but at the time of Billy’s
forming his team, the wealth of today’s significant insights about
participative leadership was largely undiscovered.
In fact, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus recently updated their
classic book, Leaders, and stated that even two decades ago, impor-
tant aspects of leadership were being “overlooked or under-
valued,” among them, empowerment, building trust, and shaping
values. The corporate, academic, and denominational worlds,
heavily hierarchical in Billy’s early years, often looked at those in
Billy’s movement as youthful upstarts.
“It seems to me that the Lord took several inexperienced
young men and used them in ways they never dreamed,” Billy
responded when first contacted about the concept of this book.
His instinct was to immediately defer credit to God and to the
team. “The ministry sort of took off and got away from all of us!
We all seemed to be a part of a tremendous movement of the
Spirit of God, and so many of the new organizations seemed to
interrelate, or began as we talked and prayed together in our
travels.”
All that is true; Billy and his colleagues were part of a remark-
able phenomenon. Late during World War II and after, thousands
of Youth for Christ rallies sprang up almost spontaneously across
the country. YFC’s first full-time employee, Billy traveled inces-
santly, speaking and engaging with pastors, YFC directors, and
other leaders of the emerging evangelical movement.
YFC was a sprawling, sink-or-swim movement, indeed, with top
leaders in its Chicago “headquarters” but directors in various cities
carrying considerable clout. The quality of local programs
depended on who was in charge. In some cities YFC roared ahead
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham