Recently I attended the Franklin Graham event in Manchester. Over the years I have been quite hesitant to involve myself in anything to do with Billy Graham or his crusades since I disagree with the altar call. However I went with an open heart and a genuine willingness to see if the Lord was doing something great.
Whilst I have little doubt about the sincerity of Billy Graham’s mission to evangelise the world, his methods have often left me scratching my head wondering if any of the conversions that took place at his crusades would ever stand the test of time. I’d like to think that some of them have and I hope they continue that way. But that does not mean that I do not have concerns about the way Billy Graham emulated Charles Finney’s appeal for people to make an altar call and repeat a prayer after him.
For those that do not know, the altar call, which is the event where people go up to the front of an arena, church or mission hall, to repeat a prayer, cannot be properly traced in the history of Christianity prior to its popularisation in the 1830’s by Charles Finney, a prominent American evangelist in the 19th century. Although some claim it could have been used a little earlier, this practice become even more common place when it was adopted later on by D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday and later Billy Graham.
Certainly when I came to Christ it was a very quiet and still moment and there was no altar call. That however does not disprove the altar call, but an evangelist of the true gospel needs to have a Biblical proof in order to do things in a Biblical and proper way.
In the Bible there is no such thing as an altar call and people did not repeat any sinners prayer when they came to Christ. The prayers came from the individuals and were not dictated by anyone. They came from the sinner’s heart and cried out to their creator in repentance with no human mediator directing them.
But such was not the case with the altar call at Franklin Graham’s “God loves you” event at the Co-op Live on October 3, 2026. In fact the whole event appeared to be designed purposely just to get multitudes of people off their chairs and down to the designated space at the front to repeat a prayer that had already been written out.
But for me, I have never been to a ‘Christian’ event of this size before and being a singer songwriter and musician myself, I’m familiar with large concerts and that’s exactly what this event appeared to be. For me it appeared like a show. Designed. Engineered. Manufactured. I doubt very much this has anything to do with genuine revival. You could see the designated areas where people would stand at the altar call.
The event basically began as a rock concert. Lights moving around as the people took to their seats. Music playing in the background. Stage layout already designed and instruments set up and sound checked and then the band appears.
I could say a lot more. But as it began I found it to be little more than a noisy mass of live music and distortion. At some points I thought the music was so loud that the speakers were going to blow and fall off. As time went on, the music got louder and different acts came on, and for a while there much of the lyrics had very little to do with praising Christ. There was barely any praise and worship songs until later on. It was very pragmatically designed.
The sad reality is that only a fraction of the evening, 25 minutes or so, was dedicated to Mr Graham’s sermon. This was on Luke 17: 28-30 and on my way out I was listening to what the people were saying and I never heard a single person talk about anything other than the performances of the singers they liked.
This was not all, I was very concerned when Franklin Graham stated “if you prayed that prayer you are forgiven” and he gave them a false assurance of salvation by stating “I don’t know of we will see each other again on this earth” but we will see each other in heaven.
No one can make such a claim to any new convert. It is a false assurance. Hebrews 12: 14 is very clear that every believer must “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:“. Yet people cheered when Mr Graham made that claim of assurance.
As I have stated this event has left me scratching my head. It has left me carefully questioning whether or not I have truly departed from mainstream evangelicalism, or whether or not it has departed from the truth? After all, Franklin Graham has closely linked partnerships to the Roman Catholic Church and quite frankly, I’m just not sure about all of this. I don’t see any justification for an altar call in the New Testament.
Having said that, I sincerely hope that people did come to Christ at this event. But if the organisers of such events truly want people to have a genuine faith that lasts and abides this is not the way to go about it. A better way would be to turn down the music, sing more hymns, preach a timeless and longer sermon and let the Bibles they freely hand out do the work of converting the souls (Psalm 19: 7)
Because quite frankly, a majority of this event was directed by loud music and only a small percentage of the evening was dedicated to the Scriptures. This to me highlights a much bigger issue of how Christianised music has replaced Scripture in people’s hearts. The Bible is clear “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10: 17) It does not say faith comes by listening to music and hearing the gospel that way. By saying that I don’t deny that music can be instrumental in inspiring people to look up to heaven and seek after something more, but it cannot be put in place of Scripture as a means of evangelism.
To which I was happy to witness the workers at the event giving out free Bibles for those who made the call, and I left knowing that the Scripture alone is more than able to bring souls to Christ and justify them freely by faith alone.
