Billy and Leighton

Ignition Promo:Halifax (Ignition Promo: St. John's here)

Yesterday marked the end of my ten year journey serving the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) here in Canada and in the broader North American context.

It’s fitting that www.epicentrecanada.com launched a fresh new website on my last day in the Calgary office. The final piece of the foundation has been laid. Justin, great work on the final Ignition promo vids. It was great travelling all over Canada with you and shooting footage and carving it all up together.

Ignition is one weekend (Oct. 7 & 9) two cities (Halifax NS, St. John's NF) three bands (Joy Williams, Salvador, Tree63) third generation Graham (Will).

Yesterday, while I was clearing off my desk, I was watching how Samaritan’s Purse Canada is buzzing and gearing up to send out teams for Hurricane Katrina relief. What a great privilege it has been to have my office adjacent to Samaritan’s Purse Projects Department these last 14 months. Water projects, relief, development, interns, daily stories from around the world – I have been greatly blessed rubbing shoulders with the salt of the earth.

Many thanks to all the BGEA Canada team – especially you management, communications, IT, and finance types. Hold the line. Fight the good fight. Thank-you Dr. Graham, Franklin, and Will. It has been a privilege serving you men these last 10 years.

On December 5th 1996, at 4:05 pm, during my leadership training and development with Arrow Leadership Ministries, I asked Leighton Ford to write in the front of my preaching Bible what it is he prays before he preaches. Leighton smiled, thought for a moment, and penned,

Lord, be in my mind, think your thoughts in me, be in my words, free me to speak or be silent , be in my body, express creative affection in my face, my touch, my embrace , be in my will, control what I do and say. Now I am ready to minister, in the reality of You in me.

In the back of my Bible, Leighton wrote what he prays after he preaches,

Lord, I have sown the seed. You make it grow!

Thanks Leighton, for being a true example of evangelism leadership:

• walking alongside Billy Graham for 40 years
• developing the theological scope of Laussane
• allowing your suffering to transform your global ministry
• nurturing young leaders under your wings through Arrow
  
• steering me to Regent and helping me find the Sandy Ford Fund
• being a scholar, an evangelist, a painter, a poet, a mentor, and a friend on the journey

Leighton's July 25th 1995 journal entry:

VISION A gift from God of seeing the "unseen" "things that are not" as God wills them to be and the art of making them [the unseen] so compellingly real that others see and are compelled [to be drawn, called] to persue the task that grows from them.

Vision is everything. Imagine an army of teens, students, and young professionals praying in large groups in various locations throughtout the city of St. John's. Imagine they go to the highest point and the lowest gutter. Imagine they have been praying like this for months and years. Imagine their heart for Jesus Christ and his vision of social justice. Imagine they will stop at nothing until there is full blown revival in the Church and full scale renewal in their city.

Mike, take some ground for the Lord Almighty in Halifax.
Dion, take some ground for the Lord Almighty in St. John's.
Charlotte, you've taken a bridge for the Lord Almighty in Barrie.

Keep praying, fight the good fight and let nothing move you.