The more friendly gatherings

As a follow-up to Sunday's post, I look at news coverage of the events elsewhere.

To begin I need to thank everyone who stopped by and (particularly) shared my post from Sunday - you know the one:

Turns out this likely will be the most-read post on my Substack to date - it’s within about 15 readers as I write this - and I didn’t really try that hard to promote it. Love that organic growth.

So as a follow-up, I was curious about the reception this tour has received now that it’s underway, with three stops down as of yesterday. In doing a news search for the God Loves You Tidewater Tour I mainly found promotional items, such as a brief piece about the upcoming events on the national CBN website, a mention of the Elkton stop (which was yesterday) by Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Christian radio station WDAC-FM, and a preview of the Elkton event from back in March from the Cecil Whig. The story by Jane Bellmyer laid it out quite well:

The excitement was palpable but so was the expectations at Crossroads Bible Church recently as Christians in Cecil and surrounding counties gathered to pray for the God Loves You Tidewater Tour.

Coming May 2 to Fair Hill Fairgrounds, The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, will bring the simple message to all who will attend; God Loves You.

(…)

Leading up to the event, churches are hosting Christian Life & Witness programs. The goal is to teach people how to talk about their Christian faith and to invite friends and neighbors to the fairground event. Those same people would then volunteer to pray with and for people at the event.

This article detailed one of several preview events held to promote the tour and solicit volunteers for assisting in the actual ministry. (Hopefully my friend Carol Frazier can comment further when she reads this as she’ll be a volunteer at the Salisbury event. A similar event was held here in late March.)

But unlike Salisbury, Elkton seems to be embracing this: “Today is officially Rev. Franklin Graham Day in Cecil County!” according to local resident Al Miller. It may not be “official” in the sense that county officials brought the Rev. Graham the key to the county, but no one seems to be objecting there.

Nor are they fretting in Edenton, North Carolina, according to the local Chowan Herald website. In preparation for next Sunday’s final stop on the Tidewater Tour, staff writer Reggie Ponder spoke with Steve Rhoads, the vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and among the noteworthy quotes from the article was this:

Although Graham has been outspoken about politics in recent years, that is not something this tour is addressing, and Rhoads said people who come out have not been asking questions related to politics.

“Candidly, we haven’t run into a lot of concern about politics,” Rhoads said. “There’s always the call on all of us to apply our faith to our life. But on this tour we have not had a lot of conversations about politics. The conversations have been more about the needs of the community.”

I won’t guarantee politics won’t come up in Salisbury, though, given its status as one of the more left-leaning areas of the Eastern Shore. Not from Graham, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see a handful of objectors near the scene. Perhaps they’ll be egged on by the post in the Salisbury Independent (which is behind a paywall, but has a headline that starts, “Despite controversy.” So I suspect I know where it’s going.)

I think most of those attending, though, will be there to have their faith reinforced, as in the Scripture I quoted in my last part, Proverbs 27:17.

If my cell phone allows and my pictures come out I may do a pictorial post of the event for this coming Sunday, so that could be on the horizon. Ironically, Graham comes to Salisbury on the National Day of Prayer - originally when I heard he was coming I thought he was going to be the speaker at the local Prayer Breakfast because it falls on that date (which would’ve been a heckuva “get”) but it turns out Graham had bigger plans.

So pray things go smoothly in Salisbury and many souls are won.