It has been my privilege to attend a Billy Graham Crusade three times. Once in Detroit, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In October 1979, while I was pastoring a church in Avonport, Nova Scotia and attending Acadia Divinity College, a Billy Graham Crusade came to Halifax, and while there we became good friends with Rev. Jack Cousins, a member of the Billy Graham Team, who came and spoke at our church.
My cousin was pastoring a church at Canning, Nova Scotia, just a short distance from Avonport. The two churches rented a bus to go to the Crusade in Halifax, with people attending from both churches. Seating arrangements were made at the Crusade, which was held at the Metro Centre, seating approximately 12,000 people.
On Sunday, after morning services, we boarded a bus for the afternoon Crusade meeting. When we arrived, we realized the Metro Centre was filling up fast. The main concern for my cousin and myself was to get our people seated, which we did, but there were no seats for us so we headed for the handicapped section where there were seats but was told we couldn’t sit there. Next, my cousin spotted two vacant seats so we headed for them (I believe now that the Lord had them reserved for us). We found out it was the tenor section of the choir.
We finally got settled in our seats and removed our top coats and felt so pleased (my cousin, in his top coat looked like Colombo, the detective). The gentleman in the next seat said, “Do you sing tenor?”, and handed us a song book. I said to my cousin, “If we don’t, we had better learn fast”.
I don’t believe Cliff Barrows, leading the choir, knew we hadn’t been to practice. Soon the choir arose to sing, “Roll, Jordan, Roll”. Thank the Lord my cousin could sing and I tried even though I don’t know music and sing only by ear, and nobody was the wiser that we were not a regular part of the choir.
That was in October 1979, and my cousin died in December 1999. I believe he is now singing in the great choirs in heaven. Rev. Cliff Barrows, Billy Graham’s choir leader, died at 93 in 2016. He was both blind and deaf and had travelled with Dr. Billy Graham for over 60 years, starting with him shortly after he got married at the age of 22. He played both a mouth organ and trombone. He used to tell Billy Graham that when they got to heaven he would have a job leading the choir but Billy would be out of a job for there would be no need for preaching in heaven.
Leslie Jobb