Straining on tiptoe, the former soccer player/manager scanned the hundreds of inquirers and counselors who had responded to Franklin Graham’s presentation of the Gospel during the final meeting of the Celebration of Hope. Looking like a man who had lost sight of something precious, he ran to the opposite side of the arena floor, cut left, and dove into the flood of people, stopping only when he reached a young woman in her early 20s.
Walker threw his arms around her and asked, “Honey, do you know what you’re doing just now?”
“Yes, Dad,” his daughter Erin answered, “I know what I’m doing. I’m coming home.”
Afterward, a grin complementing his tears, Walker explained what God had just done.
“I’m the prayer chairman of the Celebration, so on Jan. 31 I led a meeting called ‘Praying Home the Prodigals.’ It was a night of repentance for us as parents, and especially fathers–who maybe didn’t always do it right. And here, a few months later, God answered my prayer for my prodigal.”
Walker, who heads an evangelism ministry in Northern Ireland, had invited his daughter to attend the Celebration on Friday evening. Not only did she come on Friday–she asked her father if she could return on Sunday and bring a friend. Of course, Walker said.
So on Sunday evening he sat in the Odyssey arena, searching the audience for his daughter. Then, just as Franklin was making his final appeal for people to turn to Christ, he saw her and her friend, and he could see their spirits were broken. He couldn’t stay seated.
“I had to get down the stairs, just to get that embrace. I was in a bit of a heap when I embraced her. A girl out of our own church fellowship took them through the counseling materials. So [Erin] was in tears, her friend was in tears. A prodigal returned and brought someone with her. It was one of those lovely scenes that will forever be etched in my memory.”
Losing a Generation
Walker wasn’t the only person in Belfast praying that God would touch the heart of a loved one and bring them to repentance through Christ.
Although church spires pierce the Belfast skyline in every direction, since the beginning of “the Troubles” in the late 1960s, churches have watched attendance decline as young people have grown up and left their faith heritage behind. Many remember how extreme political groups co-opted the terms Protestant and Roman Catholic for their own causes.
The opposing sides during the Troubles went by various labels: The Loyalists (Protestants) were those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom; Republicans (Roman Catholics) were those who wanted to reunite Ireland.
More than 3,000 people were killed while paramilitary groups from both sides fought one another, and the police and the British military tried to restore order. The British government was forced to build “peace walls” between Protestant and Roman Catholic neighborhoods to prevent the residents from attacking one another. Bombings and gun battles were commonplace. Religious and cultural differences were used to justify hatred and violence.
Finally, in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement ushered in a measure of peace as the opposing sides agreed to lay down their arms and govern Northern Ireland together. Still, the battles of the past 30 years play a role in Belfast and have turned young people from church-going families away from Christianity in general. And even though economic prosperity and political peace returned, many people are just as unhappy as they were during the Troubles.
And like the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, Christian families have spent years praying that unfulfilled young people will return home to God.
Norman Jardine, canon of St. Jude’s Church of Ireland, says that the current generation has rejected the lukewarm spirituality it has witnessed in many churches. “Our Troubles were part of it, but also it was just a general secularization of society as well. The church has become suburbanized and it’s become middle class. The working class is the heart of old Belfast, and we’re not really reaching it at the moment.”
Still, Jardine senses a new day for God’s people in Belfast.
“I do see that something like the Celebration of Hope–held in the Odyssey Arena rather than a church–is right for today’s kind of evangelism. It will be one of the things God uses to stir up a whole new move in the church.”
As Christians in the nearly 400 participating churches prepared for the Celebration of Hope, they did see God moving among His people. And they discovered that the next generation of Belfast is spiritually aware and not opposed to talking about God.
“God Conversations”
It’s Friday afternoon, and scores of people mill around Belfast’s City Hall, a Victorian-era structure of white stone and oxidized copper domes. On the grounds of the building stands the Belfast Eye, an enormous modern Ferris wheel that offers a spectacular view of Belfast’s skyline, as well as the hills and ocean shoreline surrounding the city.
Tourists drift across the grounds, pausing to take pictures of Queen Victoria’s stern-looking statue before queuing up for the Eye. Teens with brightly dyed hair and black clothing kill time after school talking and riding skateboards and bikes.
Two teen girls are talking intently to Rob, an evangelist in a black winter jacket. Sisters, they both have oversized hoop earrings hanging from their ears. One holds a bottle of beer at her waist, partly concealing it with her red track jacket. Meanwhile the other sister talks to Rob, her camouflage pants and black shirt brightened by an orange headband.
The headband may be the brightest thing in her life. She says that they are hurting, and that getting drunk is the only thing they know to do to stop the pain. Rob talks with them for a few minutes about Jesus, then gives them a copy of “Steps to Peace With God” and invites them to the Celebration of Hope. The girls promise they’ll come.
In the days leading up to the Celebration, Rob was one of a group of young evangelists who came to Belfast from the United Kingdom and Canada for BGEA United Kingdom’s Emerging Evangelist Institute. Each morning the team met for training and prayer. In the afternoon they broke into groups of two and went out on the streets surrounding Belfast’s City Hall to invite passers-by to the Celebration.
They handed out Celebration fliers to everyone–from proper looking elderly ladies dressed in quilted raincoats, to businessmen on their way home, to cynical youth adorned in tattoos and body piercings. They answered people’s questions and it wasn’t long before “God Conversations,” or opportunities to talk about spiritual issues, developed.
Christians in Belfast found the same openness when they invited people to the Celebration. There’s always opposition when you try to bring people together in Belfast, said Celebration Director Stephen Cave, who is also head of the Evangelical Alliance of Northern Ireland. The lack of opposition to the Gospel leading up to the Celebration was a clear sign that God wanted to do something great in the city, he said.
Even before the Celebration began, God was renewing lives. During the Christian Life and Witness Course, 900 people made commitments to Christ. Many said that although they were churchgoers, they had somehow missed out on having a personal relationship with Christ. They said they finally “got it” during the Course and knew they had to make a change.
The day before the Celebration started, the Action Committee and Belfast’s Lord Mayor, Jim Rodgers, hosted The Lord Mayor’s Breakfast, which brought business and political leaders together for prayer and a message from Franklin Graham. Nine men made commitments to Christ that morning, including one who came with a friend who had been p
raying for his salvation for more than 30 years.
Later that day, each time someone asked the friend about what God had done at the breakfast, his eyes filled with tears and he could barely speak.
A Vision for Northern Ireland
The Celebration of Hope was birthed about 25 miles outside Belfast in the city of Lurgan, when Henry Holloway, a semi-retired, biomedical scientist felt a burden to reach his community with the Gospel.
“When I see something that I think needs done,” Holloway says, “my wife keeps telling me, ‘Don’t get involved, it’s none of your business,’ but I can’t help speaking out if I think something should be done.”
Northern Ireland hadn’t hosted any sort of large-scale evangelistic effort in decades, and Holloway, who himself came to Christ at a Billy Graham film as a teen, kept thinking back to a crusade he’d been involved in 32 years ago.
“It just left a lasting impression in me, as it did in a lot of other people. Partly because of the atmosphere, the camaraderie and the spirit of fellowship with all the churches. Many years after that, I used to talk to friends and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could do the same thing again?'”
It didn’t seem that many other people shared his burden, but during the next five years Holloway gathered people to pray with him for an evangelistic event to unite churches around the Gospel. Then a friend suggested inviting Franklin Graham to Lurgan. Holloway fired off an e-mail to BGEA and soon received a positive response, asking him to continue praying and also to see how many churches would join the event.
Holloway contacted dozens of churches and met with 50 ministers and church leaders interested in having Franklin Graham come to Northern Ireland.
As God drew churches and Christians together for the event, a challenge developed. Because of the blustery spring weather in Northern Ireland, an outdoor venue in April was out of the question, and Lurgan didn’t have an indoor venue large enough for the event God was forming.
The steering committee decided to move the event to the Odyssey, an entertainment complex and arena in Belfast, a city whose last major evangelistic meeting was when Billy Graham preached there in 1961. So, believing that with the new location God would likely draw more people to hear the Gospel, the committee moved forward with plans to reach Belfast and Northern Ireland.
Full House
On April 4-6, more than 30,000 people packed into the Odyssey Arena, and 80 miles away another 2,400 watched by satellite in two churches in Enniskillen, a town near the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They heard Franklin Graham present a message that transcended the arguments that have divided Northern Ireland.
“Many horrible things have been done in the name of religion,” Franklin said on Friday evening. “Religion is not the answer. Religion cannot save you. I’m here to talk about the peace that comes from having a relationship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ.”
On Saturday and Sunday evening, overflow crowds filled six nearby theaters in the Odyssey’s movie cinema. There was so much excitement in the crowds that many moviegoers decided to sit in on the Celebration instead.
God drew in people in other ways, too.
A young man named Jonathan had grown up in a Christian family but never developed his own relationship with Christ. His parents prayed diligently for him, but he and his girlfriend, Kimberley, seemed to have no time for God and no interest in anything that had to do with Christianity.
On Saturday the couple heard that Tree 63 was playing at the Odyssey. The band hails from South Africa, another country known for political and social division, and Jonathan had lived there for a few years. At the last minute, he and Kimberley jumped into their car to make the quick, seven-mile drive to the arena.
They were just about to pull into the parking lot when they discovered that neither of them had money to pay for parking. Hurriedly, they drove home to collect Jonathan’s wallet, but by the time they arrived back at the arena, a long line had formed outside. After waiting in the line for some time, they heard that there were no more seats. Exasperated at the trouble they’d already gone through to hear the band, they walked to another entrance and asked an usher if there were any seats at all.
The usher squeezed them into an overflow theater. By the time they found seats, the band had already finished playing and Franklin was beginning his message. Still, they sat down and listened to Franklin tell the story of the Prodigal Son.
Later that evening, as the couple drove home, Jonathan called his father, Jack, to tell him that they had really enjoyed the message that night.
“Would you like to go back tomorrow?” Jack asked.
“I would,” Jonathan answered.
At church the next morning, an excited Jack told this story to Irene, a fellow church member who also worked at the Celebration office. Irene “just happened” to have three reserved tickets left.
“Jack, just take them!” she said. “Just take them and get them there tonight!”
That night Irene and her family sat behind Jack and his family.
“It came to the end of the meeting,” Irene said, “and I got up to go and counsel folk. Then Jonathan and Kimberley came down together and both gave their lives to the Lord. The dad and mom were just in floods of tears.”
God drew many others on Sunday. Long before the meeting began, the arena filled to capacity; then all of the overflow seating filled. Word filtered into the arena that many people were shut out of the Celebration. Christians began leaving their seats and telling ushers, “Let someone else have my seat.” While the crowd waited outside, bitter cold wind and sleet pelted their faces.
Dennis Agajanian played his guitar and sang gospel songs. Tom Phillips, veteran BGEA team member, presented the Gospel, and the emerging evangelists circulated through the crowd and spoke with those who wanted to know more about Christ. One by one, ushers found seats inside the complex for the nearly 200 people waiting.
Throughout the weekend, more than 2,400 people responded to invitations to commit their lives to Christ, and another 900 made commitments at pre-Celebration events, for a total of more than 3,300 commitments.
Stephen Cave, as head of the Evangelical Alliance of Northern Ireland, said that a strong church in Northern Ireland would have about 150 people. “That’s almost as if, in this weekend, 20 new churches were planted or sprung up overnight!” he said on Sunday after the final meeting.
Norman Lynas, the Celebration’s executive chairman, stood behind the platform, his voice breaking as he talked about the nearly 88 percent of inquirers who were 18 or younger.
“What a difference they’ll make in 10 or 20 years’ time. That’s what gets me. So many young people, and they can change so many lives. … In Northern Ireland, there’s been a fire ignited for evangelism, and I believe our churches will grab hold and realize that the rest doesn’t work unless people come to Christ.”