Billy Graham bringing Hope to Millions through Television Outreach

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association World Television Project – My Hope – is continuing to expand further into the world to bring message of Jesus Christ to more and more people.

The broadcast is about to be expanded greatly, reaching out to more than 330,000 homes in Peru in September, Chile in October, and Argentina and Guatemala later in the year in November.

Already the Gospel is being spread by the project to Spanish-speaking regions of the US with three broadcasts taking place through one week on major television channels. The transmissions will show testimonies, and a brief sermon by either Billy or Franklin Graham, and on the third night a film will be shown entitled – ‘Road to Redemption’. As a final call after the three programmes, Franklin Graham will invite viewers to commit themselves to Christ.

The project, however, does not stop at this simple broadcast, but the BGEA-driven evangelical mission goes further; Volunteer Mateos (Spanish for “Matthews”) will invite families, friends and neighbours into their homes to view the shows. The volunteers are named after the Apostle Matthew, who followed Christ after holding a banquet for Jesus at his house with his friends.

The Mateos will be encouraged to share their testimonies with the guests and to ask them to follow Christ’s calling for them. Like all BGEA events the evangelism is followed up with assurances and help to integrate the newly committed members into a church.

The manager of the World Television Project in Latin America, Greg Matthews said, "Last year, in three countries, we had about 15,000 churches participating."

Speaking about the possibility of having a further 25,000 churches added to this number within the year, Matthews said, "Of course it all happens one church and one home at a time."

Regarding preparations for the event Matthews said, "The key is getting the Mateos trained well. We begin with the burden to pray. We get them praying for their family, friends and neighbours, then they invite these people into their homes."

The results of the project so far have been quite astonishing. Over the past three years, My Hope has trained and guided more than 813,000 Christian homes to bring more than 1.5 million people to Christ.

Matthews comments that on average 40-70 percent of people that commit do become integrated fully into a church.

Excitedly, Matthews testified the project saying that "churches explode overnight, and in some cases new churches are planted, with 40 to 80 people in one week."