{"id":2325,"date":"2018-03-05T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T08:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidwithington.com\/?p=2325"},"modified":"2018-03-10T15:49:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T15:49:44","slug":"billy-graham-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidwithington.com\/billy-graham-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Graham and Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Billy<\/a>Photo credit: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association – billygraham.org.uk<\/span><\/p>\n

Business Lessons I Learned From Billy Graham, the Evangelist and Tech Geek<\/span><\/h2>\n

Ninety-nine.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Not a bad innings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pretty good, actually.<\/span><\/p>\n

At age 99, Billy Graham has finally gone to meet his friend, Jesus, whom he preached about for many decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

There’s a lot being said about him… his life… his integrity… his ministry… his servant heart… those he impacted…<\/span><\/p>\n

So I’m not<\/em> going to talk about that<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“What? Isn’t that disrespectful, David?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope. Instead, I’m going to look at Billy Graham the Tech Geek<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Uh? Tech Geek? At 99?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Yup.<\/span><\/p>\n

You see…<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/a>
The Tech Geek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Billy Graham, The Tech Geek<\/span><\/h2>\n

Billy Graham was very advanced in his thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

He used cutting-edge technology to share his life-changing message around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in 1989, Billy Graham used satellite technology to deliver his message into numerous venues in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

We even had a big screen right in a civic hall right in the centre of Wigan!<\/span><\/p>\n

Cutting edge technology – especially for the 1980s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/a>
Billy Graham used cutting-edge technology to deliver his message<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early 1990s, Billy Graham planned another satellite broadcasting event.<\/span><\/p>\n

So our church bought a huge satellite dish and kit. <\/span><\/p>\n

I remember it well. The dish was about 2 metres in diameter.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Hey, David. You work with all that TV malarkey, don’t you?”<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew what was coming.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Can you set all this lot up?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Somehow I managed to get the dish on the roof and aligned, and ran the drop-cable into the large black receiver.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/a>
The satellite dish wasn’t actually this big – but it felt like it at the time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the loud buzzing noise told us something was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

They’d sent us the German version of the receiver.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without getting too technical, in ye olde analogue days the sound in the UK TV broadcasting system was a bit further away from the vision than in the German system. <\/span><\/p>\n

So our German box was putting the sound in the wrong place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Scratch<\/a>
Scratch head time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“What can we do, David?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Scratch-head time.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was too late to have another one delivered.<\/span><\/p>\n

The solution involved connecting up a<\/span>\u00a0trusty old video-cassette-recorder and using its modulator to create a useable signal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hey – we couldn’t let Billy Graham down by having the technology fail on our side!<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the next few nights, lots of people turned in Wigan up to hear Billy Graham speak all the way from America… via the miracle of satellite.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was technology at its best.<\/span><\/p>\n

Billy Graham at TED<\/span><\/h2>\n

Speaking at a TED Conference in 1998, approaching age 80, Billy Graham marvelled at technology’s power to improve lives and change the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

I watched it on the internet whilst researching for this article – and it suddenly occurred to me that, even after death, Billy Graham was still using bang-up-to-date technology to talk to us.<\/span><\/p>\n

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