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After six decades of worldwide preaching, the Rev. Billy Graham, 87, infirm and supposedly retired to his North Carolina mountain home, launches a new work next week in his second, and likely final, career: pastor.
The Journey: How to Live By Faith in an Uncertain World, will be in bookstores March 7. It's a simple Scripture-and-story-filled handbook on facing life as a believer.
This is what Graham as a pastor -- a guide in faith -- wants to say to people who have accepted his uncountable invitations to accept Christ.
Last June in New York he announced his retirement. Now he's shifting from soul-winning to soul-training, says Graham's spokesman, A. Larry Ross.
"The book begins where a crusade leaves off. It's about being a Christian, not becoming one," says Ross. "It's his legacy, encapsulating the essence of his sermons, writings and recordings on what it means to be a follower of Christ."
For his 25th and final book there won't be a press tour. Graham, who has dealt with Parkinson's-like symptoms, fluid on the brain and multiple falls in recent years, is conserving his strength to attend -- "health permitting," Ross says -- a March 11-12 "Celebration of Hope" in New Orleans led by his son Franklin, who now heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
He'd like to speak to pastors in the hurricane-battered city earlier in the week and make a brief greeting at the weekend gathering.
Indeed, there's no news in The Journey but the Good News, the translation of "Gospel." There are no bloggable bits where he slams people or pounds political views. He writes about, but never names, a "well-known Christian leader" with an impressive "zeal for truth" who was missing "a love for others (especially those who disagreed with him)."
Instead, his writing, like his hypnotic voice, abounds in sympathetic encouragement. Anecdotes are rooted in his childhood on a farm, his encounters with the powerful and the humble, and his marriage.
The book's four parts focus on the basic elements of the Christian life: discovering God's love, building strength, facing challenges and finally, family life, aging and death.
"When he retired, I wondered how it would be," says Ross. "But since then, he says he has a greater peace than ever before. He feels he is where God wanted him to be."
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