'Festival for the soul' to stop here

Franklin Graham, famous son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, will come to North Charleston in September for the fifth leg of a six-city 2008 festival tour.

Earlier this year, Graham visited Belfast, Northern Ireland (where 32,000 showed up); Knoxville, Tenn. (where 45,000 came); Villahermosa, Mexico (112,000 attended); and Timisoara, Romania (which drew 77,000). After the three-day event at the North Charleston Coliseum, Graham will head East: to Taipei, Taiwan.

All to spread the good news, to inspire the faithful and to carry the torch bequeathed him by his father.

The self-proclaimed rebel, at once intimidated by his father's prestige and frustrated by his long absences; the young Graham who crawled out his boarding school window to sneak a smoke and, later, made emergency landings in small aircraft he piloted; the famous preacher's son who was kicked out of a Christian college and caused his parents all kinds of grief; this man, now 56, will deliver his message to a Lowcountry crowd next month.

"Everyone is invited to this event," Graham said in a statement. "There are art festivals, music festivals and food festivals — why not have a festival for the soul?" The next-generation crusade will feature musical guests, a student night youth event and a choir of hundreds drawn from area churches.

"The festival seems like a one-weekend event deal, but it's like the tip of an iceberg," spokesman Jeremy Blume said. It is the culmination of a series of breakfasts, seminars, organizational meetings, prayer events, Christian education courses and leadership rallies that began in January. Though it's called the Lowcountry Franklin Graham Festival, it depends on the active engagement of local faith leaders and congregations, Blume said. More than 300 Lowcountry churches are involved.

Franklin Graham is president, CEO and board member of both Samaritan's Purse, an international evangelical relief organization, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He also sits on the board of Harvest Christian Fellowship. Like his father, he is the author of several books. His latest, "A Wing and a Prayer," was published in 2005.

After his rambunctious early years, described in his autobiography "Rebel With a Cause," Graham preached for the first time in 1983, when he was 31. He shared the pulpit with friend and evangelist John Wesley White. When he called on the 1,000 people in attendance to come forward to give their lives to Christ, no one responded. But White encouraged the young Graham to try again. In 1989, at an evangelistic event in Juneau, Alaska, he did, and the response was enthusiastic.

In July, he traveled to North Korea for the second time to meet leaders, visit relief projects and preach. His mother, Ruth Bell Graham, had attended a mission school in Pyongyang as a young woman. His father had met with former President Kim Il Sung. Samaritan's Purse delivered medicine and emergency supplies to the country last year in response to major flooding.

The festival kicks off Sept. 19. Visit www.billygraham.org or call 745-6272.