A Life of Listening | Leighton Ford
Isn’t that the story of God’s leaders throughout the Bible? All called to leave everything and follow Jesus into the unknown? Of Abraham called to leave his ancestral home and go into a new land? Of Jacob wrestling with God in the middle of the night, letting go of his old persona and finding a new name? Of Peter and Andrew, James and John?
My life journey had been one of letting go and reaching out. Leaving Canada for the United States. Leaving my adoptive family for the Graham clan. Leaving the Graham organization to start a new ministry when I was fifty-four. That last move was a big risk. It meant leaving the security of a large organization, with guaranteed income and support, to start an entirely new entity without structure, budget, or staff. Yet I had created new structures to carry out activities before—our local Youth for Christ in my teens, a gospel team at college, an evangelistic outreach across Canada, the forming of the new Lausanne Committee.
Perhaps, through my birth father, I inherited the genes of a construction engineer. I had to leave the security of the Graham Association to give free rein to my own call as a leader. And I can also see how starting Leighton Ford Ministries in midlife taught me to understand what young leaders would experience in their own startups.
The Second Journey
For me the beginning of my “second journey” was not at all clear. I knew it was the end of a chapter that had taken me preaching around the world for thirty years. But how was the next chapter to unfold? My second journey involved letting go not just of an organization but also of an identity. I had been known as “Leighton Ford, evangelist, Billy Graham’s brother-in-law.” People asked, what is Leighton Ford doing now? Even my close associate Irv, who had been joined at hip and heart with me for decades, was wondering where this new venture would take us.
I have always wanted to be an evangelist—sharing the good news and “making friends for God.” And at this point I did not stop evangelizing. The years to come would bring some of the most fulfilling and challenging evangelistic opportunities of my ministry—from a university in New Zealand to a concert hall in Sydney to the famous Montreal Forum hockey arena. But this new calling kept pressing in. In each of these outreach events I invited younger evangelists to join me, to share in the preaching, and to suggest local background for my own messages. We also began a series of evangelism leadership seminars for students preparing for ministry and local church pastors. In each of them a gifted and experienced younger leader served as dean. Though I would be there and be available, they were up front.
Increasingly I was seeing my calling as one to connect and mentor. To identify, develop, and bring together the emerging young evangelists from around the world. The shape of the ministry was changing. Having been known as a speaker, I was now doing a lot more listening.
From addressing large crowds, now I was having up-close and personal “soul conversations” with small groups and individuals. From traveling the world, I was now staying much closer to home. One afternoon as I sat by a lagoon at Vancouver’s Stanley Park, I watched birds take off, circle around, and light again on the surface. I mused, “Hmm, short flights and quick returns. It’s time for that.”
At its core this calling was not just in the doing but in the becoming. Around this time, I came across poet May Sarton’s description of her journey:
Now I become myself.
It’s taken Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces.
Those words rang true, not as if I were wearing someone else’s face but that as circumstances changed, I too was finding a new sense of calling and fulfillment. As Jesus said to a new follower, “You are Simon. You shall be Peter,” I was hearing that inimitable voice calling again, “Leighton . . . Peter.” That was the thread winding through these changes.
The word vocation is related to vocal. It means finding the sound of our own voice, discovering and singing the music of our soul. As I listened more deeply, not only to the voices around but to the inner voice of the Spirit, I found my own voice more fully. I was also enabled to help others to discover their voices so that through them also the voice of Christ would be heard.
Dr. Leighton Ford is President of Leighton Ford Ministries which focuses on raising up younger leaders to spread the message of Christ worldwide. He has spoken face to face to millions of people in 37 countries on every continent of the world and served from 1955 until 1985 as Associate Evangelist and later Vice President of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Leighton lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife, Jean. Their children are a married daughter, Debbie, Kevin who partners with him in LFM, and their older son, Sandy, who died after heart surgery in November 1981.
Adapted from A Life of Listening by Leighton Ford. Copyright (c) 2019 by Leighton Ford. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com