Leighton Ford

Hidden In Plain Sight

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

The Evangelism and Missions Archives holds over seven hundred processed collections. Some correspondence in our purchased microfilm stretches back into the 1600s, but we also have documents and media from as recent as the current year. The predominant time frame for most of the evangelistic and missionary activity documented in these collections, however, is the 20th century. As the Archives’ name suggests, the topics that hold together all the collections are evangelism and missions.

But to assume that the Archives only reflects these two areas is to miss the depth and breadth that these primary sources offer. Many collections also document social movements, political events, cultural trends, and more in the countries where missionaries and evangelists happened to find themselves. It is still surprising to discover unexpected points of convergence between collections that we archivists never anticipated or noticed until a collection was arranged and described to be fully open to the public. Four examples come to mind:

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“Could You Say More About That?”: Oral History as Process and Document in the Archives

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

This month, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features a post from long-time Wheaton archivist, Paul Ericksen. Since joining the then Billy Graham Center Archives in 1982, Paul has interviewed more than 125 individuals and processed and transcribed dozens of oral history interviews with missionaries, evangelists, and Christian leaders.

Archivists are primarily skilled facilitators as they focus on gathering, arranging and describing primary source materials, and assisting researchers in using their collections. Through archival “finding aids,” archivists help create the intricate web of descriptions, subject headings, and box lists that guide a researcher to identify which collections will contain relevant documents for their study, and in which boxes or folders they will find these documents. While gathering existing historical documents and preparing them for optimal access and use by researchers forms the core of archival work, archivists also collaborate to create historical documents through oral history interviews. An oral record of a person’s life and career, these interviews offer a stimulating window into the unique narratives and experiences of individuals.

Our earliest interviews were captured on reel to reel tapes like those pictured above, using Wollensak portable recorders.

Over the course of the almost fifty years since the Billy Graham Center Archives (now the Evangelism and Missions Archives) was formed in 1975, its archivists have continuously managed an informal oral history program to further enrich its resources on global evangelism. Archivists have interviewed more than 370 individuals, compiling over 1,200 hours of sound recordings on analog reels, cassette tapes, and as digital files. Through further transcription of recordings, researchers also gain the benefit of reading or searching the full-text accounts for information on a topic, person, or location. One of the earliest of these interviews was with Andrew Wyzenbeek about his memories of Billy Sunday meetings at the turn of the century. Most recently, a few current Billy Graham Scholarship recipients were interviewed in the past year about their experience and ministry in several Asian countries.

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