How are those two pictures alike? (see previous).

Answer: It's the Good Shepherd and his crook!

By the way, here's a well-kept secret of the mass-evangelism industry (Billy Graham won't mind, he's retired): At an evangelistic crusade, most of those folks who leave their seats and cascade down the aisles of the stadium and spill out onto the playing field are not actually sinners coming forward to get saved. Most of them are trained spiritual counselors (volunteers from local churches) who have been waiting for their cue to come forward and to assist with the harvest of new converts.

Here's how to tell the repentant sinners from the happy-hearted volunteer counselors: the aspiring converts are blushing, or dabbing their eyes with a hankie as they come down the steps to the front. The trained spiritual counselors are carrying a New Testament and some helpful literature from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

It is the job of the counselors, when the organ sounds, to prime the pump: they arise from their seats (not all at once, that would be too obvious) and make their way to the playing field. That way, if you or some other lost soul is thinking of getting saved, you may say to yourself, Well, other people are going down, maybe I should, too." What you don't know is that those other folks are going down there in order to save you, not to get saved themselves – and it's a good thing you don't know that, or you might chicken out. (Seriously: to repent of your sins before a television audience of two million, plus another 70,000 right there in the stands, can be embarrassing. Billy always understood that, which is part of what made him so great.)

The actual process of getting born again does not take long after you make it past all of those kneecaps in the bleachers and down the aisle and out to the playing field. An experienced counselor can process you for Heaven in less than thirty minutes. But Billy's Greater World Evangelistic Crusades were so popular and so huge that it could get pretty chaotic down there, with a thousand trained spiritual counselors scrambling for one hundred potential converts. It was like a spiritual mosh-pit, or like open-piñata time at a birthday party: when the goodies fall, you have to grab and grab quick, or you'll never get sole dibs on a repentant sinner in need of servicing.

If you're one of the sinners who have come forward, the whole process is pretty straightforward: first, you hook up with a spiritual counselor – they're not hard to find. The counselor gives you a little explanatory talk about the Four Steps to Peace with God. Then you pray together. That's the exact moment when you ask Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal lord and saviour; although – bear with me, this can be a little confusing – it is not actually Jesus per se who comes into your heart, it's the holy Ghost who comes in, and the Ghost then becomes one with your own immortal spirit. (I don't understand the science side of that, but it seems to work.)

This uniting of your spirit with the holy Ghost is what evangelists mean by "the atonement" (the at-one-ment). All of those sinners who have taken the Four Steps, including you, have now become at-one with God.

For me, that is absolutely the worst moment of an evangelistic Crusade, when I see all of those former friends taking the Four Steps to become at-one with the Trinity. It makes me feel so dejected that I usually step over to the stadium hot dog stand, and I ask the vendor there to please make me one with everything. (Ha-ha-ha! Pardon the borrowed witticism – I stole that joke from a hot dog vendor, and it still cracks me up every time I tell it.)

After the prayer is over, you are one with God and are no longer "lost." At worst, you are just a little confused. But that's why they give you the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association promotional literature, and a free New Testament, and the list of Bible-believing local churches: so that you can continue to "grow in faith and discipleship" after the conversion experience.

The new converts are then free to head home. And by sundown I have usually reclaimed sole dibs on 8 out of 10.

– L.