A Famous Name--and a Voice of Her Own

Anne Graham Lotz doesn’t want to be known as Billy Graham’s daughter. Although she is proud of her family heritage, she would rather be known, she said, as a messenger from God.

“I’ve had people express disappointment after I’ve spoken because I haven’t told family stories . . . so sometimes that’s hard,” she said in a recent interview. “Because I think, you know, I’m here giving a message from my heavenly father and you want to know sort of curiosity things about my earthly father.”

Those who have heard Lotz say she holds her own as a preacher.

“Maybe the initial opening of the door is because of her father, but once she’s in, it’s all Anne,” said Melanie Beroth, spokeswoman for Focus on the Family, which chose Lotz as the closing speaker of an event that drew 19,000 women to a Nashville arena in September.

At 49, Lotz travels the country and the world expounding on the Bible, but makes it home each Sunday to attend her Southern Baptist church with her husband, Danny.

The self-described “Bible expositor” urges Christians to have a “fresh vision” of Jesus and preaches Bible basics to non-Christians. When she gives altar calls, inviting people to become Christians after her sermon, hundreds have come forward at sites from Nashville to India.

“I don’t want to be known for who I am,” Lotz said. “When I speak, I want people to hear God speaking to them through the message, through his word.”

After Lotz spoke recently at the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, she autographed copies of her new book, “The Glorious Dawn of God’s Story: Finding Meaning for Your Life in Genesis.”

Lotz’s focus on the fundamentals of her faith permeates her book.

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She believes that if the principles in the first book of the Bible were followed by everyone--”I’m not talking about Christians now. I’m talking about everybody”--the world would be better off.

“Everything that’s happening, all the breakdown in the home and relationships and right on through, you can trace it to the fact they’re not following God’s principles laid down in the first 11 chapters,” she said.

Lotz began her ministry in 1976 by affiliating with Bible Study Fellowship, an international organization that offers Bible classes around the globe.

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In 1988, she felt called to start her own ministry, which she calls AnGeL Ministries, using the initials of her name. She’s the sole speaker for the Raleigh, N.C.-based organization, which also offers tapes and devotional study books.

The name of the ministry is intentional. “Angels in Scripture were messengers of God,” she said. “I go wherever he sends me.”

Lotz said she realizes everyone doesn’t agree with her preaching role, but she says she only goes where she is invited.

When she spoke at a statewide interdenominational meeting of ministers in the early years of her independent ministry, Lotz found herself facing the backs of some clergy who turned their chairs around when she was speaking.

“That’s when I began to really pray and ask the Lord to settle it in my heart,” she said. “He just took me to the Scriptures and showed me so that in my heart I’m at peace and I can stand in the pulpit very confidently.”

Lotz said her parents are on her side.

Billy Graham has introduced his daughter--one of five children--as the “best preacher in the family” at two international evangelism events.

Lotz, a self-described private person who is uncomfortable in the celebrity spotlight, said she has chosen not to be ordained.

Although the Southern Baptist Convention is on record opposing the ordination of women, some individual Southern Baptist churches, which are autonomous, have chosen to ordain women.

Although Lotz feels other women may be called in that manner, she said, “I feel like the Lord would not have me do that.”