At the time, together with its associated All-Scotland Crusade, led by Dr Billy Graham, it generated considerable energies, publicity and controversy.
George MacLeod argued during the inter-war years "Are not the churchless million partly the Church's fault"[5] and sought to address this by better connections between congregations and their immediate areas, by organizing ministers in teams, and by demonstrating concern for wider society.
[11] During, and in the years immediately after the Second World War, as Leader of the Iona Community George MacLeod led a series of parish missions and supported the creation of new congregations in post-war housing schemes through the Church Extension movement.
Tom Allan was widely publicized, while the "Mid-Century Campaign" in Paisley, unusually, lasted an entire year, March 1950 to April 1951.
Ronnie Falconer of BBC Scotland was secretary of the Steering Panel; other executive members were David Read (chaplain of Edinburgh University), Charles Duthie (Principal of the Scottish Congregational College), Edward Campbell of the Baptist Union, Charles Anderson of the Episcopal Church, Elizabeth Wardlaw of the United Free Church, Horace Walker and Roddie Smith of the Church of Scotland, and Ralph Morton, Deputy Leader of the Iona Community.
The urgency of the Church's missionary task is being brought home to us in several ways: (i) We are recognising the inadequacy of traditional methods of evangelism.
[20] Tom Allan explained the central part expected to be played by congregations in his pamphlets: The Agent of Mission and The Congregational Group in Action,[21] and he recommended to the Movement James Maitland's Iona Community pamphlet, Caring for People with its call to care for "the aged and infirm, the sick, the destitute; the involvement with the critical political issues of the times".
[23] Despite the opposition of George MacLeod,[24] the Movement's Parent Committee itself invited Graham to lead a campaign in Glasgow in spring 1955, to be extended to the whole country as an "All-Scotland Crusade" by the telephone relay system.
[25] George MacLeod, to the contrary, feared that a traditional rally-based professional Crusade would fatally undermine the congregational emphasis of Tell Scotland.
Large numbers of people attended Billy Graham's sermons in Glasgow's Kelvin Hall and watched the BBC's broadcasts from the Crusade.
Initial reports were highly positive: Tom Allan claimed that "a total of 1,185,360 people in Scotland attended meetings of one kind or another.
Tom Allan had resigned as the Movement's Field Organiser in the autumn of 1955 and accepted a call to the Glasgow city-centre parish of St George's-Tron Church.
Colin Day was appointed to lead a series of national "Kirk Week" events, large-scale conferences to encourage the laity to think through the implications of their faith for the worlds of home and work.
In the years immediately after 1955, sociology lecturer John Highet of Glasgow University conducted surveys of opinion on the effectiveness of the evangelism of the Movement and the Crusade, and in 1960 reported sharply different views in a chapter entitled "To what end?