1918-2018

 

 

Ministry career

While attending college, Graham became pastor of the United Gospel Tabernacle and also had other preaching engagements.
From 1943 to 1944, Graham briefly served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Illinois, which was not far from Wheaton. While there, his friend Torrey Johnson, pastor of the Midwest Bible Church in Chicago, told Graham that his radio program, Songs in the Night, was about to be canceled due to lack of funding. Consulting with the members of his church in Western Springs, Graham decided to take over Johnson's program with financial support from his congregation. Launching the new radio program on January 2, 1944, still called Songs in the Night, Graham recruited the bass-baritone George Beverly Shea as his director of radio ministry. While the radio ministry continued for many years, Graham decided to move on in early 1945. In 1947, at age 30, he was hired as president of Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis – at the time, the youngest person to serve as a sitting president of any U.S. college or university.^{[citation needed]} Graham served as the president from 1948 to 1952.
Graham initially intended to become a chaplain in the Armed Forces, but he contracted mumps shortly after applying for a commission. After a period of recuperation in Florida, he was hired as the first full-time evangelist of the new Youth for Christ (YFC), co-founded by Torrey Johnson and the Canadian evangelist Charles Templeton. Graham traveled throughout both the United States and Europe as a YFCI evangelist. Templeton applied to Princeton Theological Seminary for an advanced theological degree and urged Graham to do so as well, but he declined as he was already serving as the president of Northwestern Bible College.
Graham scheduled a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles in 1949, for which he erected circus tents in a parking lot.   He attracted national media coverage, especially in the conservative Hearst chain, although Hearst and Graham never met.   The crusade event ran for eight weeks – five weeks longer than planned. Graham became a national figure with heavy coverage from the wire services and national magazines.