Our History

We Are A World Hub of Evangelism and Mission Training

Celebrating the Legacy of Rev. Billy Graham ’43

Public Lecture with Dr. David Bruce

We celebrated the life and legacy of Rev. Billy Graham with a special public lecture, Nov. 7, 2025, featuring Dr. David Bruce, who served as Dr. Graham’s assistant for the last 25 years of his life. Rev. Graham, a distinguished Wheaton alumnus and longtime member of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Board, preached the gospel to more people than anyone in history.

In honor of what would have been his 107th birthday (November 7, 1918), Dr. Bruce shared insights and reflections on “Billy Graham’s Legacy for a New Generation,” exploring the enduring impact of his ministry and message.

In September 1980, the Billy Graham Center was dedicated for the purpose of training today’s and tomorrow’s church leaders to make evangelism a high priority. Forty years later, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center reaches over 100,000 people each year through training and teaching, gathering together, and through our online resources. We believe deeply that you have a critical role to play in showing & sharing the love of Christ today.

BGC

Advancing the Gospel Across Generations

Statement of Faith

The doctrinal statement of Wheaton College and the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, reaffirmed annually by its Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff, provides a summary of biblical doctrine that is consonant with evangelical Christianity. The statement accordingly reaffirms salient features of the historic Christian creeds, thereby identifying the College not only with the Scriptures but also with the reformers and the evangelical movement of recent years. The statement also defines the biblical perspective which informs a Wheaton education. These doctrines of the church cast light on the study of nature and man, as well as on man’s culture.
WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life; and we believe that God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing by His spoken word, and for His own glory.
WE BELIEVE that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the created order, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say.
WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, was true God and true man, existing in one person and without sin; and we believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into heaven, and in His present life there for us as Lord of all, High Priest, and Advocate.
WE BELIEVE that God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race; and that they were created in His own image, distinct from all other living creatures, and in a state of original righteousness.
WE BELIEVE that our first parents sinned by rebelling against God’s revealed will and thereby incurred both physical and spiritual death, and that as a result all human beings are born with a sinful nature that leads them to sin in thought, word, and deed.
WE BELIEVE in the existence of Satan, sin, and evil powers, and that all these have been defeated by God in the cross of Christ.
WE BELIEVE that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; and that all who believe in Him are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins.
WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God.
WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit indwells and gives life to believers, enables them to understand the Scriptures, empowers them for godly living, and equips them for service and witness.
WE BELIEVE that the one, holy, universal Church is the body of Christ and is composed of the communities of Christ’s people. The task of Christ’s people in this world is to be God’s redeemed community, embodying His love by worshipping God with confession, prayer, and praise; by proclaiming the gospel of God’s redemptive love through our Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth by word and deed; by caring for all of God’s creation and actively seeking the good of everyone, especially the poor and needy.
WE BELIEVE in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will soon return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly, in power and great glory, to gather His elect, to raise the dead, to judge the nations, and to bring His Kingdom to fulfillment.
WE BELIEVE in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of the lost, and the everlasting blessedness of the saved.
The Statement of Faith was adopted by the Wheaton College Board of Trustees on October 17, 1992.

African American Church Evangelism Institute

History

“I am excited about this opportunity to help African American churches across the country to become more evangelistic, have greater impact in their communities, and develop leaders who are more effective in their congregations and communities.”

– Pastor John K. Jenkins
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Two years ago, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center received a large grant to expand its work with pastors in helping them to thrive and begin the process of becoming conversion communities. During this expansion, significant doors opened to co-coach cohorts in partnership with strategic African American leaders; Pastor John Jenkins (First Baptist Church of Glenarden & Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals), Rev. Michael Henderson (New Beginnings Church & Vice President of National Ministries for Converge), and Pastor James Meeks (Salem Baptist Church). These three influential pastors are the original core team of African American leaders who have partnered together with the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center to lay the foundation of the African American Church Evangelism Institute (AACEI).

Together we are launching a new type of institute that incorporates the best of what we have learned through our work in the Church Evangelism Institute, but significantly strengthens the ways the curriculum and process are contextualized for African American churches and communities.

In partnership together we are creating the African American Church Evangelism Institute. These African American leaders believe the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center is the best home and platform for this new institute because it can work across denominations, thereby drawing in more congregations than if it was housed in a single church or denomination. We believe this partnership will help catalyze a movement of evangelism and mission in local communities through local African American churches across the country.

These influential African American pastors have the vision to facilitate cohorts that will serve 150 African American churches over the next five years and beyond. The new institute will focus on challenges facing African American congregations such as effectively reaching emerging generations, fruitfully navigating shifting contexts and demographic changes occurring around their churches, developing team ministry approaches and leadership pipelines in congregations to launch new ministries, and creating new evangelism models that work effectively in a new era.

Through a two-year cohort journey, pastors will learn how to revitalize congregations by helping them to become “conversion communities,” where unchurched and de-churched people come to faith, then grow in their faith, and their congregations become more welcoming places for emerging and young adults.

The new cohorts will begin in early 2022 with senior pastors of African American congregations, and later integrate an outreach leader, and a leadership development person from each church into the process, with the goal that one of these leaders will be under 40 years of age.

The new Institute’s leadership structure maximizes African American leadership, decision-making, and ownership through our Oversight and Executive Teams.

Wheaton College

Our hope is that through this collaborative approach between Wheaton College and African American senior pastors, we can model mutual learning and genuine partnership in ways that will inspire and start to heal some of the racial divisions that challenge our nation.

Dr. Philip Ryken, Prisdent
– Wheaton College