Inspiring Today’s Gospel Champions
Learn from Robert V. Finley, Torrey Johnson, Dawson Trotman, Billy Graham, and more. . .
Pictured above: Bob Finley leads a team meeting for Youth for Christ in 1946. Back row, left to right: Johnnie Hope, Hubert Mitchell, John Huffman, Emerson Pent, Chuck White. Front row: Bob Pierce, Watson Argue, E. Darling, Chuck Templeton, George Wilson, Torrey Johnson, Dick Harvey, Billy Graham, Walt Smyth, and Bob Finley.
Read below to learn how God equipped and favored a group of faithful young Christians to give their ALL so that ALL could hear the gospel—even to the uttermost.
And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him. – Luke 5:11
Torrey Johnson and Youth for Christ
Torrey Johnson (on the left) was the founder and first President of Youth for Christ. Inspired by Jack Wyrtzen’s youth rallies in New York City, in May of 1944, he organized the first inaugural “Youth for Christ Rally,” featuring Billy Graham as the speaker. For 16 weeks, roughly 3000 people attended these events at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall.
Three “Youth for Christ Victory Rallies” spearheaded by Johnson and held in Chicago ensued between October of 1944 and May of 1946. They were attended by more than 155,000 people. To learn more about this youth movement, click Here
Robert Finley (pictured below left) speaks to 25,000 people at the first “Chicagoland Youth for Christ VICTORY RALLY” held at Chicago Stadium on October 21, 1944. Torrey Johnson, the first President of Youth For Christ is pictured on the far left, and to his right is Bob Cook, who would become Youth for Christ’s second president.
Finley, a nationally recognized college boxing champion, spoke on what would have been his graduation day from the University of Virginia.
In addition to winning the intercollegiate boxing championship his senior year, Finley was the president of the student body and head of the honor committee.
During his first months at UVA, in 1941, he started the school’s only Christian fellowship at the time he was attending. In the fall of 1943, he instituted a citywide Christian youth radio program on WCHV in Charlottesville.
Starting in the spring of 1944, Finley led Friday night Christian Youth Rallies at University Baptist Church for teens and college students throughout the area. Also while at UVA, Finley formed and led an evangelistic team to visit other colleges and churches in the region to win students to Christ. All of this happened as Finley worked his way through school managing the university’s cafeteria.
To learn more about the October 1944 Chicago “Youth for Christ Victory Rally” in Finley’s words, click
Letter from Torrey Johnson October 22, 1944
Letter from Torrey Johnson May 24, 1945
Letter from Torrey Johnson, February 28, 1953
Dawson Trotman and the Navigators
Dawson Trotman (1906-1956) founded the Navigators in 1933. He and Bob Finley crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary together in 1948 to attend a historic Youth for Christ conference at the Bible Institute in Beatenburg, Switzerland. The above picture was taken of Trotman and Bob Finley in Tokyo in 1951. To read more about the time in which their lives crossed paths, read
In April of 1956, Dawson Trotman visited International Students, Inc, the ministry God led Bob Finley to found in 1953. Standing next to Trotman are two foreign students that were part of ISI.
Letters from Dawson Trotman
Letter from Dawson Trotman, December 7, 1951
Letter from Dawson Trotman, March 5, 1951
Letter from Dawson Trotman in 1953
The International Student Magazine March 1955
BILLY GRAHAM, BOB FINLEY AND
YOUTH FOR CHRIST
The above picture was taken at the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland. The group gathered had all attended the 1948 Beatenburg Youth for Christ World Congress in Beatenburg, Switzerland in 1948. Standing: Back row, L-R: Grady Wilson (Graham Team), Walt and Ethyl Smyth (GT), Roy McKeown (World Opportunities), Ted Engstrom (World Vision), Bob Finley, Harold Ockenga (Gordon-Cornwell Sem.), Bob Pierce, Bob Evans (Greater Europe Mission), T.W. Wilson (GT), Second row, standing: Palermo brothers, George Wilson (GT), Greg Tingson. SEATED: Corrie Ten Boom, Mrs. Ralph Neighbor, Billy Graham, Frau Dr. Wassersug (Bibel Schul – Beatenburg, Switzerland).
Remembering Our Friend
Billy Graham
By Bob Finley
The homegoing of our friend Billy Graham has prompted me to reflect with joy on some of the wonderful memories we had together and the many ways he helped our ministry. Billy was my senior by four years (I turn 96 in May!), and as an older brother in the Lord, he was a constant encouragement to me.
When we were in our twenties, God called both of us as evangelists with Youth for Christ. Thousands of young people were responding to the gospel in those days in rallies across the United States. At the time Billy and I served together, we were the first “field evangelists” with Youth for Christ. It was a great season of harvest for God’s kingdom and a significant preparation for both of us. As the Lord was calling Billy to start a new evangelistic ministry, he was calling me to the mission field. One day after a crusade on the West Coast, Billy told me he wanted to support me for $500 a month. This covered all my living and ministry expenses as an evangelist in Asia.
I was the first missionary Billy ever supported, and $500 was a lot of money in those days. It went a long way. The Lord was moving powerfully in that part of the world. We had crusades of up to 50,000 people and thousands were being saved. But it was there in Asia that I discovered an important lesson and truth. The funding Billy was sending me could go so much further and be much more impactful if it was used to support indigenous missionaries. In those days that amount of money could have supported at least 20 native missionaries full time.
After three years of missionary service, this realization prompted me to start a new ministry [in 1954] that would evangelize international students in the United States and then support their ministry when they returned home. Some of the brightest and best were coming to America, and they returned as the future leaders of their nation. When Billy heard about this new strategy he got behind us. This was a bold move on his part because our new strategy was not without controversy! We were telling the churches in America there was a better way to approach foreign missions. Not everyone was excited to hear this, to say the least. But at twenty crusades Billy asked me to share for ten minutes on the new approach to foreign missions and our new ministry, including at the New York crusade in Madison Square Garden. Billy also plugged us on his national radio ministry on ABC. He said to millions of people, “Christians all over the world should get behind Bob Finley and help him in his work . . .” Later, when we opened our national office in Washington DC, he donated an entire floor of office space and provided much of the furniture and equipment we needed.
I thank the Lord for friends like Billy. It is a reminder to us that God brings people across our path and into our lives for a purpose. God is in the business of building the Body of Christ around the world, and he does this through relationships. In the sovereignty of God, he used Youth for Christ as an intersection point for so many future leaders that he would call to launch unique ministries, including Bob Pierce, Dawson Trotman, Billy Graham and so many others. Throughout our lives, these early connections became future blessings multiple times in our respective ministries.
The task is not yet finished. Although much progress has been made, there are still thousands of languages and peoples that have yet to hear the gospel, even for the first time. The torch has been passed to the next generation, and thankfully God has given to His people some bright lights from the past like Billy Graham to inspire us forward. I thank our Lord for the amazing friend he was to so many, for his faithfulness and steadfastness in the cause of Christ, and for finishing well in the assignment God gave him.
*These thoughts were shared by Bob Finley, retired founder and president of Christian Aid Mission, after Billy Graham’s homegoing in February of 2018.
