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Torrey Johnson and Billy Graham were fishing one day off the coast of Florida. Johnson was the pastor of Midwest Bible Church in Chicago and Graham, a recent graduate of Wheaton College, was the young pastor of a church in Western Springs, a suburb of Chicago.
Johnson had a vision. He had been conducting youth rallies titled “Chicagoland for Christ” and he was aware of others doing the same, including an ex-insurance salesman named Jack Wyrzten, who had been conducting youth rallies in New York since 1940. Johnson, as he explained to his fishing buddy Graham, envisioned a number of these youth evangelists getting together, sharing resources, and encouraging one another with data, good ideas and mutual encouragement.
What happened next was recalled by Ted Engstrom in his autobiography, “Reflections on a Pilgrimage.”
“In 1944 Torrey Johnson, then pastor of the Midwest Bible Church in Chicago, and director of the Chicagoland Youth for Christ program, called together those individuals who were leading these rallies to meet at the Christian conference grounds in Winona Lake, Indiana, as the guests of the conference director, Dr. Arthur McKee. At this week long conference, a charter was drafted and a constitution developed, officially organizing what became Youth for Christ International” (p. 33).
Torrey Johnson was elected chairman of a temporary committee, and he soon recruited Graham, who had worked on the Chicago rallies, to become the organization’s first full-time evangelist.
Fast-forward four years. Youth for Christ was now a rapidly-expanding movement, holding two-week conventions in Winona Lake each summer. In August 1949, during the fifth YFC convention, about 40-50 youth leaders and YFC directors were meeting in the Rainbow Room of the Westminster Hotel for an all-night prayer meeting.
At about 3 a.m. Armin Gesswein, who was leading the meeting, stood to his feet. He addressed the gathering, “You know, our brother Billy Graham is coming out to Los Angeles for a crusade this fall. Why don’t we just gather around this man and lay our hands on him and really pray for him? Let’s ask God for a fresh touch to anoint him for this work.”
Graham knelt on the oak floor of the Rainbow Room while the others, circling around, laid hands on him and prayed for his new venture. Later, alone, Graham went next door into the Winona Presbyterian Church and spent the rest of the night in prayer for the venture, as well.
Two months later, at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Hill Street in Los Angeles, Graham’s tent crusade began. At first attendances were sparse, but soon began to surge, necessitating enlarging the engagement well beyond its initial several weeks.
A year later, in his first meeting with President Harry Truman, Graham explained it this way:
“I told him about Los Angeles the previous fall, where we preached in a huge tent but initially attracted virtually no mention in the press. Then newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, for no apparent reason, had directed his editors to focus on what was going on inside the tent. Almost overnight we became nationally known. During the fifty days of meetings there, attendance snowballed to a total of 350,000, an unheard-of crowd for an evangelistic gathering in those days.”
It was in that 1949 tent crusade that many well-known personalities committed their lives to Christ. One was Louis Zamperini, who later became an Olympic distance runner, Prisoner of War, and principal character in three movies, including 2014’s “Unbroken.” Another was Jim Vaus, called “The Wiretapper,” as well as Stuart Hamblen, the television cowboy music star and composer of songs including “It Is No Secret (What God Can Do).”
Today the Rainbow Room in Westminster Hall is still intact, and a handsome explanatory plaque on the wall tells some of the story. The name “Rainbow Room” came about because Homer Rodeheaver, who had been Billy Sunday’s songleader and a noted publisher of gospel music, owned the hotel and claimed the rainbow theme after his favorite song, “Every Cloud Will Wear a Rainbow if Your Heart Keeps Right.”
Much more of the story and many related artifacts are on display in the Winona History Center, located in Westminster Hall on Ninth Street in Winona Lake.
