The first Billy Graham evangelistic campaign, held September 13–21, 1947, in the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was attended by 6,000 people. He would rent a large venue, such as a stadium, park, or street.^[1] As the sessions became larger, he arranged a group of up to 5,000 people to sing in a choir. He would preach the gospel and invite people to come forward to ask Jesus "to be their savior" and pray together. The inquirers were often given a copy of the Gospel of John or a Bible study booklet. In Durban, South Africa, in 1973, the crowd of some 100,000 was the first large mixed-race event in apartheid South Africa.^[2] In Moscow, in 1992, one-quarter of the 155,000 people in Graham's audience went forward at his call.^[3]

In 1995, during the Global Mission event, he preached a sermon at Estadio Hiram Bithorn in San Juan in Puerto Rico which was transmitted by satellite in 185 countries and translated into 116 languages. ^[4]

During his crusades, Billy Graham frequently used the altar call song "Just As I Am".^[5]

Over 58 years, Billy Graham reached more than 210 million people (face to face and by satellite feeds).^[6] The New York Crusade of 1957 - the longest of Graham's evangelistic crusades took place in Madison Square Garden, which lasted 16 weeks.^[7] The largest audience in the history of Graham's ministry assembled at Yoido Plaza in Seoul in South Korea in 1973 (1.1 million people).^[8][9]

Graham's revival meetings were most commonly called "crusades", and were billed as such for decades, but Graham himself began calling them "missions" after the September 11 attacks due to a potentially offensive connotation of the word crusade among Muslims.^[10]

Concluding his last crusade in 2005 in New York, Graham had preached during 417 crusades, including 226 in the United States and 195 worldwide in over 50 countries, predominantly in Christendom.^[11][12]

• Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

• "BG Crusade Chronology" (PDF). BGEA. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
• "BG Crusade cities". BGEA. Retrieved February 24, 2018.
• "Select Chronology of Billy Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, up until Rev. Graham's Retirement in 2005, with a few later significant events". Billy Graham Center. Wheaton College. 2013.
• "Billy Graham's 1st TV Broadcast". Billy Graham Center. March 2010. Retrieved February 8, 2012.
• Billy Graham sermons Billy Graham Center

• Billy Graham Crusades New Georgia Encyclopedia