Shovels turned on $14 million center dedicated to Charlotte’s most-famous preacher
Evangelist Franklin Graham led a ceremonial groundbreaking recently for a $14 million center where researchers worldwide will see and study his late father’s sermons, letters, photos, audio and video collections and other historical records.
“To have all the aspects of my father’s life consolidated in one place is so important,” Graham said at the groundbreaking near the Billy Graham Library in south Charlotte. “And knowing that people in many generations from now will be able to benefit from all of this.
“He would not want future generations to come here and study Billy Graham,” Franklin Graham said, according to a YouTube video of his address at the Oct. 30 groundbreaking. “He would want future generations to study the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Charlotte is where Billy Graham was born and launched his global ministry. Known as “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham died at age 99 on Feb. 21, 2018, at his home in Montreat.
The Billy Graham Archive and Research Center will be “a state-of-the-art” 34,000-square-foot, two-story building on 1.46 acres, Lisa Moseley, spokeswoman for the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told The Charlotte Observer on Tuesday.
Finishing the interior will cost another $3 million to $4 million, Moseley said.
Money to build the center “is from general donations, but the funds will be distinct from our regular budget allocations,” Moseley said.
While the building is scheduled to be finished in October 2021, it will take until January 2022 before it’s ready for researchers, she said in an email
The additional three months are needed for “establishing the archives and moving everything into place,” according to Moseley.
“Since we are storing historic documents, there are environmental concerns that need to be taken into account in order to preserve the integrity of the materials,” she said. “All of that has an impact on the construction costs and timeline.”
Billy Graham’s 70 years of historical artifacts have been housed at several sites: Wheaton College in Illinois, his office in Montreat, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the Billy Graham Library in south Charlotte, association officials said in an online post about the groundbreaking.
Billy Graham founded the Charlotte-based ministry in 1950.
Son Franklin announced the planned consolidation of his father’s archival material last year. Franklin Graham is president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Boone-based Samaritan’s Purse.
“Some 214,000 people visited the Billy Graham Library here in Charlotte (in 2018) alone, and it makes sense for my father’s archives to be housed and maintained here for visiting scholars to conduct research, and for our guests to see when they come visit our ministry headquarters, the Library and my parents’ gravesites,” Franklin Graham said in 2019, the Observer reported at the time.
“This is a strategic and timely task for this moment in BGEA’s history,” David Bruce, Billy Graham’s longtime executive assistant, said in the association’s post about the groundbreaking. Bruce leads the effort to preserve and share Graham’s archive material.
The association has a responsibility “to shepherd and preserve these materials for future generations” and encourage evangelists, pastors and others “to carry on the task of sharing the Good News of the Gospel — just as Mr. Graham had given his life to do,” Bruce said.
The new center also will include the Bibles and sermon notes Graham took to the pulpit during his crusades, along with Graham’s letters to and from such leaders as Queen Elizabeth II and President Ronald Reagan.
Graham’s personal journals and writings will be available for review, as will a hand-typed copy of his first book, “Peace with God,” in Estonian, the official language of the country of Estonia, in eastern Europe. The book “was secretly passed among Christians behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War,” according to the association’s post.
