Dr. Jack Hyles

Discover, enjoy, and learn from the professional, personal, often heart-felt, and sometimes intimate interactions of America's leading church builder with the co-laborers of his generation. -- Jacket back. God allowed Dr. Jack Hyles to pastor the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana from August 1959 until He took him to heaven on February 6, 2001. During this pastorate of 41-plus years, the First Baptist Church of Hammond grew from an average weekly attendance of 750 to a membership of over 100,000. For over 20 years in a row, the church was acclaimed to have the world's largest Sunday school. Those Sunday schools, which all met on the church's downtown Hammond campus on Sundays, often averaged over 20,000 in attendance per Sunday. During the last several years of Dr. Hyles' pastorate, the First Baptist Church of Hammond saw over 10,000 baptisms per year with some years exceeding 15,000. -- Jacket flap. As I read at least a portion of each of the over 55,000 letters or memos, I chose the ones which I thought might: 1. Teach a valuable lesson. 2. Help to chronicle the phenomenal blessings of God upon brother Hyles' ministries. 3. Add to the flow of "the story" of Brother Hyles' adult life. 4. Be of interest to people who knew, or wished they had known, Dr. Jack Hyles or any of the people with whom he associated. 5. Help to explain the history of the fundamental movement in the second half of the twentieth century. 6. Be used as a tool by pastors and other laborers in God's harvest. -- Page 11.