They had only a single borrowed camera and a shower curtain as backdrop. It was 50 years ago, on May 28, 1973, that Paul and Jan Crouch broadcast their first television program from a modest studio in Southern California. But the story of TBN began long before then.
In the early 1900s, an Iowa farmer’s wife loaded up a revival tent in the rumble seat of her Model T and preached the Gospel from Texas to the Canadian border. She used the latest of inventions, the first affordable automobile, as the vehicle to bring the good news of Jesus to everyone in her path.
Years later, Paul Crouch Sr. would not only inherit his grandmother’s passion for evangelism but her ingenuity as well. Together with his wife Jan, and in response to the voice of God, he went about building the largest Christian network in the world. Paul and Jan would answer the plea from an old hymn—“to give the winds a mighty voice”—in the most innovative way possible. Utilizing the inventions of their generation—broadcast television and satellites—they proclaimed the message of Jesus through the airwav