Jack Graham

Graham has served two terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest American Baptist denomination, with 16 million members, and as president of the SBC Pastor’s Conference.

The church reached the 43,000-member mark in 2018, with regular attendance at worship services averaging about 17,000.

Pastor Graham served as Honorary Chairman of the 2015 National Day of Prayer and is currently a member of President Donald Trump's Religious Advisory Council. He participated in the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral the day after the inauguration.

In 2006, Prestonwood opened its second campus in Prosper, near U.S. Highway 380 and Dallas Parkway. That same year, the church also completed a new children's wing and updated its facilities for PowerPoint Ministries, including an upgrade to High Definition (HDTV).

Graham's theological views reflect the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message (2000 edition).

As the church family continued to increase by some 2,000 members annually, and with no ability to expand at the original Far North Dallas location, leaders and members prayed, investigated, deliberated and finally, in 1999 built a new 7,500-seat worship facility, school and ministry complex on 140 acres (0.57 km) in west Plano.

In 1989, Prestonwood Baptist Church, then a Dallas congregation with a membership of approximately 11,000, called Graham as pastor after its founding pastor, Bill Weber, admitted to an extramarital affair and resigned, but was actively seeking to regain his position as pastor, and failing that had convinced several of the church's wealthier members -- including cosmetics magnate Mary Kay Ash -- to support a new church he was starting..

By 1976, he and his wife, Deb, had one son, and Graham was associate pastor of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church in Fort Worth, pastored by G. Fred Swank. That year he also completed work for a Master of Divinity degree with honors from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. Four more years went by, and Graham received a Doctor of Ministry degree in “Church and Proclamation.”

Born in Conway in Faulkner County in central Arkansas, young Graham was baptized as a professed believer in Jesus Christ at First Baptist Church in his hometown. From there, his life took a steady course into Christian ministry that continued during his formative years in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1970, at the age of twenty, he was ordained pastor of his first church, married and halfway through Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors.

Graham began his ministry as pastor of East Side Baptist in Cross Plains in Callahan County, Texas (1970–1971). Following his associate pastorate at Sagamore Hill Baptist Church (1972–1975), he went on to pastor First Baptist Church in Hobart, Oklahoma (1975–1978), First Baptist Church in Duncan, Oklahoma (1978–1981), and First Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, Florida (1981–1989).