Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder and senior pastor for 48 years of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passed away following complications from an earlier cardiac event.
He was 76. Kennedy also had founded Christian station WAFG(FM).
He was born in 1930, but according to the organization, Kennedy’s life as a Christian did not begin until 1953 when his radio alarm went off as he slept on a Sunday morning, and a preacher’s booming voice asked him, “Suppose you were to die today and stand before God and He were to ask you, ‘What right do you have to enter into My heaven?’ — what would you say?”
He credited that program for delivering the call to Christianity, and founded WAFG in 1974 as an outreach to the South Florida community.
Kennedy began his pastorate at CRPC in 1959. His sermons will continue through “Truths That Transform,” a daily broadcast carried on 750 radio stations and “The Coral Ridge Hour,” a weekly television broadcast that airs on 400 stations and the Armed Forces Network.
