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Cruz and the Pentecostal Movement

Nicky Cruz was trained as a Pentecostal evangelist and has followed that calling his entire adult life. He has held countless crusades and rallies throughout the world. While his message is universally evangelical, his personal preference for the Pentecostal denomination is reflected in his work. According to the Pew Forum on religion and Public Life, 8.5 percent of all Protestants in the United States are Pentecostals. Pentecostals were also the fastest-growing denomination in the world, accounting for about 25 percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians in 2006. The popularity of Cruz’s autobiography has taken him and his brand of Pentecostalism to all parts of the globe.

Great Lives from History: Latinos

Nicky Cruz

by Norma A. Mouton

Puerto Rican-born religious leader

Cruz founded Nicky Cruz Outreach, a religious organization that evangelizes young people in urban environments worldwide. He has written numerous books, including a best-selling autobiography that has been adapted as a film.

Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; literature

Early Life

Nicky Cruz (NIHK-ee krooz) was one of eighteen children, seventeen boys and one girl, born to Galo Cruz and Aleja Velásquez. Both parents were known for practicing witchcraft. His father was a large man and this, combined with his skills in the occult, resulted in him being called “The Great One.” As practicing spiritists, his parents often held séances in their home and were known to perform animal sacrifices. Cruz recalls that once, while in a trance, his mother declared that he was the “son of Satan.” This home environment, filled with both mental and physical abuse, produced a child who constantly tried to flee, only to be found by the local police and returned to his parents.

Nicky Cruz.

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(AP Photo)

By the time Cruz was fifteen, his father could no longer put up with his rebelliousness and sent him to New York to stay with his older brother Frank and his wife. By sixteen, Cruz had fled his brother’s home and while living on the streets joined the infamous Brooklyn gang of street toughs known as the Mau Maus. Soon he became their president and found himself involved with drugs, alcohol, and violence with no way out. Unable to sleep and racked by nightmares, Cruz was predisposed to seek something more for his life and open to accepting the gospel message delivered by a street preacher named David Wilkerson. After struggling with the changed lifestyle this message required, Cruz finally accepted the offer of help extended by Wilkerson and eventually went to Bible school in California. It was while studying in La Puente, California, at the Latin America Bible Institute that Cruz met his future wife, Gloria Steffani, and in 1961 they married. The couple would have four daughters: Alicia, Laura, Nicole, and Elena.

When Cruz finished his studies, he went to work as director of Wilkerson’s Teen Challenge program in New York City. Married life among the drug addicts and street people he had recently known was not easy, and eventually Cruz decided he needed to leave New York. In 1968, he published his autobiography, Run Baby Run, written with the help of Jamie Buckingham. By then he had begun receiving requests to speak before larger and larger groups in various cities, and eventually this would result in the founding of Nicky Cruz Outreach.

Life’s Work

When Cruz left the Bible Institute in California to work with Teen Challenge ministry, he already knew that his vocation involved working with people who lived the same kind of life from which he had so recently escaped, but he still did not know how his life’s work would develop. He knew that God had called him to be an evangelist, but he was unsure of how to combine his calling with his love for working with teens. He was willing to sacrifice for the cause, but he did not think he had the skills necessary to work with large groups of people. He could talk to one person, but he was apprehensive about standing up and speaking to an audience in English, a language that was not his own.

In 1962, Wilkerson wrote and published The Cross and the Switchblade, the story of Cruz. This book was made into a film that premiered in 1970. When Cruz’s story became known, people began seeking him out and his speaking career began. He initially participated in evangelist Billy Graham’s world-famous crusades, his first opportunity to evangelize. Cruz left Teen Challenge to begin his own ministry and moved to California. However, it was not until 1965, when Cruz’s interpreter came down with pneumonia and could not accompany him on a crusade in Seattle, that Cruz began speaking on his own and his ministry began in earnest.

Despite the success he was having through his crusades and rallies, Cruz was still not satisfied. He longed to work with children, knowing that if someone had approached him at an earlier age, he would not have sunk as low as he did. With only three thousand dollars, Cruz began Outreach for Youth with a center for street children in Fresno, California. Cruz and his wife began taking in unwanted and troubled children, placing them in school, and helping them to turn their lives around. This marked the beginning of Nicky Cruz Outreach. The center grew, and so did the number of speaking engagements. Soon Cruz had to turn the center over to others in order to continue with his work as an evangelist. However, his dream of establishing teen centers throughout the country had not died. He later moved his family to Raleigh, North Carolina, to open a center for girls. While that center was successful, Cruz knew that his calling was evangelism and eventually he moved his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Cruz continued his work with rallies, crusades, and a full schedule of meetings in many countries. The focus of NCO ministries since moving to Colorado has been the TRUCE (To Reach Urban Communities Everywhere) program, which operates in cities throughout North America and Europe. TRUCE employs an aggressive ministry, considered unorthodox by many, that sends teams months in advance of a planned event to prepare and train volunteers in local churches and communities. The teams set up free street concerts where attendees hear urban music and see street dancers before receiving a short testimony and hearing an evangelistic message. Finally, an altar call is issued and people are given the opportunity to surrender their lives to Christ. While Cruz’s focus has been Europe and North America, his mission is worldwide, and his organization has held rallies as far away as New Zealand.

Significance

Nicky Cruz Outreach has grown exponentially in the years since Cruz left his job with Teen Challenge to begin his own ministry. Because of his work with troubled youths, Cruz has become known as an authority on youth violence and has spoken to countless state legislatures and on many nationally televised programs. Cruz’s work has been instrumental in the growth of Pentecostal congregations throughout the Spanish-speaking world, making this the fastest-growing Protestant denomination among Hispanics. Not only do his rallies and crusades win converts wherever he speaks, but the evangelists he has trained to work in his TRUCE program continue to grow the congregations once Cruz has moved on.

The various books he has written have provided guidance for his evangelical work, and his two autobiographical books, Run Baby Run and Soul Obsession: When God’s Primary Pursuit Becomes Your Life’s Driving Passion (2005), serve as examples of how to turn around a life through acceptance of Christ. Run Baby Run has been translated into at least forty languages and sold more than fourteen million copies; it is required reading in the secondary school programs of many European nations. The cinematographic version of this book, Thousand Pieces: The Nicky Cruz Story, scheduled for release in 2011, could further bring his message to young people.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Mouton, Norma A. "Nicky Cruz." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240018901001.

APA 7th

Mouton, N. A. (2012). Nicky Cruz. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Mouton, Norma A. "Nicky Cruz." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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