HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – World-renowned evangelist Billy Graham will come full-circle when he returns to Los Angeles this summer for his seventh crusade in the city where it all started for his historic ministry.

Baptist Press reports the July 29–Aug. 1 crusade will be held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

The event will hold a lot of nostalgia for his first crusade, which took place in 1949 in Los Angeles. Graham was 25 then. The crusade was held in a tent and extended for eight weeks. Some 350,000 people attended; 3,000 made decisions for Christ.

"It is overwhelming to receive an invitation to once again come to Southern California to proclaim the Gospel. I never dreamed I would still be preaching at the age of 85," Graham wrote in a letter. "But the call the Lord has laid upon my heart to share the Good News is as strong as when I was much younger. God has granted me renewed strength, energy, freedom and determination to preach the Gospel."

Co-chair for the crusade, Jack Hayford, pastor of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, said, "We want to love L.A. to life. We are so sure God ordained this moment in history. The Billy Graham campaign sets a historic moment before our city, as spiritual lightning has struck L.A. in his former crusades and I believe is about to again."

Graham will be joined in the Los Angeles outreach by Cliff Barrows, who has been with Graham for more than 50 years, and 95-year-old singer George Beverly Shea.

Graham, who suffers from Parkinson's disease yet averages two crusades a year, "has no plans to retire," said Larry Ross, Graham's media director. "He is still strong in the pulpit but makes fewer plans with shorter commitment times."

Graham will also preach at a crusade in Kansas City, June 17-20.