TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The Rev. Billy Joe Daugherty, the founding pastor of Victory Christian Center, died Sunday after a short battle with lymphoma. He was 57.

Church officials announced the pastor's death during church services Sunday morning. Associate pastor Bruce Edwards told the congregation that Daugherty "graduated into heaven" at 4:40 a.m.

Daugherty, who was originally from Magnolia, Ark.; was hospitalized in October with a viral infection in his throat when tests discovered the cancer.

Daugherty also founded Victory Christian School, Victory Bible Institute and Victory World Missions Training Center.

His television show, Victory in Jesus, was televised throughout the United States. Daugherty and his wife, Sharon Daugherty, have written more than a dozen books.
Originally from Magnolia, Ark., he attended Oral Roberts University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Christian education.

He was a youth minister in the 1970s at Sheridan Christian Center, and became senior pastor at the church in 1976 when the pastor retired.

By 1980, attendance had grown from 300 to 2,000. Daugherty sought to relocate the church. When church leaders decided not to move, he started what is now Victory Christian Center, meeting briefly in a former car dealership at 4400 S. Sheridan Road, and moving in 1984 to the vacant Thoreau Junior High School.

Four years later, when Tulsa Public Schools sold the school building, the church moved to its present site at 7700 S. Lewis Ave. and held worship services in the Mabee Center across the street.

In 2007, the church moved into its state of the art, $32 million, 5,000-seat worship center, built without borrowing money. It was the first time the church had its own worship center. Daugherty made the news in 1991 when he was hospitalized with minor burns he suffered rescuing two of his children from a fire that heavily damaged their home.

In 2005, he made national news when a man came forward at an altar call on a Sunday morning and slugged him in the face, opening a cut over his eye that required two stitches. Daugherty went to the Tulsa jail to forgive the man, did not press assault charges, and later wrote a book about the experience: “Knocked Down But Not Out.”

In October, 2007, Daugherty was named interim president of Oral Roberts University after ORU president Richard Roberts stepped down in the wake of allegations that he misused university funds.

In addition to his wife, Sharon Daugherty, he is survived his mother, Iru Daugherty. Among other survivors are his four children, all of them involved in the ministry. They are daughters Ruthie Sanders and Sarah Wehrli, and sons Paul and John.