Manford "Mannie" Craig grew up in Maine and sensed a calling to become a missionary at age 16. He figured that meant service to a foreign country, because that's the only kind of missionary he heard about in the 1950s at Assemblies of God church services, prayer gatherings and camp meetings.
In Springfield, Missouri, in the mid-1960s, Craig graduated with a bachelor's degree in theology from Central Bible College and a master's degree in theology from Central Bible College Seminary. Upon the advice of Assemblies of God institutional chaplain representative Paul Markstrom, Craig served a year in a psychiatric clinical internship at Menninger Clinic in Kansas.