Tuesday, October 8, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 8th of October 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

On a recent weekend edition, we looked at the 20th century—the century of world missions and evangelism, evangelicalism, and the movement of the church to the south and east of the globe. As I made my list of the top names of the century, an unlikely name appeared on a Christianity Today list that made me pause: Bob Pierce.

The list included names like Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Pope John Paul II, Mother Theresa, and… Bob Pierce? If you don’t know the name, you would likely know the two ministries he founded: World Vision and Samaritans Purse; the combined revenue of the two and their charitable givings dwarf any non-governmental agencies over the past 70 years. But his story is a complicated one, perhaps difficult to tell with nuance, and he is glossed over in the story of 20th century evangelicalism and world evangelism.

Bob Pierce was born on this, the 8th of October in 1914, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to Fred and Flora Pierce. His carpenter father would move the family westward to Colorado and then to Los Angeles. Bob’s father would die during the depression, and he would have to work to help his family as his mother was crippled.

Active in the Nazarene church, he attended Pasadena Nazarene College, where he worked with the Los Angeles Evangelistic Center, where he met the pastor's daughter, Lorraine. The two married in 1936, and Bob left college to begin work as an evangelist. He traveled the West Coast in the later 30s as an evangelist before getting connected to Youth For Christ and Billy Graham in 1944.

Working with Youth For Christ, he traveled to China in 1947 and thus began a life of international travel and missions. His family life would be rocky. His early evangelistic sermons traced his infidelity to his wife. While they would reconcile and have three daughters, he would travel—according to his daughter—some 10 to 11 months of the year, and when he was home, he was preaching and fundraising.

The genesis of World Vision came from his time in Korea. After China was shut off to Westerners, Bob made his way into Korea. When war broke out there in 1950, he was able to obtain a reporter's license from the National Association of Evangelicals to remain in the country. There, he witnessed the squalor similar to that in China and was asked by a translator, then struggling with her own orphans, what Bob could do for her now. He gave her his last twenty-five dollars, which they figured would cover a year's worth of clothes, food, and medicine.

The idea of “sponsoring” one child- and to receive a photo and update of a particular orphan was an idea that, in the long term, has provided for more orphans than anything specific gift, offering, or institution.

Bob would clash with the board of this new organization, “World Vision” and would eventually go on to found Samaritans Purse in 1970- the idea behind this mission was to funnel donations into existing aid organizations during emergencies.

But, as his daughter would later write, all was not well at home. His eldest daughter would ask him to come home and then, distraught, took her own life after multiple attempts. Bob and Lorraine would separate, and he would spiral with unnamed (to my knowledge) substance abuse, and he would spend a year on mental health leave before being diagnosed with Leukemia. His wife and surviving daughters would reunite in the fall of 1978, and Bob would succumb to his disease days later at the age of 63. A note if you’re interested: one of his daughters, Marilee Pierce Dunker, has written a book, “Man of Vision,” about her life and her father. She is honest about her father and his legacy of missions, and today, she works with World Vision.

Her father, the founder of World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, Bob Pierce, was born on this day in 1914 and died in 1978- he was 63 years old.

The last word for today is from 1 Corinthians 1 and a timely word:

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 8th of October 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who sponsors a whole lot of kids… they just happen to all be his own- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who, despite this past weekend’s show, is giving up sports. All of them. All of my teams are bad. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.