A Tenacious Life!

On October 14th, my friend Wayne Crooke died suddenly of a heart attack in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He was only 66 years old. Wayne and his wife Carolyn have given their lives to the nations of South East Asia. He was my first mentor in missions. Beth and I worked with Wayne and his family when we were first married, young twenty-somethings with high ideals and low experience. We joined him to help build SEA Crusades. Together, under his visionary leadership, we pioneered an open-air crusade model in Thailand that planned and prayed to reach thousands of people for Jesus Christ.

For three years we hammered away with negligible results and small crowds. But Wayne was tenacious and wouldn’t give up. Of all things I loved and hated about Wayne Crooke, it was his determination that was his most memorable feature! In the spring of 1981, after years of toil, God finally gave him the break-through for which he had labored and wept in prayer. We set up our simple equipment on a large open soccer field in Thoeng, North Thailand, and advertised with handbills in the surrounding area. I remember Wayne commenting about how small the village was, and perhaps we were foolish to agree to come here for ten days of meetings.

Three hundred people showed up on the first night. Then 600 on the second, and 1200 on the third. The crowd continued to grow like that until on the 9th night over 20,000 filled the field! They came for only one reason: to hear stories about Jesus Christ and see His power at work in their lives. It was an historic night, not only in our experience, but also in the history of Thailand. No one had ever seen such large crowds gather to hear the Gospel in this nation. In following years, our family started working in Sri Lanka and Wayne and new team members continued traveling all over Thailand conducting huge open-air meetings like this. In recent years, Wayne, now in a new season of life, was preparing to enter Burma.

Those experiences set our family on a journey in missions that we continue to walk out today. In Sri Lanka, two years after Thailand, Beth and I followed Wayne’s model, and ultimately planted churches after our outreaches – one at a time until 35 churches were birthed. Today that group has grown to over 90 churches with membership totaling 35,000 people!

We should never under-estimate the impact we make on others. Positive impact is almost always the result of faithfulness over time – steadfastness, perseverance and determination! Our culture too often sells us short with quick fixes, instant gratification, and fast food answers. Too often we expect the same from God. But much of Kingdom work is the fruit of time-tested steadiness.

I hope I am the kind of mentor and example that Wayne and Carolyn have been to me. My goal in leadership is to model that kind of life-long steadiness. I remember making a decision as a young person, while we worked with Wayne in Thailand. I had heard a lot of people talking about “having the fire of God in our souls!” and of “burning out for Jesus.” I decided at that time that rather than burning out, I was going to be an internal-combustion engine that would make the long trip and keep on rolling.

Perhaps that is why, after a lifetime, people like Wayne Crooke were still happily doing the stuff!

And THAT, as they say, is how we roll!