Let it be seen in me

Bob Foster is 94 years old, stooped but still barrel-chested at 6 feet 2 inches, with neatly combed silver-white hair and crinkly blue eyes. He still keeps a miniature Bible that he received when he professed Christ at age 16. The Bible is now dog-eared with yellow highlights, particularly across passages in Romans. He can still read those flea-sized words—but he hardly needs to, because he’s got all the key verses memorized, quoting Scriptures faster than he otherwise speaks.

Born in 1920 in Los Angeles, Foster was one of the movers in the early evangelical revival during World War II. He was college buddies with evangelists Billy and Ruth Graham, worked closely with Navigators founder Dawson Trotman, and was friends with other contemporaries such as Bill Bright and Howard Hendricks.

While his classmate Billy Graham preached in front of thousands at worldwide revival crusades and shook hands with famous political leaders, Foster was strolling the Colorado mountains in jeans and cowboy hat, soft-talking first-time riders into climbing on a horse at Lost Valley Ranch, a guest ranch he once operated near Colorado Springs.

Foster grew up in an evangelism-minded home in Chicago and Wheaton, Ill. His father taught personal evangelism at Moody for decades and instilled in his son a lifelong love for people, trees, horses, the outdoors, and God. Foster said his dad was his role model: “Monkey see, monkey do. I saw godliness in my father, and I wanted what he had.”

After graduating from Wheaton College in 1943 Foster worked for Youth for Christ and then Navigators, while his wife Marion raised their four children. In 1961, after much prayer, they sold an inherited plumbing business and bought Lost Valley (LVR) for $238,000: It now has 65 staff members and is worth about $12 million. LVR’s website advertises warm western hospitality and outdoorsy activities such as horseback riding, square dancing, and fly fishing—but it’s also a training ground for evangelistic Christian living.

Gaylen Hassman, a repeat guest at LVR, first visited the ranch in 1985 with his wife and two young kids. He was a busy lawyer at a small town in Iowa, and he wanted to treat his family to a western-style, resort vacation. He and his family were “smitten with how these people lived their lives.” He had viewed Christianity as “legalistic” with an “uncomfortable hardness to it,” but he liked it when Foster took a group of men on horseback up to the mountain peak. As they gazed at the splendor of God’s creation, Bob used his own story to talk about God.

Seeing how Christians relished life and showed love at LVR pinpointed “the sins, imperfections, brokenness, and true nature” that he never realized he harbored: “I wasn’t interested in a sales pitch, and I probably would have tuned out had I heard it.” He left the ranch thinking, “Boy, this is something that I would like to have in my life. I would like to live that way too.” He came back to LVR in 1987 to further observe, question—and then profess faith in Christ.

Foster also taught young staff members, most of them 19 to 25 years of age, to exude Christ-likeness—an evangelism method that he calls “living a lifestyle that demands an explanation.” One former head wrangler, Dace Starkweather, now a 40-year-old recent Biola University graduate, said the “ranch ministry approach was more genius than most people recognized. … Lost Valley has found a way to move the soul of everyone who comes through—and ultimately move them closer to the Lord, Jesus Christ.”

When Foster left the ranch in 1995 to take care of his wife, who had Alzheimer’s, a group at LVR put together a scrapbook heavy with detailed, nostalgic letters and cards from previous guests and staff members. Many wrote that they “got saved” at the ranch, or soon after. Some kids grew up and came back to serve on LVR’s staff.

After Marion died in 1998, Bob met his second wife, Beverly. They married in 2000 and lived in Orange County, Calif., until Bev died in 2010. Today, though he lives alone, Bob still keeps busy teaching Sunday school, leading Bible studies, and mentoring men. When I met him, he had just returned from a speaking engagement in Seattle. Every night, he sings from an old hymnal so that his heart and mind are set on God as he turns off the light.

It’s a lifestyle that Bob has lived mindfully since the day he decided to lead “a life that counts for eternity” with “the sail set in the right direction.” When I asked him what that meant, he sang back an old hymn: “Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me / All His wonderful passion and purity / Oh, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine / Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.”

Sophia Lee shares how Bob Foster’s ordinary but effective evangelism inspired her.