Notable deaths in 2021 - Religion

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 28th of December, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: remembering those we lost in 2021.

Today, we’re focusing on men and women of faith. Several well-known religious figures died this year, including televangelist Marcus Lamb. He died in December from COVID-19. Christian dietician Gwen Shamblin, the leader of Remnant Church, died in a plane crash in May, along with several other church leaders.

REICHARD: Here now to remember some of those who didn’t receive as much recognition is WORLD’s Josh Schumacher.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Evangelist Stephen Lungu, sometimes called “the Billy Graham of Africa,” died from COVID-19 in January. He was 78 years old.

Lungu grew up in Zimbabwe suffering abuse first at the hands of his father, and later at the hands of strangers in an orphanage. As an adult, he turned to the drugs and violence of the gang life, and later to Marxism.

Lungu became a believer at an evangelistic tent meeting he and his band of Marxist fighters originally planned to attack.

LUNGU: So I said, “Guys, let’s surround the tent and at 7 o’clock I’ll blow the whistle, and I want you to throw the petrol bombs at one time and take your guns and shoot everybody.”

But then their plans changed.

LUNGU: And then suddenly we decided to go inside and listen for two minutes only.

The message that the preacher shared that night penetrated Lungu’s heart. He stumbled toward the front—weapons and all—and gave his life to Christ.

Lungu would go on to preach the gospel to thousands of people. He also led the African Enterprise in Malawi and internationally. He described his personal mission this way in 2011 …

LUNGU: But now my ministry is to proclaim Jesus with African Evangelistic Enterprise, to proclaim Jesus across Africa, to proclaim Jesus to many, many people.

Another Christian leader who spent quite some time serving in Africa also died this year.

Floyd McClung was 75 when he died in May. McClung served as a missionary with Youth With a Mission for 35 years—including eight years as international director. He also founded the missionary training organization All Nations and wrote the bestselling book, The Father Heart of God.

McClung trained church leaders at one of his training centers in Africa by helping them to establish a proper foundation for their hearts.

McCLUNG: But when you have a security in God, you know who you are, you know that God loves you. Then your leadership is a response to his love and not an attempt to get his love.

From missions in Africa, to missions in the Holy Land.

Evelyn Mangham was raised as the child of missionaries serving in the Middle East.

MANGHAM: My parents were missionaries to the Holy Land–we called it that. The children of all of the missionaries all lived in Bethlehem. Just six miles from Jerusalem. And we went to school in Jerusalem.

After returning to the United States for college, Mangham followed in her parents’ footsteps and became a missionary herself. In 1975, Mangham pushed evangelical churches to sponsor refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. She and her husband co-founded World Relief’s Refugee Resettlement program. When they left the organization in 1987, it was resettling refugees at a rate of about 6,000 per year.

MANGHAM: My life has proven so much of what I learned–over all that I’ve learned in the scriptures.

Mangham served as a missionary with Christian and Missionary Alliance as well as other organizations for about four decades. She died in October, just one day before her 99th birthday.

Two figures in religious-focused addiction recovery also died this year.

Abraham Twerski was on Orthodox rabbi and psychiatrist who melded ideas from Alcoholics Anonymous with Judaism to help people struggling with addictive behaviors. He died in late January from COVID-19.

TWERSKI: If you’re helping somebody who’s doing nothing, you’re doing nothing, alright? And I think if we have this kind of domino thing where everybody’s helping everybody else, but nobody has an idea of what it’s for. So I think we have to have a sense of purpose.

Rabbi Twerski wrote about 80 books throughout this lifetime on topics ranging from the addictive mind to domestic violence within Jewish communities. He also established the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburg. In the 1980s, Forbes magazine recognized the center as one of the top 12 rehabilitation centers in the United States.

John Baker, who co-founded a Christian 12-step program for recovering addicts, died less than a month after Twerski. Baker was a recovering alcoholic when he approached Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren with the idea of beginning a ministry called Celebrate Recovery.

BAKER: You know, it’s a tough road for anyone dealing with any kind of hurt, hang-up, or habit. That’s what we say in Celebrate Recovery. You don’t have to do this all by yourself. It’s not going to work if you do it alone.

Today the organization has chapters in more than 30,000 churches, and also works with Prison Fellowship.

Now to the founder of one of the largest African American Christian publishing houses—Urban Ministries, Inc.

Melvin Banks was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1930s. He later went to Chicago to attend college at Moody Bible Institute.

After finishing his education, Banks decided to start a publishing company focusing on Sunday school and church education materials for African American congregations. He started in his basement in 1970, and grew to serve 50,000 different churches across America.

BANKS: We included African American young people as photographs in the publication. So for the first time, they were gaining a sense of esteem by seeing themselves portrayed in the publication.

Throughout his career, Banks emphasized the multi-ethinic nature of the scriptures and the gospel story.

Melvin Banks died in February. He was 83 years old.

And finally, the founder of the largest church in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. David Yonggi Cho was 85 years old when he died in September.

Cho founded the South Korean megachurch, Yoido Full Gospel Church, in 1958. The congregation first met in a temporary shelter pieced together from U.S. Army tents left from the Korean War. But it quickly outgrew its temporary home.

WORSHIP SERVICE: “I’ll raise a Hallelujah/Heaven comes to fight for me/I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm…”

And storms did come. Cho was convicted of embezzling funds from the church to the tune of about $12 billion. The court gave him a three-year suspended sentence in 2014.

Cho insisted his conscience was clear before God. And his supporters claimed his only crime was being naive about the waywardness of his son, who also participated in the scheme.

Yoido Full Gospel Church has a membership of approximately 800,000 people, and offers 7 services every Sunday. It has planted over 500 churches elsewhere in Korea.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.