Remembering What God Has Done

Billy Graham shares the gospel with Marines in the Korean War. Ted Fletcher, at right, listens.

The gospel came alive to Pioneers founder Ted Fletcher when, as a young Marine serving in Korea, he heard the gospel presented by Billy Graham. The fiery evangelist asked, “Will you surrender your life to Jesus Christ?”

“For a moment I wondered if Rev. Graham had chosen the wrong word,” Ted later wrote. “How could his message ever persuade a group of battle-hardened Marines who would rather die fighting than surrender? Yet, I knew that how I responded to this invitation would not only determine my eternal destiny, but also make a difference for the rest of my life here on earth.”

Lord, thank You for working in Ted’s life and in ours, too, calling us to surrender to You and give ourselves to Your purposes.

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Ted and Peggy, center, gathered with many of their children and grandchildren in 1998.

In May 1979, Ted and Peggy Fletcher officially founded Pioneers as World Evangelical Outreach and sent their first workers to Nigeria to work alongside local believers.  In years to come God used Ted and Peggy to send many, including their own children and grandchildren, to serve among the unreached all over the world.

All this was just getting started when daughter Arlene, then just a teenager, spent a summer in Papua New Guinea. “Peggy and I will never forget one of her letters home describing a trek through the jungle where she saw a human skull hanging from a tree,” wrote Ted. “That would have been challenging enough for a teenager, but then she learned that the person had been eaten by the very man who was guiding her team through the jungle.” Yikes!

Father, thank You for guiding our steps and raising up laborers from every generation. You send out our sons and daughters and go with them wherever You call them.

Ted Fletcher with members of the Biami tribe of Papua New Guinea.

“How did we recruit missionaries willing to live in a snake-infested jungle, survive under primitive conditions, and befriend tribal people whose cultures were rooted in cannibalism? The answer is that God found them for us,” Ted wrote.

Ted Fletcher with Bedouin shepherds in Kuwait after the Gulf War.

“We pray for unreached people and ask God—the Lord of the harvest—to raise up missionary laborers to go. He answers that prayer and sends them our way. They start or join teams that plant churches. And God continues to work miracles,” Ted explains.

Ted with Harry Liu, a Chinese-American friend who took Ted and Peggy on an eye-opening trip to China. 1981.

“We continually reminded ourselves that God didn’t say, ‘Go into all the world where you can get a missionary visa.’ He just said, ‘Go into all the world.’”

But there has been another call as well: “from all the world.” Pioneers recognized that honoring the Lord and reaching the world effectively would require linking arms with missionaries from many cultures, countries and backgrounds. The Pioneers family grew to include Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Latin Americans and members from across Africa, Asia and Europe.

After a series of mergers, Pioneers history became richer and more complex. Organizations founded as far back as 1881 came into the Pioneers family. They brought a wealth of experience in places like the South Pacific, Sudan and the Arab world.

Lord, we rejoice in the opportunity to partner with members of Your body from all over the world and seek You for wisdom and unity as we grow together.

Peggy Fletcher with Ghanaian missionaries, 2004.

Ted Fletcher went to be with the Lord in 2003. In the weeks before his death, he was working daily to help a team of Ghanaian missionaries, serving with Pioneers-Africa. They were raising funds to start their ministry among two closely-related animistic-Muslim tribal groups who live as small-scale subsistence farmers in a very remote part of Ghana.

The next year, in 2004, Ted’s wife Peggy and their son John traveled there. They followed the paved road until it ended and the dirt trail for several hours more. Peggy reported,  “Our joy was great as we learned that several churches were being planted—one even meeting in the shade of the village’s massive jacaranda tree.”

Before leaving Ghana she attended a meeting of African leaders committing themselves to sending teams north into the Arab world. “I was thrilled, as I knew Ted would be, to anticipate the potential of an African missionary force empowered to assume their God-given place in the Great Commission.”