EDITORIAL INSIGHTS: MY FINAL
TRIBUTE TO K.P. YOHANNAN Founder of Gospel for Asia -- GFA World
By Bill Bray, Senior Editor, CIS News
THERE is no use pretending that I could ever sit here and write a straightforward obituary or editorial on the life and times of the late K. P. Yohannan. He was a true, 20th Century apostle if there ever was one.
So, meanwhile, this tribute will have to do.
My very personal recollection of his leadership lifestyle dates back to 1965. It is based on a year of literature evangelism and street preaching the two of us spent in the villages of Rajasthan. Actually, it straddled the fall of 65 and spring of 66. It was followed by years of friendship and collaboration until K.P.’s tragic death in May, 2024.
At the time, we were both technically students on an Operation Mobilization summer mission to North India. Only 18, I was legally the “team leader” but that was in name only. I drove our massive, seven-ton converted moving van. It was a huge red vehicle which I had already driven across Europe and the Middle East from London to Bombay. It was loaded with hundreds of thousands of tracts and books.
Meanwhile, K.P. was only 15 going on 16 – not even old enough to technically be on the team.
But he was as zealous for Christian service as any missionary evangelist I had ever met. And as a result, we bent the rules. I remember arguing with Frank Dietz to permit K.P. to join us because he would turn 16 while we were on the “Blitz Rajasthan for Christ!”
While it was true that I enticed the young zealot to join us on that recruiting mission to Kerela – within hours he had informally taken over the leadership of the team.
Years later, in the United States, I edited and collaborated with him on his first three Creation House books: "The Coming Revolution in World Missions", "The Road to Reality", and "Why the World Waits" or “Why the World Still Waits” as we wanted to sarcastically call it.
While I was often the ghost-writer for large segments of these books, they were all genuine collaborations between Yohannan and me.
Amazingly, millions of these books were distributed – over 400 million copies of "The Coming Revolution in World Missions" alone! And as a result, a new era began in Christian missions, the "age of indigenous missions."
