A Brief Biography of Donald A. McGavran

By H. L. Richard

Donald McGavran was born in central India on Dec. 15, 1897. His parents and maternal grandparents were missionaries in India associated with the Disciples of Christ, the denomination under which Donald also served. From 1910 to 1923 he was in the USA where he completed college at Butler University and seminary at Yale.  

At a YMCA camp in 1919 McGavran heard John R. Mott speak and responded by committing his life to missions. He attended the Student Volunteer Movement 1920 quadrennial convention in Des Moines with his soon-to-be fiancée Mary Elizabeth Howard, also a Butler graduate whom he married on Aug. 29, 1922. After a year at the Disciples of Christ College of Missions on the Butler campus, the McGavrans moved back to central India. 

The focus of McGavran’s missionary service was educational work, and he completed a PhD with that focus at Columbia University in 1935. But McGavran was deeply shaken during his first term in India by the death of his seven-year-old daughter, Mary Theodora. Coming through that crisis he referred to “winning back a feel of the spiritual world.”[1]

His view of missionary service was turned upside down by J. Waskom Pickett’s 1933 study of Christian Mass Movements in India; Pickett became a close friend and colleague.[2] From that point on, McGavran built his focus on church growth on the foundation of Pickett’s research, doing his own detailed study of people movements along with Pickett and G. H. Singh, published in 1938 as Christian Missions in Mid India: A Study of Nine Areas with Special Reference to Mass Movements. 

By 1955 with the publication of The Bridges of God McGavran had become a renowned missiologist.[3] A 1954 trip across Africa had contributed to his conviction that the principles he had developed were valid among all nations. In 1961, seeking a platform to influence mission thinking across the world, McGavran moved to Eugene, Oregon as director of the Institute of Church Growth associated with Northwest Christian College. From here he shifted to Fuller Theological Seminary in 1965, starting the School of World Mission. 

McGavran was founding dean of the School of World Mission and built the core faculty before stepping down as dean in 1971. He continued teaching at Fuller until he was 83 years of age in 1980. By his death on July 10, 1990, McGavran’s influence as one of the central missiological figures of the twentieth century was firmly established. 

 

Notes
  1. From a Dec. 1932 letter to a friend, quoted from Vern Middleton, Donald McGavran: His Early Life and Ministry, pg. 35).
  2. When McGavran published How Churches Grow in 1959 he inscribed a copy, “To J. Waskom Pickett, at whose fire I lit my candle.” (Quoted in Arthur Gene McPhee, Pickett’s Fire: The Life, Contribution, Thought, and Legacy of J. Waskom Pickett, Methodist Missionary to India. Dissertation, Asbury Theological Seminary, 2001, unpaginated abstract.)
  3. In an inscription to his wife Mary in the first published copy of this book McGavran refers to her as “my co-author Mary.” (This copy of the book is held at the Ralph D. Winter Research Center, Pasadena, CA.)
Select Bibliography

Kraft, Charles H. 2005. SWM/SIS at Forty: A Participant/Observers View of Our History. Pasadena: William Carey Library.

McGavran, Donald. 1955. The Bridges of God. New York: Friendship Press.

McGavran, Donald. 1986. “My Pilgrimage in Mission.” Introducing a New Series. International Bulletin of Missionary Research 10:2, April 1986, pp. 53-58.

McGavran, Donald, J. Waskom Pickett, G. H. Singh. 1938. Christian Missions in Mid India: A Study of Nine Areas with Special Reference to Mass Movements. Jubbulpore (Jabalpur): Mission Press.

McIntosh, Gary L. 2015. Donald A. McGavran: A Biography of the Twentieth Century’s Premier Missiologist. [Boca Raton, FL]: Church Leader Insights.

McPhee, Arthur Gene. 2001. Pickett’s Fire: The Life, Contribution, Thought, and Legacy of J. Waskom Pickett, Methodist Missionary to India. Dissertation, Asbury Theological Seminary. (Published as The Road to Delhi: J. Waskom Pickett and Missions in the Twilight of the Raj and Dawn of Nationhood revised and expanded. Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2012.)

Middleton, Vern. 2011. Donald McGavran: His Early Life and Ministry, An Apostolic Vision for Reaching the Nations. Pasadena: William Carey Library.

Pickett, J. Waskom. 1933. Christian Mass Movements in India: A Study with Recommendations. New York: Abingdon Press.