I learned yesterday Dr. David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia (among other things), has graduated to glory.
Probably one of the first books I ever read that stirred me into missions was Our globe and how to reach it, which he edited way back in the 1990s. The first two statistical charts related to missions that led me to grapple with the numbers were the statistical summary for the first Lausanne Congress, and the “Top 211 Least Evangelized Megapeoples.” I remember being at a conference in Colorado while I was with my first agency, AIMS, and hearing this young guy, all full of vinegar, calling David “the worst thing that ever happened to the Southern Baptists.” I was amazed that someone who purported to be a loving Christian would speak the way he did. I found myself defending this guy I had never met, and getting mad myself. Later, I reflected on that and wondered why and how a researcher and writer could stir up such passion.
I was introduced to Dr Barrett by a mutual friend while I worked at AIMS. Just before Heidi and I were married, David called out of the blue and asked if we would consider coming to work on the World Christian Encyclopedia–primarily to help with data analysis. Thus began a four year sojourn at the WCE.
While there, I moved from writing programs to actually analyzing data, forming conclusions about it, to editing the Monday Morning Reality Check (one of the early e-zines), to editing the AD 2025 Global Monitor, to doing some writing for the Encyclopedia itself. This wasn’t easy. It wasn’t always fun. My skin thickened. I failed, often, and felt completely inadequate. I struggled to learn. He–and the others working on the Encyclopedia–could simply glance at a report and tell me something was wrong with the program I had written and the analysis it produced. They could do it because they were numerate–and I was not. Up to that point I had thought I was pretty smart, but I discovered that I was smug and they were smart. Not arrogant, just quietly expert in their task. I found I wanted to be more like them. I guess David could see past the smugness, past the insecurity, past all of that to some raw material inside me: for he was constantly pushing me, poking me, prodding me on. Insisting that my writing could be better. Revising it. Sharpening it.
When I earned an accolade from him, the heavens seemed to part. The day he told me I could call myself a researcher, because I had discovered something new–well. I can’t begin to describe that feeling.
More than the smarts: he was incredibly, audaciously bold in standing for the unreached. He would say some of the most outlandish things. He would often sign his letters, “Yours for the 1.2 billion unevangelized.” He would insist on the scandal of the church not reaching those who had never heard. If you ever hear me say something provocative, something bold, something difficult or challenging–it’s really not mine. I’m riffing David.
I remember, once, he spoke to a chapel gathering–completely off the cuff, it seemed to me. He just looked over their heads, saw a map, and started riffing on the map. Moved instantly to the unreached. I was amazed at how easily it went. He knew his subject, and he was boldly, passionately, standing for them.
Yet he was very–introverted. Quiet. Almost shy. He would come into the office, and almost immediately go straight to his little room, which was little more than a small cubicle stuffed with books and papers. His had an extraordinary mind–the Encyclopedia was virtually in his head–and an incredible boldness and yet he was very shy and quiet (at least what I saw of him). It fired me with the idea that me, in my own incredible introversion, could also have a voice.
He wasn’t that way with his family. It’s not my place to say much about that, but I did see him at home a few times, with his wife and children, and I saw a completely different side of him I had never seen before: warm and humorous.
Working for and with David was never easy. It was challenging. I grew enormously, though. He shaped my stubbornness, my determination to understand data, my insistence on speaking for the unevangelized. Much of what I am today, I am because of his influence in my life. I am sad to hear of his passing, but I know his life was lived to the fullest, passionately, seeking out God’s will for the nations. I hope to do the same.
Other articles on David’s life
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Thanks for the reflections Justin. These are times to reflect back, see what God has done in our hearts and lives and press on! You have done that well with this post.
greg
Thanks Justin. As one of those smug ones that David took under his wing for awhile, my ministrycontinues to express the impact of his coaching. He was convinced that facts should shape missions strategy and determined that comprehensive encyclopedic compilation of the facts from every stream of Christianity in every place was possible. If that meant him visiting every bishop and monestary of an ancient orthoox church or gathering data from parts of the body of Christ that most other parts of the body failed to recognize, he was up to the task. He was correct. His World Christian Encyclopedia and the myrid spinoffs shaped the global missions narrative for decades . Much less well known, but equally groundbreaking, was his research and analysis of six thousand African Independent Christian movements. He demonstrated definitively the impact that Scripture has on changing the face of Africa.
As a gentle spoken, gracious brother he had an iron determination that could not be distracted by public and private attacks on his person, his research, his theology, his conclusions, or his evidence based jugements. As a loyal Anglican, he took in this loyal Southern Baptist and helped shape an initiative that unleashed the gospel into scores of creative access countries and hundreds of unreached people groups through a previously untried methodology. I will not remember him though for his advocacy of revolutionary and previously unorthodox N R M approaches, but for stimulating and challenging Big Mac lunches eatem across the street from office, where conversation could be transparent, spiritual, and evidence based.