12 Aug End of an Era

By Phil Waldron, CEO

It is with mixed emotions that I write the following words about the passing of my father Jimmy Eugene Waldron on July 15^th of this year. He was eighty-eight years old and would have completed eighty-nine years on November 4^th. He had been a preacher and missionary since he was eighteen years old when Calvin Parker, who preached in and around Nashville, TN, took him into his home while he finished his senior year of high school. Calvin loaned him a car and Dad began almost immediately to travel to small churches around middle Tennessee preaching for congregations that didn’t have a full-time minister.

From those humble beginnings, as a young preacher-student, he went on to do mission work in Pakistan, Australia, Ukraine, Nepal, Hongkong and finally India. I remember traveling with him in India in 2002 for a fifteen-day trip. I recorded extensive video interviews with him about his work during the trip. My questions were specific about what had contributed to the extensive success that had accompanied his years in missions, particularly in India. At that time, some 22 years ago, he stated that they had lost track of how many conversions they had seen after the number surpassed 40,000 and the number of churches that had been planted had surpassed 2,000. This trip was inspirational for me in our own mission efforts in both México and then Honduras.

Dad’s favorite verse and one that guided his work was II Timothy 2:2, “and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” At the core of everything that he did was the conviction that training and educating both men and women was the key to spreading the kingdom in this generation and the one to come.

Having said that, considering the context of a third world country and the massive population of poor and needy people, Dad’s ministry was focused on creating sustainable programs among those that they converted to Christ. They had programs where their graduates received vocational training along with their Bible training. They gifted sewing machines, bicycles and goats to the poor in order for them to be able to support themselves and their families.

Seeing and hearing about all that Waldron Missions had done over the years and the results that God had blessed them with had a formative effect on Mission UpReach. In truth, it is a very Biblical approach. One of the theme verses that guides us along these lines comes from Jeremiah 29:7, that says, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

As expressed in our mission statement here at MUR, “Our mission is to transform lives with the Gospel through educating, training and providing opportunities.” Just like we saw over many decades in my father’s mission in India, when you focus on teaching and training Christians they will produce new churches. And when you offer them opportunities to gain skills and opportunities to support themselves and their families, the results are a sustainable, generational growth of the kingdom. I am thankful to have known Jim Waldron as a father and missionary. Although not a perfect man, he was “sold out” to Jesus and God’s grace used that commitment to produce what He wanted in areas that were “ripe to the harvest.”