An ‘Out of This World’ Endeavor

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed
you would see the glory of God?”
[ John 11:40 ] 

Ron Thompson was a senior at Moody Bible Institute in 1959 when he learned about a radio ministry with the audacious goal of reaching the Soviet Union.

“It was very exciting to think of broadcasting the gospel to Russia,” Thompson said 64 years later.

That led to Thompson becoming closely connected to Trans World Radio (now TWR) for one year – a connection that was lost until he was well into his 80s.

Thompson, now 84, recently shared his recollections by phone from his home in Bloomington, Indiana, the home of Indiana University.

Thompson was born a triplet in the western Pennsylvania steel mill town of Beaver Falls. By the time he was in fifth grade, he knew what he wanted his life to look like. He would attend Penn State University, become an engineer and work at the Pentagon, just as a cousin of his was doing.

All about a vision

That ambition didn’t change when he came to faith in Christ on Nov. 22, 1953, Thompson said. But in 1956, while he was still in high school, God spoke to him, telling him to go away and rethink his plans.

The epiphany came at the 1956 Youth for Christ Convention in Winona Lake, Indiana, while Thompson was still in high school. There, he had a private conversation with Robert Pierce, the founder of World Vision.

“I shared my story with him,” Thompson related. “He said, ‘You go under the stars tonight and you release it to God. It’s all about having a vision of God.’”

Thompson did that, and he changed course. Instead of Penn State, engineering and the Pentagon, it would be Moody, where he enrolled in the three-year “pastors’ course” in the fall of 1957. He joined the school’s Missionary Union, consisting of students whose membership cards stated they would serve in the mission field if God called them.

From Moody to Russia

In the fall of 1959,Thompson was elected the group’s president. Each year, Missionary Union would take on a missions project. A number of Moody’s students were missionary kids, so the school had connections in many countries. But none had a link to Russia.

Thompson thought it would be good to reach out in a new direction, so he contacted Ben Armstrong, deputation secretary for what then was still known as Voice of Tangier. Armstrong,  the brother-in-law of our founder, Paul Freed, would go on to lead the National Religious Broadcasters.

Armstrong told Thompson that what the radio ministry really needed was $30,000 for an antenna that would reach from the new home of what would then be known as Trans World Radio in Monaco to Russia.

But $30,000 was almost three times as much as Moody students had raised for any previous project, according to Moody archives. It was a major challenge for a school in 1959 with a student body of about 1,000.

It was “out of this world,” Thompson said in the interview. “We struggled with this quite a bit. It was just too much. God kept talking to us. He told us it’s never a matter of money, it’s a matter of vision. Is this God’s vision or not? And if it’s God’s vision, money is inconsequential.”

The 12-member Missionary Union committee decided to go for it. They drew their theme from the account of the raising of Lazarus in John 11, when Jesus told Martha that if she believed, she would see the glory of God.

“We decided to focus on the glory of God, and God settled his peace over us,” Thompson said.

‘All on tiptoes’

Thompson announced the project at an assembly, and the Moody students responded. A cutout of an antenna placed in a stairwell served as a gauge of the progress toward the goal. Some students received packages of jewelry from home that they would sell, with the money going to the project, Thompson said. 

A Moody Bible Institute publication from the time commented: “The sum of money needed to erect a 100,000-watt transmitter for Trans World Radio was enormous, but the dividends were even greater in terms of needy souls in godless countries behind the Iron Curtain.”

The sum raised gradually increased as 1959 turned to 1960. “The whole year, we were all on tiptoes with anticipation,” Thompson recalled.

When the goal was achieved, Armstrong traveled to Chicago to receive the check at an assembly. Coverage of the event in a Moody publication from the time hints that at least some of the money might have gone to a more immediate purpose.

“Ron Thompson presents Rev. Ben Armstrong, deputation secretary for Voice of Tangier, with Missionary Union’s first large check,” a photo caption reads. “‘Ron, this comes just in time. This very amount is due tomorrow in order to keep our lease!’”

Similar examples of God’s just-in-time delivery during that era are cited throughout Paul Freed’s memoir, Towers to Eternity.

The house painter

God called Thompson to Moody for a purpose, but it turned out that it wasn’t for him to be a preacher. Instead, he went into a counseling ministry. He found joy in serving international students, first at the University of Illinois, then at Indiana University, then in Houston. Along the way, he earned master’s and doctorate degrees.

He returned to Indiana in 1982 with a burden to minister to international students who were at the point of wanting to die. He had no job, though. The Lord reminded him that when he was a teenager, he had helped his father paint houses, Thompson recalled. He reminded the Lord that he had achieved advanced academic degrees.

“God said, ‘My son Jesus was a carpenter,’” Thompson recalled, a chuckle in his voice. “‘When you pass over to here, no one is going to ask you: Were you an academician or a house painter?’”

He bought an old Ford Pinto, put a ladder on the roof and started painting houses with his 16-year-old son. “Forty-two years later, I’m still painting houses with my son.”

In a photo from the Moody archives, Thompson looks fit. In his 80s, he remains energetic, his voice ringing with enthusiasm. He has received a renewed calling from God that will take him away from painting, he said. In 1991, he and his wife Marguerite, along with two other couples, bought a large tract of land near Monroe Lake, which is just south of Bloomington. He and Marguerite, whom he met when both were students at Moody, used the home they built as a sort of inn for people struggling with mental illness.

Thompson, a widower since 2011, said he believes God now is calling him to set up a not-for profit sanctuary on land he owns for people “with dementia and other woundedness,” as he puts it. He cites Psalm 139:12, with the desire that their night could shine with the brightness of day.

He’s calling it Wellspring, because there is a spring-fed well on the property, and in reference to Proverbs 4:23, which states, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.”

Connecting with TWR

After leaving Moody, Thompson never heard another word about Trans World Radio. He assumed, he said, that the ministry had folded. But in 2022 he decided to check. He used a website called Mission Finder, and that led him to TWR. Longtime TWR missionary Tom Streeter learned about Thompson’s interest. They connected, and Streeter sent him two books that tell the TWR story: Towers to Eternity and the more recent Great Things He Has Done.

Starting a new ministry in his 80s might seem audacious, but raising $30,000 at age 21 also seemed audacious. Thompson said he is choosing again to believe and to rest in God’s faithfulness to fulfill his promise.

He is sustained and energized, Thompson said, as he thinks of the words of the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” which often was sung at chapel services during his Moody Bible Institute days.

“It’s not only my calling,” Thompson said. “We all have a beautiful calling and a journey to live to fulfill God’s glory in our lives.”

Images: (top, left) Ron Thompson was a senior at Moody Bible Institute in 1959 when he learned about TWR, (middle, right) A clip from a Moody Bible Institute publication outlines the Missionary Union's project, (middle, left) Ron Thompson presents Rev. Ben Armstrong, deputation secretary for Voice of Tangier, with Missionary Union’s first check, (bottom, right) Ron and Marguerite Thompson met while students at Moody.