The year 2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of the killing of seven Alliance missionaries in Banmethuot, Vietnam.  These martyrs were graduates of what today is Nyack College:  Carolyn Griswold, Leon Griswold, Ruth Wilting, Ed and Ruth Thompson, N. Robert Ziemer, and Betty Ann Olsen. (See footnote.) Two other alumni, who perished in 1962, were Dr. Ardel Vietti and Archie Mitchell.

Looking back forty years later, what can we learn from this tragedy?  And if these ardent followers of Jesus Christ were alive today, what might they say to us?  If their voices could be heard, I believe they would be passionate about four values that can mark our service to God today.

Lost people matter to God and He wants them found (Luke 19:10).  The love and care of these missionaries for the peoples of Vietnam, even lepers there, was driven by a passion to make Christ known to them by word and deed.  The longing was for Vietnamese to hear, understand, and believe the liberating news about Jesus.

Everything we have belongs to God.  We are only stewards (1 Chronicles 29:14).  Six people laid their time, talent, and treasure . . . themselves . . . on the line knowing that “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds (John 12:24). 

Knowing and obeying God’s Word is fundamental to all true success (Joshua 1:8).  Understanding that success in the truest sense is not tied to possessions, fame and money, their pursuit was knowing God through His Word.  As their natural selfishness faded through obedience to Christ, His selfless beauty was increasingly seen in them, exponentially increasing their passion to make Him known. 

Achieving God’s purposes involves taking faith-filled risks (Hebrews 11:6).  Granted, it wasn’t safe for these people to be where they were in 1968.  Nor is it safe for Christ’s representatives to live out their faith openly in many other places today.  Yet we’re called to take faith-filled risks in living our Christ’s mission.  And it’s only through our willingness to do this that this mission can be accomplished globally.

In 1975, an Alliance missionary was in the next-to-last helicopter to leave the American Embassy roof in Saigon just before the fall of South Vietnam.  A huge concern was what would happen to the Alliance church family in Vietnam, then numbering about 125,000 believers.  Would they even survive?

In 2006, I visited with Alliance church leaders of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City.  When I inquired as to the size of the family of Alliance churches in Vietnam then, I was told there were more that 1,000,000 believers.  Tears welled up in my eyes and my heart lept for joy.  That’s dramatic, eight-fold growth in just over thirty years!  The Church had not just survived, it had thrived!  Compared to the size of the Alliance in the United States, this means for every American believer who is a part of an Alliance church, there are more than two Vietnamese believers who belong to the Alliance in Vietnam.  The Alliance of Vietnam is now the largest family of Alliance churches in the world.

In a very real sense, while dead the voices of these martyrs can still be heard.  Their lives, their examples in living and in dying, speak loudly to us.  They challenge us to embrace these four values laying ourselves on the line for Christ.  And if they could see the incredible growth of the Church in Vietnam that’s taken place since their deaths, they would rejoice greatly, worshipping Jesus and declaring with one voice, “Yes, the way we lived and died for Christ in Vietnam was worth it . . . because He is worthy!”

Dr. Robert Fetherlin is Vice President for International Ministries at the U.S. C& MA National Office in Colorado Springs, CO.

(To learn more about these outstanding people and the story surrounding their deaths, go to http://www.cmalliance.org/whoweare/archives/alifepdf/AW-1968-03-13.pdf#search=%22%22, pages 3-12.)