Biography
Don Richardson was born in Canada in 1935 and raised in a family that took the Bible seriously. As a boy he was drawn to the stories of missionaries who had taken the gospel to far-off peoples. He studied at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, a school known for its strict discipline and its passion for missions. There he met Carol, who became his wife, and the two of them gave themselves to the work of carrying the gospel to people who had never heard it.
In 1962 they sailed with the Unevangelized Fields Mission to Dutch New Guinea, a wild land of jungle, swamps and rivers that was largely unmapped. They were sent to the Sawi people, a tribe of about five hundred who lived in the lowland swamps and had almost no contact with the outside world. The Sawi were fierce in war and took pride in treachery. They honored a man who could befriend an enemy, feed him and then kill him and eat him. The Richardsons arrived with a small child and went to live among them in a hut they built themselves.
The early years were very hard. They struggled to learn a language that had no written form. They suffered from fever, hunger and loneliness. And when Don began to tell the Sawi the story of Jesus, they responded in a way he did not expect. They admired Judas. To them, the betrayer was the hero of the story, because he had fooled the one who trusted him. Don wondered whether the gospel could ever be understood by such a people. He considered leaving the tribe.
Then a war between two Sawi villages raged and drew near to the point of destroying both. The Richardsons said they would leave unless the fighting stopped. The Sawi did not want the white family to go, and they began to seek peace. Don saw an unusual ritual that he had not known about. To make peace, the two sides would exchange a baby, a child given by one village to the other. As long as the child lived, the peace would hold. They called this child a peace child. A father would give his own son to the enemy to end the war, and the child was honored.
Don realized that he had found the bridge. He told the Sawi that God had done this very thing for all mankind. He had given His own Son to make peace with the people who were His enemies, and that Son was alive and the peace was lasting. The Sawi understood. They saw that Jesus was the true Peace Child. Many of them turned to Christ, and a church was formed among them.
Don told the story in a book called Peace Child, which was published in 1974 and became one of the most widely read missionary books of the twentieth century. He followed it with Lords of the Earth and Eternity in Their Hearts, which argued that God has placed in nearly every culture a point of contact that prepares the way for the gospel. The idea made a strong impression on mission thinkers. He later became a leader in the mission movement and urged the church to take the gospel to every people group.
He was not a flawless man. He was a strong personality who held his convictions firmly and sometimes clashed with others. He and Carol faced loneliness, illness and the grief of leaving their work at times. Like every missionary, he needed the patience of the God he served. He also acknowledged that cultural bridges can be abused, and he warned that the gospel must never be changed to suit a culture.
He died in 2018. His life had spanned the whole story of modern missions, from a jungle village to the large halls where he spoke to thousands. The Sawi church he helped to start is still there. His work shows that God goes before His messengers and has already prepared places in every people where the news of His Son can take root.