Biography
John Oswald Sanders was born on January 17, 1902, in Invercargill, at the southern end of New Zealand. He was raised in a godly home, and as a boy he came to faith in Christ. His family belonged to the Brethren, a plain community of believers who held the Scriptures dear and valued the work of lay men and women. This shaped his life. He grew up believing that every Christian could serve God and that no special title was required.
He studied law and became a lawyer, and he was a good one. He worked in Wellington and rose in his profession. Yet from his youth he gave his evenings and his weekends to the work of the gospel. He taught the Bible, spoke in meetings and helped train others. He was also a strong supporter of the New Zealand Bible Training Institute, which prepared young men and women for ministry and for the mission field. His heart lay in that work, and in time he gave his whole life to it.
He married and raised a family, and he traveled widely as a speaker. He wrote little at first and mostly taught. During the years when he practiced law and carried heavy duties in his church, he cultivated a discipline of reading. Reading biographies of great Christians became a lifelong habit, and he drew from them many lessons about leadership, humility and suffering.
In 1954 he was asked to become General Director of the China Inland Mission, founded by Hudson Taylor. It was a difficult time. The Communists had taken power in China, and by 1951 the mission had been forced out of the country it had served for more than eighty years. Hundreds of missionaries were scattered and unsure of where to go. Sanders took up the leadership of a wounded mission and helped lead it to a new beginning in Southeast Asia and East Asia. The mission was renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship and carried its work to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and beyond. He led it until 1969. During those years he traveled to the fields, spent time with missionaries and wrote letters of encouragement to workers in remote places. He was not a flashy leader. Those who worked under him described a calm man with a sharp mind, a tender heart and great patience.
After he stepped down from his post, he went on writing and teaching. His books numbered more than forty. Among them were Spiritual Leadership, Spiritual Maturity, The Incomparable Christ, Enjoying Intimacy with God, Prayer Power Unlimited and Heaven: Better by Far. Spiritual Leadership, first published in 1967, is his best-known work. It argues that leadership in the church belongs to those who have been formed by God, and it uses examples from Scripture and from the lives of great leaders such as Nehemiah, Paul and Hudson Taylor. He insisted that a true leader is a servant and that the cost of leadership is sacrifice. He wrote in a clear, direct and warm way, and his books were widely used for training pastors and missionaries.
Sanders knew his own weaknesses. He wrote about the dangers of pride and of a driven spirit, and he often warned younger leaders to guard their time with God. He did not claim to be free of the pressures he described. He spoke of the need to check ambition and to allow God to deal with the heart. The honesty in his writing gave it weight.
He kept preaching and teaching into old age. He was still taking meetings and speaking well into his eighties, and he traveled until his body could no longer bear it. He died on October 24, 1992, at the age of ninety. He left behind a great missionary society, a body of books and a generation of leaders who had learned from him that the way up in the kingdom of God is the way down.
His life stands as a plain witness. A lawyer gave himself to Christ and to the lost, and he led by serving. The mission that he guided through its darkest hour sent workers into many nations, and the books he wrote still train men and women who seek to lead as Christ led.