Lester Sumrall

Lester Frank Sumrall was born on February 15, 1913, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His family was of modest means, and his father was a businessman. As a boy, he was sickly and suffered from tuberculosis. At the age of seventeen, he was told by his doctors that he had only a short time to live. He was in a sanatorium and was expected to die. A Pentecostal woman, who visited him, prayed for him and spoke of the power of God to heal. He said that he was healed, and that he rose from the bed. The experience changed his life. He gave himself to God and soon felt a call to preach.

He began as an evangelist in the Assemblies of God and traveled across the American South. He was a young man of energy and drive. In 1931, he went on a missionary journey to the Caribbean and South America, and he was fascinated by the foreign field. He worked in a number of countries, including Brazil, Argentina and Chile. In 1934, he married Louise Layman, a missionary, and they went to Asia. They spent a few years in Hong Kong and in the Philippines and were evacuated before the Japanese invasion. He was a pioneer in the training of Filipino pastors and the building of churches.

He settled in South Bend, Indiana, in 1957, and he founded a church, the Christian Center, which grew into a large congregation. He was a man who had a gift for building institutions. He began a Bible school, a school for children and a radio ministry. In 1963, he started a worldwide mission, called World Harvest, which later became LeSEA, Lester Sumrall Evangelistic Association. The ministry took in the whole range of a media operation. In 1969, he began a television station, and later a number of radio stations and a satellite network. LeSEA Broadcasting reached millions of people in many countries.

He also led a program of relief to the needy. He took part in the delivery of food and supplies to the poor in the Third World. He started a school for ministers, Indiana Christian University, in 1980. He was a prolific author, who wrote over a hundred books. They include Demons, the Answer Book and The Reality of the Spirit World, which dealt with spiritual warfare. He was known for his work in deliverance, and he had much experience in dealing with those who were thought to be troubled by evil spirits. In 1947, he had a spectacular case in the Philippines, in which a young woman was reportedly delivered, and he later wrote about it.

He was a strong personality and was sometimes controversial. He was a firm supporter of the prosperity message in his later years and was criticized by some for the fund-raising methods of his ministry. He also made sweeping predictions about the end times, which did not come to pass. He was given to bold claims. Some of his teachings on demons and on deliverance were questioned by those who thought that they were exaggerated. He was also a man of great generosity and a warm heart.

He lived a full life, and he continued to travel and preach into his eighties. He died on April 24, 1996, in South Bend, at the age of eighty-three. His son, Peter, took up the leadership of the ministry. His life shows the effect of a man who was healed as a youth and who spent his life in the service of the gospel, and who made use of media to reach the world.