A Tribute to Stan Rowland:
Father of the Community Health Evangelism Movement
July 27,1936 to September 12, 2024
On September 12, 2024, Stan Rowland made the transition from the Kingdom battle he waged so fiercely on earth into the Home we all long for.
As Lausanne 4 approaches, I want to pay tribute to this champion of wholistic or integrated ministry. His work and the model he created uniquely combined evangelism and social responsibility in ways that changed the lives of millions of rural poor, bringing individuals to faith in Christ while lifting their communities out of cycles of poverty and disease. He wasn’t part of the elite discussions about the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility at the First International Congress on World Evangelism in 1974 in Lausanne. Nor was he part of the Grand Rapids gathering in 1982 where, under the chairmanship of John Stott, the commitment to evangelism and social responsibility was codified as an evangelical commitment. However, after Lausanne and before Grand Rapids he went to work in the trenches figuring out how to appropriately carry out wholistic ministry in meaningful ways. In my estimation, he has done as much to promote wholistic missions in the evangelical church as any church leader from 1974 to the present day.
Here’s the back story. After the Lausanne Conference, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, asked businessman Stan Rowland to draft a proposal for a ministry that would integrate curative care, health education, community development, and spiritual growth. This document, drafted in 1978, was the beginning of the development of a strategy that would bring Gospel-driven transformation to the poor and unreached. Stan named the strategy Community Health Evangelism, or CHE.
In the decades to come, Stan’s work and the ministry model that he created would span the globe, touching the lives of villagers all over the world and sparking the imagination of the church at every turn. CHE ministries emerged on every continent, moving the church beyond projects in a single village to transformational movements sweeping the globe.
We have no way of measuring how many lives have been touched by CHE ministries. We do know, however, that God used Stan Rowland to catalyze Christ-Centered movements of change that have multiplied disciples, planted churches, and transformed impoverished communities around the world. We also know that members of the Global CHE Network represent more than 400 organizations and almost 65,000 workers doing CHE ministry in 115 countries and more than 7,000 communities. That is quite the Kingdom legacy!
We celebrate Stan’s life today – a life well lived. We thank God for his vision and leadership. As the Global CHE Network, we take up his mantle, committing ourselves to ministries that change the lives of the rural poor forever.
Sincerely,
Terry Dalrymple, Coordinator, Global CHE Network
Father of the Community Health Evangelism Movement
July 27,1936 to September 12, 2024
On September 12, 2024, Stan Rowland made the transition from the Kingdom battle he waged so fiercely on earth into the Home we all long for.
As Lausanne 4 approaches, I want to pay tribute to this champion of wholistic or integrated ministry. His work and the model he created uniquely combined evangelism and social responsibility in ways that changed the lives of millions of rural poor, bringing individuals to faith in Christ while lifting their communities out of cycles of poverty and disease. He wasn’t part of the elite discussions about the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility at the First International Congress on World Evangelism in 1974 in Lausanne. Nor was he part of the Grand Rapids gathering in 1982 where, under the chairmanship of John Stott, the commitment to evangelism and social responsibility was codified as an evangelical commitment. However, after Lausanne and before Grand Rapids he went to work in the trenches figuring out how to appropriately carry out wholistic ministry in meaningful ways. In my estimation, he has done as much to promote wholistic missions in the evangelical church as any church leader from 1974 to the present day.
Here’s the back story. After the Lausanne Conference, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, asked businessman Stan Rowland to draft a proposal for a ministry that would integrate curative care, health education, community development, and spiritual growth. This document, drafted in 1978, was the beginning of the development of a strategy that would bring Gospel-driven transformation to the poor and unreached. Stan named the strategy Community Health Evangelism, or CHE.
In the decades to come, Stan’s work and the ministry model that he created would span the globe, touching the lives of villagers all over the world and sparking the imagination of the church at every turn. CHE ministries emerged on every continent, moving the church beyond projects in a single village to transformational movements sweeping the globe.
We have no way of measuring how many lives have been touched by CHE ministries. We do know, however, that God used Stan Rowland to catalyze Christ-Centered movements of change that have multiplied disciples, planted churches, and transformed impoverished communities around the world. We also know that members of the Global CHE Network represent more than 400 organizations and almost 65,000 workers doing CHE ministry in 115 countries and more than 7,000 communities. That is quite the Kingdom legacy!
We celebrate Stan’s life today – a life well lived. We thank God for his vision and leadership. As the Global CHE Network, we take up his mantle, committing ourselves to ministries that change the lives of the rural poor forever.
Sincerely,
Terry Dalrymple, Coordinator, Global CHE Network