Daisy Washburn Osborn
(1924—1995)

Country of Origin

United States

Countries/Regions of Ministry

United States
Global

Traditions

Pentecostal
Charismatic
Independent

Ministries

Missionary
Healing evangelist
International ministry leader

Daisy Washburn Osborn was a Pentecostal evangelist, missionary, author, teacher, administrator, and international Christian leader whose ministry extended across more than five decades of the twentieth century. Together with her husband and ministry partner, T. L. Osborn, she helped develop a model of large-scale outdoor evangelism that combined gospel proclamation, prayer for the sick, literature and media distribution, and the equipping of indigenous Christian workers.

Daisy Osborn's historical importance extends beyond her marriage to a prominent evangelist. She herself preached internationally, exercised executive leadership, coordinated large-scale evangelistic crusades, wrote extensively on Christian identity and the role of women, and helped shape the missionary strategy of Osborn Ministries International. Records note her serving the President and CEO of the organization as well as her substantial responsibilities in its international work. Her life is therefore significant within the overlapping histories of the globalization of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, women's leadership within twentieth-century Spirit-empowered Christianity, and the development of large-scale international evangelism.

Daisy Marie Washburn was born September 23, 1924, in Merced, California. She was the tenth of eleven children and grew up in economically difficult circumstances. As a teenager she met Tommy Lee Osborn, a young Pentecostal evangelist. They married in Los Banos, California, in 1942, when Daisy was seventeen and T. L. was eighteen, beginning a ministry partnership that would continue until her death in 1995.

Their early missionary experience in India in 1945 became formative for both of them. The young couple returned to the United States dissatisfied with their ability to communicate Christianity convincingly within a non-Christian environment. The experience encouraged a theological and missionary reorientation. The Osborns became persuaded that the proclamation of Jesus Christ should be accompanied by the kinds of signs and healings described in the New Testament. This conviction led them away from US-based ministry and toward international Mass Miracle Evangelism.

In 1949, T. L. and Daisy conducted an extended evangelistic mission in Jamaica. The campaign became foundational to the international model they subsequently developed. Large outdoor crusades, direct gospel preaching, prayer for the sick, public testimonies, and an emphasis upon the resurrection of Jesus became characteristics of their ministry.

In the following decades, the Osborns conducted evangelistic crusades throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, ultimately extending to more than one hundred nations. Daisy assumed responsibilities throughout that went considerably beyond those normally associated with the wife of an evangelist in the mid-twentieth century: she preached, taught, wrote, and organized. She directed Mass Miracle Evangelism and administrated global mission outreaches. Her responsibilities included all the complex work necessary to conduct international crusades involving government permissions, negotiation, transportation, venues, advertising, finances, literature, personnel, communications, local church relationships, and national ministry leaders. She also met with heads of state and government officials, aided by her ability to communicate in French and Spanish.

Her administrative role is historically important because large-scale evangelistic events were not produced solely by the preacher standing on a platform. They required extensive transnational networks of pastors, governments, transportation systems, translators, publishers, technicians, local organizers, and financial supporters. Daisy led and operated within that infrastructure. She was a wife and mother, yet her leadership challenged the assumption that women associated with prominent male evangelists functioned primarily in supportive domestic capacities.

She instead provided an important example of husband-and-wife partnership within twentieth-century Pentecostal missions. Although T. L. became the more publicly recognizable name, together, Daisy and T. L. built a ministry encompassing evangelism, international relationships, missions strategy, indigenous leadership development, and administration. Their shared convictions were that the gospel should be communicated to every person, supernatural signs should point people toward the living Christ, and those who received the gospel should themselves become witnesses. The evangelistic crusade could come and go; the gospel and the national witness were intended to remain. Daisy helped translate these convictions into functioning international programs.

She worked with T. L. in authoring Modern Miracles in Mombasa and their autobiography, The Gospel According to T. L. & Daisy, published in 1985. Her own books combined biblical teaching with practical themes of personal responsibility, dignity, purpose, courage, and decision-making. Her writings concerning women were particularly concerned with identity. Rather than defining women primarily by social position or traditional roles, Daisy repeatedly directed attention toward the individual's relationship with Christ and the possibilities she believed followed from redemption. Her message was therefore both theological and practical: understand one's identity in Christ, recognize one's God-given dignity and ability, and act upon that knowledge.

Her publishing ministry also reflected the broader Osborn commitment to multiplication. Books and teaching materials could continue communicating biblical principles after a conference had ended and could cross geographical boundaries that the author herself could not continually traverse.

A central feature of the Osborn missionary philosophy was the conviction that Christians within a nation were capable of evangelizing their own people. This represented an important movement away from missionary models that could leave Western workers permanently at the center of Christian activity. Daisy and T. L. increasingly invested in national pastors, evangelists, soul winners, and church planters who already possessed the language and cultural knowledge necessary to communicate within their own communities. Osborn Ministries provided financial assistance to both women and men, as trained national preachers through what became known as the National Missionary Assistance Program.

For Daisy personally, it meant investing in women who could develop ministries within their own nations and cultures. In 1976, Daisy traveled to Nigeria with her daughter, LaDonna, and Daisy Guillock in connection with the developing women's ministry associated with Margaret and Benson Idahosa. The relationship is historically significant because Margaret Idahosa subsequently became an influential Pentecostal leader in Nigeria and internationally. Daisy worked with Margaret during the formative development of Christian Women's Fellowship International and subsequently served as a spiritual advisor to the organization until her death.

Her international experiences exposed her to women living under dramatically different cultural, economic, religious, and social conditions. She increasingly addressed questions of women's dignity, identity, calling, spiritual authority, and capacity for Christian ministry. Her teaching was grounded in a theological conviction that redemption restored human dignity and that the Holy Spirit's gifts and calling were not restricted by gender. This emphasis became increasingly visible in her books, preaching, seminars, and women's conferences. Beyond writing, she encouraged women to preach, lead, evangelize, and recognize their capacity for Christian service. Her message was not that women should simply imitate male models of ministry. Rather, her teaching emphasized the spiritual dignity and potential of each believer, including women, to respond directly to God's calling.

This dimension of her ministry is particularly important within the broader history of Pentecostalism. Women had exercised substantial roles in early Pentecostal evangelism and missions, but institutional developments within parts of the movement sometimes narrowed the leadership opportunities available to them. Daisy's ministry deliberately affirmed women's participation, including in international contexts.

Ultimately, Daisy's work demonstrates the breadth of skills required to build and sustain a twentieth-century international evangelistic ministry. Histories of revival movements naturally focus upon sermons, crowds, conversions, and reported miracles. Yet the infrastructure supporting international religious movements can be equally consequential. Daisy participated in radio ministry, conferences, seminars, publishing, and Mass Miracle Evangelism crusades. She interacted with church leaders, national Christian leaders, and public officials, to help coordinate ministry across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries.

Daisy Washburn Osborn died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 27, 1995 at the age of seventy. Her death ended more than five decades of ministry partnership with T. L., but her influence continued through the organizations, national leaders, literature, missionary strategies, and women she had helped develop.

LaDonna C. Osborn

Osborn Ministries International

For Further Reading:

Osborn, Daisy. 5 Choices for Women Who Win. Tulsa, OK: OSFO Publishers. Later editions by Destiny Image Publishers.
———. I Chose to Go. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
———. New Life for Women. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
———. The Woman Believer. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
———. Woman Without Limits. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
———. Women & Self Esteem. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
———. Winning With Christ. Tulsa, OK: Osborn publications.
Osborn, T. L., and Daisy Osborn. The Gospel According to T. L. & Daisy: Classic Documentary. Tulsa, OK: OSFO Books, 1985.
———. Modern Miracles in Mombasa. Tulsa, OK: Osborn ministry publication.

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