T. L. Osborn (1923—2013)

Country of Origin

United States

Countries/Regions of Ministry

United States
Global

Traditions

Pentecostal
Charismatic
Independent

Ministries

Missionary evangelist
Healing evangelist
Author and publisher

T. L. Osborn was a major figure in the post-World War II Pentecostal healing revival and expansion of Spirit-empowered Christianity in the Global South. Together with his wife and ministry partner, Daisy Washburn Osborn, he developed 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. His historical significance lies in the scale of his international campaigns and conviction that the gospel should be reproducible: converts should become witnesses, local believers should become leaders, and Christian resources should be placed into the hands of people who could carry the message farther than a visiting evangelist could go.

Tommy Lee Osborn was born December 23, 1923, in rural Pocasset, Oklahoma. Raised in a farming family, he encountered Pentecostal Christianity while young and entered evangelistic ministry during his teenage years. In 1942 he married Daisy Washburn, beginning a ministry partnership that would continue until her death in 1995.

The Osborns' early missionary experience in India in the mid-1940s became formative to their understanding of evangelism. Osborn later described confronting non-Christian religious traditions and becoming dissatisfied with a presentation of Christianity that, in his view, depended upon argument without adequately demonstrating the reality of the risen Christ. After returning to the United States, experiences in the emerging healing revival strengthened his conviction that the miracles of the New Testament should accompany gospel proclamation.

Osborn emerged within the broader postwar healing revival that reshaped US Pentecostalism during the late 1940s and 1950s. He interacted with prominent ministers associated with that movement, including Oral Roberts, William Branham, and F. F. Bosworth. In a 1982 oral-history interview, Osborn discusses these relationships, his theology of healing, and memories of his worldwide ministry.^[1]

Unlike many US healing evangelists whose principal public influence developed through domestic tent crusades, radio, or television, the Osborns increasingly directed their attention toward international evangelism. A 1949 evangelistic mission in Jamaica became formative when large numbers of people sought prayer, and reports of healing accompanied the preaching. Experiences such as these contributed to the development of the evangelistic method they would eventually carry into scores of nations, known as Mass Miracle Evangelism. Large outdoor crusades were organized, especially in non-Christianized nations where Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, traditional religions, and other faiths existed. Osborn's preaching concentrated upon Jesus Christ—particularly His death, resurrection, and continuing presence—and was followed by prayer for the sick.

Their 1957 mission in Mombasa, Kenya exemplified this approach. Mass Miracle Evangelism attracted large crowds, inspired further Osborn and associates' visits, and propated subsequent charismatic revival movements in Kenya.^[2] As the demographic center of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity shifted toward Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century, the Osborns' ministry intersected with it and the internationalization of the postwar healing revival they had been part of in the American circuit. Though healing was central and Osborn became internationally identified with it, he understood healing principally in relation to evangelism. Miracles, in his interpretation, were signs pointing to the living Christ. They were not merely for establishing belief in divine healing, but for using the expectation of New Testament signs as part of the public proclamation that Jesus Christ was alive and risen. This theology became influential in forms of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelism around the world.

Additionally, Osborn's international ministry distinguished itself from models of missions that centered primarily upon Western institutions. The evangelistic crusade was to be temporary while the gospel and the local Christian witness were to remain. Their evangelistic events were not simply US revival campaigns conducted abroad. Increasingly, Osborn emphasized that Christians within a nation should evangelize their own people. Additionally, evangelism did not belong exclusively to professional evangelists, ordained clergy, or foreign missionaries. The person who received the gospel, empowered by the Holy Spirit, could become the person who carried the gospel to someone else. This conviction developed into one of the central principles of the Osborn missionary philosophy: every believer could become a witness for Christ.

Emphasis on indigenous evangelism led to programs assisting national Christian soul winners and church planters. Through what became known as the National Missionary Assistance Program, Osborn Ministries provided financial assistance to trained national preachers—both women and men—who evangelized communities within their own countries and cultural settings. Ministry records report that more than 30,000 national missionaries were supported through this strategy.

The importance of the program was not merely numerical. It reflected a change in missionary philosophy from the assumption that an American missionary must permanently remain at the center of the work. Instead, the Osborns sought to transfer responsibility to people who already understood the language, culture, customs, and communities they were attempting to reach. The visiting evangelist could leave while the witness remained.

This principle anticipated later discussions within global Christianity concerning indigenous leadership, contextual mission, multiplication, and the decreasing dependence of expanding Christian movements upon Western missionary personnel. The Osborns were part of emphasizing that nationality, race, economic status, education, and social position did not determine a person's value before God or capacity to become a Christian witness.

In this, literature became an important component of the Osborn strategy. T. L. Osborn was a prolific author whose books addressed divine healing, evangelism, Christian identity, faith, the believer's relationship with Christ, and the responsibility of Christians to communicate the gospel. His best-known work, Healing the Sick and Casting Out Devils, appeared in 1950 through Voice of Faith Ministry in Tulsa. Bibliographic records document the 285-page first edition, and numerous later editions appeared under the shortened title Healing the Sick. The book became one of the most widely circulated works associated with the Osborn ministries and a significant text within Pentecostal teaching on divine healing.

Osborn Ministries used media systematically. Books, tracts, correspondence courses, audio recordings, films, photographs, periodicals, and, later, digital resources allowed the gospel message to continue circulating after visiting evangelists. Media therefore served the same principle as indigenous evangelism—multiplication—because a preacher reached a crowd once, but a resource in the hands of a national believer continued carrying the message. Moreover, translated and digitally reproduced resources could move beyond geographical limitations. Osborn's extensive use of reproducible media helped transform a personal evangelistic ministry into an international teaching network.

Finally, T. L. Osborn's international ministry could not be understood apart from Daisy Washburn Osborn. Their worldwide work developed as an unusually integrated husband-and-wife ministry partnership. Their shared ministry encompassed evangelism, writing and publishing, international relationships, missionary strategy, indigenous leadership development, and administration. They were a team in preaching, teaching, writing, traveling, meeting with heads of state, organizing campaigns, and managing it all.

After Daisy's death in 1995, T. L. continued to preach, teach, publish, and travel internationally, increasingly ministering alongside their daughter, LaDonna Osborn. T. L. continued in active ministry until he died in Tulsa, Oklahoma on February 14, 2013, at the age of eighty-nine. By that time, the religious world in which he had begun ministry had changed dramatically. Indigenous and nationally led churches had become central to the expansion of Christianity worldwide, particularly across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity had expanded throughout these regions, and forms of evangelism involving mass outdoor events, indigenous pastors, healing prayer, extensive media, and locally led churches had become familiar features of global Christianity. Many of these were unusual when the Osborns began using them, which testifies to the effectiveness and significance of their work.

T. L. Osborn therefore occupies an important place at the intersection of three major developments in twentieth-century Christianity: the postwar healing revival, the globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, and the movement toward indigenous evangelism and leadership in world missions.

LaDonna Osborn

Osborn Ministries International

Notes

[1] Karen Robinson and Roberts Lairdon, “Interview with T. L. Osborn,” 1982, Oral Interviews Collection, Holy Spirit Research Center, Oral Roberts University.

[2] See Allan Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001); Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, 2nd ed.

For Further Reading:

Osborn, T. L. Healing the Sick and Casting Out Devils. Tulsa, OK: Voice of Faith Ministry, 1950.
———. Healing the Sick. Tulsa, OK: T. L. Osborn Evangelistic Association. Multiple editions.
———. The Message That Works. Tulsa, OK: Osborn Ministries International.
Osborn, T. L., and Daisy Osborn. The Gospel According to T. L. & Daisy: Classic Documentary. Tulsa, OK: OSFO Books, 1985.
Osborn, T. L., and LaDonna Osborn. Soul Winning. Tulsa, OK: Osborn Ministries International.
Robinson, Karen, and Roberts Lairdon. “Interview with T. L. Osborn.” 1982. Oral Interviews Collection, Holy Spirit Research Center, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma.