Thomas "Tommy" Tyson (1922—2002)
Country of Origin
-
United States
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- United States
Traditions
- United Methodist
- Charismatic
Ministries
- Christian businessman
- Pastor, itinerant speaker
Thomas Tyson was the son of a Methodist minister and brother of five more Methodist ministers. In 1952, he was a young pastor of Bethany Methodist Church in Durham, North Carolina when he got baptized in the Holy Spirit through the influence of a scholarly but deeply spiritual acquaintance. When he told his parishioners what had happened to him, they were not entirely positive. Tyson soon scheduled a meeting with his superiors.
He described the situation to Bishop Paul Garber, stating: “If no more than I have now is causing this kind of a reaction, there’s no telling what will happen if the Lord really gets hold of me.” Maybe, he speculated, he should just go back to being a layman. “I am already packed,” he said. But the bishop shook his head. “Now you just go back and unpack that bag,” the older man replied. “You’re not going anyplace. We need you. We want you. But you need us, too.” Both men had read enough Methodist history to know that faith was more than head knowledge and tradition. Hadn’t the eighteenth-century founder, John Wesley, written in his journal about prayer meetings where “the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground”?
Two years later, in 1954, Tyson completed a Master of Divinity at Duke University and was formally appointed as a conference evangelist. His iconically hearty laugh and folksy manner won over many as he travelled and spoke at spiritual retreats. But there was a serious side to him as well; he drew much from Quaker devotional classics to teach about “listening prayer.”
An international prayer movement called Camps Farthest Out invited him often to lead events. It was at one of these, in 1963, that he met the healing minister Oral Roberts. The two struck up a friendship with Roberts asking Tyson to be the inaugural chaplain of a new university he was opening in Tulsa. Tyson's bishop approved, so in 1965, Tyson guided the spiritual formation of hundreds of Christian students at Oral Roberts University. An online tribute from a former student testifies that “His [Tyson's] broad smile and bellowing laugh would melt ice in Alaska. He was disarmingly warm and gracious to everyone, but became a lion in the pulpit, challenging young Christians to a deeper relationship with Christ…. I had the honor of seeing Tommy up close his last year at ORU. He was a great man of faith and a spiritual father to so many.”
In 1968, Tyson and his wife, Frances, returned to their roots in North Carolina. They established a Christian retreat facility called Aquaduct Conference Center. When not ministering there, Tyson resumed his travels, leading spiritual healing conferences alongside various ministers including medical doctors and Catholic clergy. Even the Methodist bishop of Cuba requested Tyson to come to minister, but Fidel Castro prohibited it. The dictator's reason, he said, was that Tyson would bring the Holy Spirit to that island nation and he didn’t want it.
In 1983, the National Association of United Methodist Evangelists (NAUME) honored Tyson with its distinguished “Philip Award” in recognition of his influence across the denomination and beyond. He left his mark on such well-known pilgrims as Ruth Carter Stapleton (evangelist and sister of U.S. President Jimmy Carter), Fr. Francis and Judith MacNutt, and author Madeleine L’Engle. So wide was his reach that, upon his death at age eighty, United Methodist theologian William Cannon said, “Tommy was better known in Rome than in Raleigh.” His winsome manner and gentle spirit assured thousands of Charismatics that their walk in the Spirit's fullness did not need to push them away from their ecclesiastical heritage.
Further Reading
- "Listen to Tommy Tyson Messages," https://www.tommytyson.org/media.