Dick Hillis

The Boy Who Stole Money to Go to China

Dick Hillis was born in 1913 in British Columbia, Canada, and later moved with his family to Washington State in the United States. He was born into a Christian family and heard the gospel from childhood; his mother prayed constantly for him and his twin brother, yet he never accepted it. As a boy he was set on getting rich. He worked at a local grocery store and worked out a plan: steal the money from the cash register, take a train to the coast under the pretext of visiting relatives, and then board a ship to China to make his fortune. The first steps of the plan succeeded and he reached the docks—but he was too young to board the ship bound for China. Penniless, his hopes of riches gone, he had no choice but to go home. What waited for him at home was grace: the store owner did not hand him over to the law, but let him work to repay the money he had stolen.

Coming to Faith at Biola

Later he decided to go to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola) to study alongside his twin brother. It was there that he was saved by God and gave his life to Christ—turning from a troublemaking boy into a faithful servant. As his relationship with God grew, he began to sense a call to mission in China. At first he resisted: precisely because of the way he had once regarded China, he had to be sure that it was truly God calling him and not his own selfish desire to go. Yet the call did not fade. He began missionary training. In 1933 he set out for China as the youngest missionary ever accepted by the China Inland Mission.

A Retreat for Failed Missionaries

On the voyage he suffered from loneliness and anxiety, because he knew no Chinese and could not talk with the people on board; after he arrived in Shanghai, the unfamiliar city left him even more at a loss. He first took language classes and was then sent to the countryside of Henan. His field was settled, but loneliness and self-doubt still clung to him. He preached the gospel to people in Henan, yet felt he was making no progress at all in the kingdom of God. Hearing that there was a retreat nearby "for failed missionaries," he went—having already planned to give up. What encouraged him was this: other missionaries, too, often felt that they were failures before the Lord. He decided to change his strategy.

Fishers of Men

After returning to Henan he gained a Chinese co-worker, Brother Kong (孔弟兄), a godly servant. Once, while Dick was preaching, cries for help came from the village: someone was possessed by an evil spirit and might harm himself at any moment. Brother Kong, unhurried, began singing hymns and reciting Scripture; Dick, struck by his trust in the Lord, joined in. Through this he saw the power of God with his own eyes, and his heart was set alight again. Meditating on Matthew 4:19, he came to understand that he needed to make "fishers of men," and not merely to proclaim the gospel. To this end he designed a discipleship program, spending several months training together with the farmers of Henan, rooting them in the Bible and teaching them to disciple others—a method that later became the mark of his lifelong ministry. He also married Margaret, whom he had met at Biola, and the two stayed on together through the turmoil of war: neighbouring villages were plundered and diseases came and went, but their obedience never wavered. While the Communists controlled the village, he met a Communist army lieutenant—a man who knew that storming the city wall meant certain death, yet was willing to die for it because he was convinced of his ideology, even if it advanced them only one mile. Dick asked himself: how far am I willing to go to spread God's message?

Soong Mei-ling's Appeal

In May 1950, because of the war, he and his family were forced to leave China and return to the United States. On the way home he was anxious about the road ahead—China was home. For a time he thought of becoming a professor, so as to give his family a steady income in Washington State, where he had grown up. But God had other plans. That July he was invited to a week-long missions conference in Indiana. As the conference drew to a close, a man announced that they had received an appeal from Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Mei-ling (宋美龄): she was asking for the hope of the gospel for the officers and soldiers in Taiwan, worn out in body and mind after the war. Dick had lived through the war in China and had no intention of going back, but God seemed to be calling him. He asked God for three confirmations; one after another, God provided two co-workers for him, as well as financial support for himself and his family. The three flew to Taiwan. The sight of thousands of officers and soldiers responding to the gospel filled them with great joy—after a disastrous war these men came to love the God who gives peace and courage. But the soldiers spoke Mandarin and the local churches spoke Taiwanese, so discipleship became a problem; they adapted the correspondence courses of The Navigators to cope with such large numbers. In Taiwan he worked alongside the Canadian missionaries James and Lillian Dickson (孙雅各夫妇)—a couple who for many years had devoted themselves to improving sanitary conditions in Taiwan, from leprosy clinics to maternity wards to kindergartens, and who were known for truly loving the people of Taiwan. When the three-month trip ended, Dick returned to the United States with a heart that beat for Taiwan; he saw that for more than seven million Taiwanese a handful of missionaries was not enough, and that local people had to be mobilised. He later obtained funding and founded the mission agency Overseas Crusades (福临中华), carrying on the method he had learned in Henan of "making fishers of men." He died in 2005.