SBCOutpost

Mrs. Bobbye Rankin, wife of International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin, is truly a first lady. Dr. and Mrs. Rankin were appointed as Southern Baptist foreign missionaries to Southeast Asia in 1970, where they served in various capacities until 1993, when the Lord called them stateside to lead the International Mission Board. The Rankins have two children, both of whom have been appointed for overseas mission work, and currently reside in Richmond, VA.

Recently, the SBCOutpost team discovered an article about Mrs. Rankin that was written by her son, Russ, and we think it provides an incredibly intimate picture of his mother’s character and commitment to serve the Lord. We’re sure you’ll understand why we decided to reproduce Russ Rankin’s article about his mother when you read it.

She is a model homemaker, a faithful witness, a gentle servant, a godly complement to her husband, and an example to her children. Thank you, Russ, for capturing the remarkable influence your mother has had in your life in a these brief words. And thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for being the kind of woman after whom young ladies — missionaries, pastors’ wives, and laywomen — can pattern their ministries.

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RUSS RANKIN’S ARTICLE ABOUT HIS MOTHER: I was about 6 or 7 when the old beggar began coming to our house. To my young eyes, he looked older than Methuselah.

Wrinkles ran craters down his dark, sun scorched face and his sunken cheekbones accentuated a toothless mouth. I would hear him coming down the driveway, leaning heavily on a stick he used for a cane. His eyes, clouded with age, had practically failed him and he tapped his way to our door with his stick, laboriously feeling out the path of his slow trudge.

We were the only foreigners in that town in Indonesia where my family served as missionaries in the early 1970s. Perhaps he thought that by sitting on our doorstep he would receive a sympathetic handout.

He never spoke a word to my mother, who would come out to acknowledge him with a beaming smile and respectful greeting. It was not money that she brought him; it was a cool, wet washcloth that she used as she knelt before him to clean his hands and bare feet, blistered and dirty, covered with sores from exposure and lack of proper attention.

Each time as I watched, she would bring a cold glass of water for him to drink and then she would softly speak to him about how precious he was to the Father, a Redeemer who offered a provision of saving mercy and grace from this world of pain and loneliness.

Later, when our family lived in Bangkok, Thailand, she learned to speak Thai so she could minister to Thai students in Bangkok. It was not uncommon for our home to serve as a meeting place for young men and women who were drawn by my mother’s spirit of hospitality and ministry. Eventually, many of them came to know Christ.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Scripture says in that day the righteous will plead ignorance, claiming they never saw Christ in those situations. To that, the Lord says, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

Throughout her many years on the mission field, my mother continues to live her life being the hands and feet of Jesus. She used her gifts to teach her children at home, she has led women in countless English classes and introduced them to the Savior, and she ministers tirelessly alongside my dad as they worked together to support missionaries who plant churches among unreached people groups.

Today, my mother is known as a woman of the Word. Scores of missionaries around the world have been encouraged and inspired – as I have – by my mother’s example of committing vast portions of Scripture passages to memory, not as much as a faith-discipline, but as a way of aligning their lives to the heart of the Father.