Evangelist and author Anne Graham Lotz recounted her grandfather's 25 years of medical missionary service in China and urged Christians to renew their gospel commitment.
Lotz, granddaughter of Dr. L. Nelson Bell and daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, addressed a September 23 online gathering co-hosted by the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and the World Chinese Christianity Alliance (WCA).
The gathering marked the WEA's 180th anniversary and looked ahead to the 220th anniversary of Protestant missions in China in 2027. Under the theme "From Legacy to Horizon: Learning from Pioneers, Mobilizing for 2033," it included presentations on Robert Morrison, James Hudson Taylor, and Bell.
WCA General Secretary Rev. Ezekiel Tan introduced the segment on Bell as illustrating "the gospel through medical excellence and holistic mercy." Lotz was joined by her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright, Bell's great-granddaughter.
Lotz opened by greeting WEA Secretary General Rev. Botrus Mansour and congratulated the WEA on its 180 years of work.
She then turned to her grandfather, who began serving at the Love and Mercy Hospital in Tsingkiangpu, in present-day Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, in 1916. Lotz said he went on to run the hospital, which she described as having 300 beds. He and his wife, married only six weeks, traveled from Seattle by freighter to Shanghai and then along the Grand Canal to Tsingkiangpu, where Bell's wife, a nurse, established a women's clinic. The couple served in China for 25 years, until the Japanese invasion forced them to leave in 1941.
Lotz said she was raised on stories and traditions from her grandparents' years in China, Chinese meals every Sunday night, learning to use chopsticks before a fork, and Mandarin spoken in the house whenever her grandparents wanted to talk privately.
"I was raised loving China, loving the Chinese people," she said.
Reflecting on her grandfather's life, Lotz drew on Romans 1:1, where Paul describes himself as "a servant of Christ Jesus." She said Bell, too, was called first to a relationship with Jesus Christ, before his calling to medicine, to China, or even to marriage and fatherhood, and only then to the purpose of making Christ known.
Bell had been an outstanding scholar and athlete who signed a contract to play baseball for the Baltimore Orioles before giving it up for medical school and missionary service, she said. At his 300-bed hospital, he made sure every patient heard the gospel: those well enough to walk attended daily chapel, while a chaplain visited patients confined to their beds.
Lotz recalled hearing stories throughout her childhood of lives changed through her grandfather's ministry, including that of "Wang Nani," the nanny who helped raise her mother, a woman Lotz said had once trafficked children for sex before hearing the gospel and being forgiven.
In 1988, Lotz, her mother and her sisters traveled to Huaiyin as guests of the Chinese government; they visited the house where her mother had been raised, since converted into a church, whose pastor told them he personally knew more than 200,000 local people who had come to faith through her father's and grandfather's ministry. She also described being approached in a Beijing hotel by a woman who, years earlier, had been prayed over by Bell after struggling to conceive, and who had returned to show him the child later born to her.
Turning to her central appeal, Lotz said Bell had told her that every patient he treated would eventually die. "So that's sort of a sobering thought, isn't it?" she said. "We can feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and clothe the naked… but every single person is still going to step into eternity." She summarized the gospel with John 3:16, stressing that God's love extends equally to the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Japanese, European, African and American peoples, and that salvation comes through Jesus alone.
She recalled her own conversion at age seven, eight or nine, after watching a television depiction of the crucifixion, adding: "Because God doesn't have grandchildren, does he? Just because I'm L. Nelson Bell's granddaughter or Billy Graham's daughter doesn't mean that I'm a child of God. I had to make that decision for myself, and so do you."
She then issued her challenge to the two alliances: "You recommit yourselves to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because you can do all sorts of wonderful things around the world, and everybody you serve and help is going to die, and they're going to step into eternity." She closed her remarks by leading viewers in a prayer of commitment to Christ, inviting anyone watching who had never done so to confess their sin and receive Jesus "in the person of the Holy Spirit."
Lotz then invited her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright, whom she introduced as a Bible teacher continuing the family's legacy, to close in prayer for China. Wright thanked God for her great-grandparents' 25 years of service, and prayed that God would "empower people to tell people about Jesus" and draw people to himself "while there's still time."
