J. Harold DeVilbiss (1926-2013)
Adapted from an article written by James O. Combs, former editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune, with updates and additions by Keith Bassham
Texas-born on December 22, 1926, in San Antonio, TX, Harold was originally given the name Curtis Lee because his mother didn’t think he would live very long. A few months later she changed his name to John Harold. His mother was a godly woman who nurtured her youngest son with the Word of God. At the age of 12, Harold accepted the Lord as Savior. His father, Thomas, was away from home working in the oil fields of Mexico from 1920 until 1924, only seldom showing up for a few days with his family. Saved as a lad, Harold was a Southern Baptist for several years, attending Sunday school and church regularly.
In early 1943, a defining event occurred that would change his life immediately and set him on the road to a glorious life as an ambassador of our heavenly King in Mexico.
His mother took Harold with her from San Antonio, TX, where they lived, to visit relatives in Tyler. While there, they were in the Fundamental Baptist Church (later named Central Baptist Church), pastored by a fiery, evangelistic 30-year-old courageous and crusading preacher, John W. Rawlings.
They liked what they heard. Asking Pastor Rawlings where they could get Bible preaching like that, he suggested they attend the Huisache Baptist Church, a congregation founded by Louis Entzminger, a coworker with the redoubtable J. Frank Norris, and pastored by Luther B. Osborne at the time. One service in the San Antonio church was enough. They joined and became “Fundamental Baptists.”
During the summer of 1943, Harold, who had worked after school at a Winn’s 5 and 10-cent store near Hawthorne Junior High School, dropped by to see his fellow employees. He met another teenager who was also serving the Lord. Through Harold’s invitation to a revival at Huisache, and later hearing G. Beauchamp Vick of the mammoth Temple Baptist Church of Detroit on a July Sunday morning, Harold’s friend, Jimmy Combs, moved his letter from the prestigious First Baptist Church and cast his lot with the fundamental Baptist movement. Both went through Brackenridge High School in San Antonio together and remained lifelong friends.
Harold was licensed to preach at the Huisache church in 1943, and he was ordained in July the following year. He was only 17 years old. After graduating from high school in May of 1945, through a series of unusual circumstances, Harold received a catalog from Kansas City Bible College and followed the Lord’s leadership to enroll in the fall of 1945. He studied there a full year, and Combs followed him in January.
They attended and taught Sunday school at the three-year-old Kansas City Baptist Temple, founded by Wendell Zimmerman, and worked on the church staff for a time at the rapidly growing church, which was running around 300 in attendance.
In the summer of 1946, Zimmerman called Harold aside and asked if he was, indeed, called to the mission field of Mexico. Zimmerman said the church had accumulated several thousand dollars in a missions fund since they started, with the prayer that God would send an independent Baptist missionary they could commission and support on a foreign field.
Harold knew this was God’s will for his life. Though he was only 19 years old and single, he was enthusiastically supported by the congregation. He left Kansas City, pausing to visit his parents, where his father had begun farming in Pearsall, TX, and crossed the Rio Grande.
On June 13, 1946, Harold began his ministry. Learning the language and working with some other Baptist Mexican nationals, he found a wonderful response to his ministry and message among the Mexicans. By 1958 he had established 12 churches on the eastern coast of the country, beginning in Tampico.
Well received by the Mexican people, Harold was known by the Mexicans as “Geraldo” or Gerald, since the American/English name is not used in Spanish. He met and married Connie Muñoz (Ramirez), a very talented Christian girl from a prominent family in the Madero church.
In 1950, DeVilbiss was taking his first furlough traveling over America. He was present in Fort Worth for the founding meeting of the Baptist Bible Fellowship in the Texas hotel, casting his vote and aligning himself not only with his sending church in Kansas City, but with Fred Donnelson and the new movement.
DeVilbiss’s work as a young pioneer of independent Baptist missionary work in Mexico has been recognized in the Southern Baptist publication, A Century of Baptist Work in Mexico. The author, Frank Patterson, writes,
“Since the 1880s, numerous Baptists have gone to Mexico as missionaries without support from a mission board … But early in the early 1940s a group (later known as) the Baptist Bible Fellowship, sent Rev. J. Harold DeVilbiss to work in the State of Taumilipas with headquarters in Ciudad Madero, Taumilipas. Rev. Jose Bueno, an aggressive young pastor in Cuidad Mante and Limon, visited the Kansas City Baptist Temple of Missouri, whose pastor, Rev. Wendell Zimmermann, offered economic support. Later the two churches led by Bueno separated from the SBC … J. Harold DeVilbiss, representative of the Baptist Bible Fellowship had held conferences in Ciudad Madero …”
As a result of these contacts (and an earlier contemporary movement, formed in 1944 and called Fundamental Baptist Mission, launched by Luther B. Osborne from San Antonio) there were churches in Saltillo, Raices, and other places. DeVilbiss founded his first major church in Tampico, where he served for many years.
The Baptist Bible Fellowship of Mexico was founded by 24-year-old Harold, in Mante, January 9-11, 1951. The Fellowship was composed of the pastors and churches of Mante and Limon, DeVilbiss’s churches at Cuidad Madero and Tampico, and a church at Gonzales, together with six other missions. By 1953, the Saltillo and Raices churches were added to the Fellowship and by 1956 there were 18 churches, five of them started by DeVilbiss. By that year DeVilbiss and his colleagues had founded a Bible institute, organized a women’s society, conducted encampments, and formed a youth association.
This indigenous work done by and through nationals caused Frank Patterson to write, “The Convention’s losses were small and temporary, but confrontation with the independent movement made a profound impression on the leadership. Immediate emphasis was given to dependence upon the Holy Spirit, respect for the local church was manifest, and it was realized that if the Convention wanted its own institutions they must be supported nationally …”
In the 1950s, Harold and Connie settled down to build a church in Tampico. Following a disastrous hurricane that demolished their meeting place, they built a new auditorium to accommodate several hundred.
Fine music became a trademark of the DeVilbiss family. During the 1950s four children were born to the dedicated Christian couple. They formed a musical team, enlisting a dozen other Mexican musicians to become a singing and playing orchestra, touring both Mexico and the United States to promote missions. The family itself became a very talented musical combo. All four children — John, Thomas, Annita and Danny — are skilled musicians.
Today, all four are active in Christian work. The eldest son, John DeVilbiss (Ph.D. Stanford University) became a geologist, promoting biblical creationism in seminars and lectures. Tom and his wife Robin work in Edo De Mexico; Ed Hoagland and Annita DeVilbiss Hoagland are in Mexico City; and Danny is a teacher in an exclusive school in the capital. The Hoaglands and the Tom DeVilbisses have served the Lord at the great Mexico City church.
As mentioned, DeVilbiss received his education at Calvary Bible College (formerly KCBC) back in the 1940s, and then continued to study through Moody Bible Institute’s external studies program. In the late 1980s, he completed a B.A. degree from Louisiana Baptist University. In 1981, he was honored for his 35 years in the ministry with a Doctor of Divinity degree from Baptist Bible College of Springfield, MO.
DeVilbiss served as president (the first) of the BBF in Mexico, founder and leader of the Latin American Bible College, a church planter, pastor, and evangelist. Thousands of people have come to Christ through his far-reaching ministry. Scores have gone from the States to Mexico, resulting in multitudes coming to Christ, hundreds of young Mexicans being trained for Christian ministries, and about 70 men and women out of the DeVilbiss ministry are serving in full-time ministry. Today the BBFI has mission points all over Mexico, largely due to the ministry of Harold DeVilbiss.
Most of his years in Mexico were spent in Mexico City, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world where he led Fundamental Baptist Church. In his latter years, Harold assumed the deserved role of a distinguished elder statesman, still temporarily pastoring churches needing special attention, conducting mission conferences and seminars, speaking in the college, and occasionally visiting churches in the U.S.A.
For more than six decades, DeVilbiss served on the mission field with dedication and distinction. He faced persecution, survived a nearly fatal automobile accident, wrestled with the powers of darkness, and emerged a dynamic overcomer and a revered leader. For length of missionary tenure, for consistent consecrated ministry, for such abundant spiritual fruit and long-lasting results, he and Connie set an inspiring example, not often seen, for the present and next generation.
The first memorial service for the missionary was held Sunday evening, December 15, in the last church he planted in Mexico City. More than 300 people attended, and many shared their hearts and stories about his ministry to them personally. A second memorial took place the morning of Monday, December 16, at Capital Baptist Church in Mexico City (one of the many churches he founded). That afternoon, the body of Harold DeVilbiss was buried at a cemetery in Mexico, among those he served for more than 67 years.