Otis Gatewood (1911–1999) was a well-known

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as ...

and

missionary A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

in Churches of Christ. Gatewood's work helped spur on the surge of domestic and foreign missions efforts of Churches of Christ that followed World War II. He was perhaps best known for his efforts in Europe; seeing thousands of

Mormon missionaries Missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)—widely known as Mormon missionaries—are volunteer representatives of the church who engage variously in proselytizing, church service, humanitarian aid, and commu ...

return to America from

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during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

made him distressed that there were apparently no preachers of the Churches of Christ working there, so after the war ended he went to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

and preached there for ten years. Gatewood's book ''You Can Do Personal Work'' was for many years one of the best known books on personal evangelism in Churches of Christ. In 2013 the '' Lubbock Avalanche-Journal'' reported a 1992 meeting between Gatewood and Mikhail Gorbachev. In the context of the meeting Gatewood had accompanied food shipments to Russian orphans and elderly people from Churches of Christ in Texas. During the meeting Gorbachev claimed that he was "indeed a Christian and had been baptized by his grandfather in the Volga River many years before."

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Eulogy and biography
1911 births 1999 deaths American members of the Churches of Christ Ministers of the Churches of Christ {{Christianity-bio-stub