IVP - Behind the Books - July 2009 Archives

In Memoriam: Marie Little

There are only a few legends in contemporary Christian publishing. Paul Little was certainly one. His books How to Give Away Your Faith and Know Why You Believe (which Christianity Today includes in a list of the fifty most influential books in modern evangelicalism) have sold consistently since their release in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His work with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization helped to set a course for ministry and discipleship for the global village. Countless evangelists and apologists working today point to Paul as a major influence. His premature death in 1975 didn't so much cut short his influence as anchor it, so that his timeless insights into the resonance of the gospel forever reflect the tone and spirit of a missionary to the Vietnam era, a twenty-year stretch that watched hope and defiance give way slowly to disillusionment.

Unlike some of my colleagues in InterVarsity, I never encountered Paul, but I had lots of interactions with his wife. Paul's books have never been out of print, in part because Marie was so fastidious in her efforts to keep them current, to run them through the gauntlet of a seemingly ever-increasing critique of Christianity from the outside. Just last year she and I corresponded repeatedly about re-releasing the lesser-known but still seminal Know What You Believe, and her carefully edited collection of his insights into Know[ing] Who You Believe. Not only did she keep all these books strategic over three-plus decades, she kept herself current with the ongoing discussion of how Christian faith contends with intellectual integrity and articulates itself to a generation effectively inoculated against Christian culture.

It must be tough to be married to a legend--even tougher to be a legend's widow. Beyond Paul's writings, he innovated outreach to international students and proclamation evangelism on Spring Break initiatives and the like. Marie was right there with him, helping to shape the nature and scope of their ministry. After his death Marie became intimately involved at Willow Creek Community Church, the architect of the seeker-sensitive paradigm in church ministry; there she helped countless women and men get a practical foothold in disciplines that support growth in love of God and neighbor. Even at her retirement community she's been a force to be reckoned with. Still, her chief ministry since Paul's death was as a sort of archivist of his name and canon, a role that demands a remarkable humility and a love that is stronger than death.

Last year Marie came to visit the Press. Well into her eighties, she had weak eyes and ears but a charisma that immediately won over her audience and a commitment to the gospel that wowed the room. People still talk about it now and then. Marie earned her own legendary status that day among the many people here who weren't even born when Paul died, people who don't even know how much the Littles have influenced the practice of their faith.

I will miss the occasional phone call from Marie, inquiring sheepishly about the ongoing impact of those books she'd so painstakingly stewarded for the second half of her life, chatting casually about the challenges of getting older and the joy of discipling her peers and understudies, ending each call with the sort of salutation that would sound contrived and cliched if you weren't convinced by her life that she believed it wholeheartedly: "God is good, my friend."