Joe Cannon: Pioneering with the Gospel

Last year the Highland Church honored Joe and Betty Cannon.  Below are the remarks I made about them both.  With Joe now in his final days, I was reminded once more of God’s greatness through Joe.

Joseph L. Cannon was an unlikely figure to become a global missionary. He spent his early years in Canada in a gang. Some looking at him in his teens in the late 1930’s might have imagined a future for him in jail not a future for him in ministry. Yet, God broke into Joe’s life, changed his heart, and gave him a calling that would take Joe to four foreign mission fields and a ministry that would span more than sixty years.

Joe began preaching in 1943. In 1947, with his first wife Rosabelle, Joe’s mission work in Japan was launched. In those decades after World War II a new wave of missionaries was entering Japan. Two of the first missionaries eventually recruited a number of additional missionaries, particularly from what was then called Harding College, now Harding University. Among this new generation of missionaries was Joe Cannon. Joe once described to me his decision to go to Japan in this way: “I believe Jesus wanted me to go serve among the most unloved people I could find. And at that time, the most unloved people in America were the Japanese.” Thus, Joe and Rosabelle moved to Japan. They and their family ministered there for 24 years, baptizing thousands of individuals, planting 15 churches, and strengthening the church. Additionally, they played key roles in establishing Ibaraki Christian College, starting 4 kindergartens, and 4 orphanages.

Toby Huff, whom Joe baptized in Okinawa in 1969, wrote of his first meeting with Joe: “After my initial embarrassment and proper introduction to this wild Canadian, I thought, ‘If this man can be a missionary in God’s service then there is hope for me.’”

In 1971 Joe, Rosabelle and their family moved from Japan to Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG consisted of one large island and 600 smaller islands. The natives spoke more than 750 different languages. Joe was the first American missionary in PNG. Education became a significant tool for evangelism and several schools were started. Joe started the first one, the Melanesian Bible College in Lae, and then assisted in the establishment of other schools. Joe served with the Melanesian Bible College for thirteen years. He helped train virtually every preacher in PNG and was thus responsible for the planting of hundreds of churches in PNG.

Joe also preached in the bush in PNG. He writes of walking one day up very steep mountains to preach to a distant tribe. The hike was so difficult that even the carriers Joe had hired quit. For six hours Joe and a small group including a man named Teo toiled up the face of the mountain. Finally they reached the top, only to find no one there. Teo explained that the tribe must have run into the forests because of leaches which had appeared in that area. Joe looked down and several leaches were already attaching themselves to his leg. Teo and Joe started running back down through the dripping forest as fast as they could go. Two hours later they arrived at the bottom—bloody and bruised. Such was the work of a preacher in the bush in PNG.

In 1983 Joe and Rosabelle moved to Memphis, TN to begin a training program called Mission/1000. Hosted at the Highland Church of Christ, the Mission/1000 program aimed to recruit, train and send 1000 paramissionaries over 20 years. Hundreds of men and women were eventually trained and sent to assist mission points around the globe.

During this same time Joe and Rosabelle continued annual trips to Irian Jaya, Indonesia to establish yet another pioneer work with unreached tribes, in cooperation with the very students they had trained in Missoin/1000.

Joe wrote several books, including three reflecting on his mission work: Go For the Globe!, The Heart of The Missionary, and For Missionaries Only. For Missionaries Only was written after his years in Japan to encourage and help struggling missionaries. The Heart of The Missionary was written after his years in Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya.

Joe often engaged in his mission with less than abundant funding. He once wrote, “I have always tried to keep money from interfering with the work of the Lord…I remember one time I determined not to return to the field until we had the funds wanted. I cancelled our flight and sulked, prayed, and fasted for a week in the backyard garden of a friend until I read…scripture and decided to ‘cool it’ and get back to work. As it turned out, the grace of God provided for our needs in God’s good time and in God’s good way.” Many, many times Joe refused to let money interfere with the work of the Lord.

Joe often wrote on the theme of age and mission work. Once, he penned these words: “While there is one soul unsaved, one tribe not reached for Christ, we have work to do. Rise up, ex-missionaries, ex-preachers, you discouraged and disappointed ones. Rise out of lethargy, oil the old joints, and get back in this fight for the souls of mankind.” Elsewhere he wrote, “How old do you have to be? Ask the eighty-year-old Moses, and the twelve-year-old Josiah. Try the fifty-year-old Paul, or the twenty-year-old Timothy. The Lord placed no age limits on those He called to do His work…I celebrated my 21st birthday on the boat to Japan…We have too many heading for Senior Citizen’s Homes that ought to be heading for mission fields. You might as well suffer rheumatism in India as in Indiana…I say it’s never too late to serve the Lord but we must start now. Not tomorrow, not after retirement, not after it becomes more convenient, but right now.” And Joe has practiced what he preached. He gave more than sixty years of his life to mission work.

After the death of his wife Rosabelle, Joe married Betty Dollar. Betty, a former realtor, had left her full-time work in Memphis to do mission work in Ukraine. Ukraine, independent from the former Soviet Union since 1991, was known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. And in the early 1990’s, there was a spiritual harvest in this breadbasket: tens of thousands of Bibles were distributed in Ukraine, several thousand people were baptized and several congregations were established. Betty joined this wave of mission work in 1995 and helped establish the Bila Tserkva Church of Christ in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine. For many years she labored there with other missionaries. She was joined by Joe when they married in 2002.

When in Ukraine, 7 days a week Joe and Betty would teach at the church and in their apartment. They also ministered to teenagers at the Shans Center, a rehab center for those with multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, and other illnesses. During their time in Bila Tserkva, more than 100 people of all ages were baptized.

Few have given their lives to foreigners and strangers like Joe and Betty. Few have spent the richest part of their lives on the mission field like Joe and Betty. Some might wonder what would possess a couple to do this. Perhaps the answer is found in words Joe once wrote about why he loved the missionary life: “Pioneering with the gospel! This is the great thrill of missionary work…Bringing souls to Christ who have never heard of Him before. Reaching people with the gospel who never had a chance before…In missionary life, you go by faith into the unknown. You bet your life on the promises and providence of God…What a joy to this happy pioneer to arrive in strange places, and find Christ is there…To meet the challenges, to have every fiber of your soul and personality tested and tried. To be purified by the ups and downs, the successes and failures, the joy and sorrow…To be in the place where victories are won against seeming overwhelming odds. What can take the place of experiences like this?…This is the life for me!”