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Paris Reidhead (1919-1992)

Paris Reidhead devoted his life to communicating the message of the Gospel in America and throughout the world. He was chosen by God to be a spokesman for Him before his birth. Paris related the circumstances of his birth to his daughter Virginia Teitt in early 1992 just before he died. “After a long and difficult labor his mother gave birth to her first-born son on May 30, 1919, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The baby was breech; his neck had been broken and was at a right angle. The doctor announced that he had saved the mother, but lost the baby. Our grandmother, Ruby Perkins Reidhead, responded that this could not be so, for she had prayed and God revealed that her son, this child, would be a spokesman unto Him. When the doctor checked again, the baby’s head had straightened, his color was normal, and his breathing regular. This was Paris Reidhead’s birth.”

A student pastor in rural Minnesota at age eighteen, Pastor Reidhead felt led of the Lord to overseas mission work. In 1945, Paris Reidhead and Marjorie, his wife of two years, traveled under the auspices of the Sudan Interior Mission to the Sudan-Ethiopia Border where they surveyed and analyzed tribal languages in preparation for evangelism and education in this area, which led to the translation of the New Testament into Dinka.

Upon his return to the United States, Pastor Reidhead was appointed Deputation Secretary of the Sudan Interior Mission in the Southeastern United States. He was soon a nationally recognized spokesman for missions.

In 1953 Pastor Reidhead began his national Bible Conference ministry for the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C & M A) which appointed him, in 1956, to pastor the Gospel Tabernacle, the New York City church where the C & M A was first established by Dr. A. B. Simpson in 1887. While in New York, Mr. Reidhead drew on informational resources at the United Nations to pioneer a program through which government and private funds were used for economic development in the Third World; his efforts to implement local programs on this model took him to mission fields in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Third World development became his full-time commitment in 1966. Pastor Reidhead’s vision of public-private funding for economic development led, in 1971, to the formation of the Institute for International Development, Inc., which has served as the model for about ninety evangelical organizations, which have, in turn, channeled more than $100 million into Third World development. In 1984, Mr. Reidhead founded Enterprise Development International, a service agency devoted to aiding Third World church and evangelical agencies in creating job opportunities for destitute families.

Since Pastor Reidhead’s death in 1992, Paris Reidhead Bible Teaching Ministries, Inc. has continued under the leadership of his daughter, Virginia Teitt, a dedicated Board, and the many people who have donated time and talents after being changed by God’s Word through these messages. The message of the Gospel is reaching an ever-widening audience all over the world.