Reverend Dr Benjamin Alvin Sawatsky was born on November 25, 1934 in Capasin, Saskatchewan, Canada. (Fondly called Ben, Reverend Ben, or Dr Ben, he was born Bennie Sawatsky but legally changed his name to Benjamin in the 1990s.) He was born six weeks premature in their log house when his mother had gone out to draw water from the well on a cold winter’s day. She slipped and went into labour. With no medical help close by, she delivered her son and put him on a wood-burning stove to keep him warm. By faith, she made an agreement with God that if He would spare her first-born son’s life, she would dedicate him to serve the Lord. God saved him and his mother kept her promise. 

His parents, Henry and Helen (Heppner) Sawatsky, were German Mennonite farmers whose forefathers came from Old Prussia. The Mennonites were known for their strong religious faith and this greatly influenced Sawatsky even at an early age. 

He started his early schooling in a one-room schoolhouse. He was converted at the age of 13 in his church in northern Saskatchewan at an evangelistic meeting conducted by his uncle, Ben Heppner, who personally led him to faith in Jesus Christ. As a 10th grader, he met and heard his first missionary speaker, James Stewart, whose convicting preaching led him to commit his life to Jesus Christ. 

While growing up, he spoke Low German at home and High German^[1] at school and church. He then went on to learn English in high school, and later Mandarin in Taiwan.​​​​​ He could also speak and understand simple Russian, Japanese, Cantonese, French and a few other languages.

Sawatsky’s father, realising the importance of education for his children beyond the eight grades of primary school, decided to leave the farm and moved to Three Hills, Alberta in 1953. Sawatsky spent three years at Prairie High School and graduated from Prairie Bible College in 1957. It was there that he was profoundly influenced by the disciplined lives of the faculty members. Through his involvement in ministry in the Bible college, he felt God’s call to missions and, specifically, to the Chinese-speaking world. Ben and his wife, Muriel, would later spend 18 years of ministry among the Chinese people in Singapore and Malaysia.

It was also at Bible college that he had his first experience in ministry. One of his professors, Dr David Enarson, introduced him to the Evangelical Free Church (EFC). In 1957, Sawatsky served as an associate pastor as well as children’s and youth pastor of Belgravia EFC in Edmonton, Alberta. It was there that he met his wife, Muriel Evelyn McKee, who was born in Highridge, Alberta, on her parents’ farm. Her parents were committed Christians who prayed daily that their children would become missionaries. Ben and Muriel married on August 2, 1958 at Belgravia EFC. They had two children, Kimberly and Kevin, and later five grandchildren.

Soon after they moved to Deerfield, Illinois to study at Trinity College and Seminary in Chicago, the couple helped plant the North Suburban EFC. It was here that Sawatsky had his first taste of church planting with other like-minded people and it was also this church that later commissioned them as missionaries. On June 7, 1959, Ben and Muriel joined 22 other committed believers to form the charter membership of the North Suburban EFC. 

In 1961, Sawatsky was ordained with this EFC and they then set sail for Singapore from Vancouver. For 26-year-old Ben and 23-year-old Muriel, Singapore and, later, Malaysia were new mission fields for EFCA Mission. To Sawatsky, such pioneering work appealed greatly but like any pioneering ministry, the couple soon discovered that there were many challenges.

While in Singapore, they had to learn to adjust to pioneering church-planting ministry in an urban centre. This was quite unlike his preconceived idea that any pioneering work had to be among people living in more primitive conditions. In addition to many hours a day of studying the Chinese language, they also began to help in various ways at Bethany EFC. This one-year-old church was  the only EFC in Singapore when they arrived in April 1961. Sawatsky soon found he also had to prepare gospel messages for entirely non-Christian audiences. This was quite unlike his home church where the audience was entirely Christian. However, the Lord blessed him with converts. After almost a year of language study, the couple went for a more intensive course of study at the Taipei Language Institute in Taiwan. 

Upon their return to Singapore, they were assigned to help plant Bukit Timah EFC. He teamed up with Henry Khoo to rent a large facility which had been a nurses’ training centre and hostel. Although his local church experiences in Edmonton and Deerfield were helpful, he encountered many new situations in the Bukit Timah church and faced issues such as the role of the missionary church planter, the timing for appointment of church leaders and a pastor, and the opposition that came from Hindu and Buddhist homes. 

It was a steep learning curve for them since there was no church-planting manual comprehensive enough to cover every situation. As Sawatsky put it, “By its very nature, church planting must be experienced, especially cross-cultural church planting.”^[2] They had to turn to the Holy Spirit to grant them wisdom and power. 

Their first church-planting experience in Singapore, however, left some impactful memories. Apart from being able to establish numerous lasting relationships, they learnt how to be creative, relentless and aggressive in evangelism. This led to many conversions and a continual round of public baptisms in the early days. By the time the couple returned to Canada for their home assignment, the congregation had grown to about 100, mainly young people. 

During their five-year term in Singapore, Sawatsky also shared a new church plant with another EFC missionary, Reverend Eric McMurray. They made several exploratory visits to Malacca and  the three weeks of intensive evangelism helped to launch Malacca EFC, the first EFC in Malaysia. During one of these evangelistic trips, they were led to a young man named Ho Keh Yun who in 1984 became the pastor of a new Chinese-speaking EFC church. James Phalen and his wife, Fran, were then appointed by the EFC Mission as the first and only cross-cultural church planters. 

Upon their return after a year of home assignment in July 1966, the couple decided to plant a new church in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Prior to their coming, Sawatsky’s counterpart, McMurray, had already built up a small nucleus of believers in 1965 in Kuala Lumpur. Upon McMurray’s return to Canada, Sawatsky took to shepherding these believers who met in their bungalow home. The congregation gradually grew in number mainly through evangelism and children’s programmes for the community. Halfway through their second term assignment, the family had to relocate to another place to make space for the growing church located in Section 14, Petaling Jaya. 

This enabled them to plant another church known as EFC Gospel Centre in Sungei Way, another suburb of Kuala Lumpur. This was Sawatsky’s attempt to pastor two churches simultaneously. He served Petaling Jaya EFC (PJEFC) as pastor from 1967-1971 and SS1 Gospel Centre from 1969-1971. It was during his second term that he also launched the publication of a bi-monthly evangelistic magazine called the Asian Beacon in 1969. Two years later, the editorship was passed to Morrie Palmer, a fellow missionary. Sawatsky also helped to facilitate the affiliation of another independent church to become Emmanuel EFC. 

On their return from their second year-long home assignment, they found that PJEFC’s congregation had dwindled in number with the leadership much discouraged. That reminded Sawatsky of a similar experience when he started church planting in Singapore. As Sawatsky said, “I could not bear the thought of putting another church plant through similar pain… We needed to address the weak spot in our church planting strategy before adding one more congregation.”^[3] In many ways, the congregation was too dependent on him as a pastor.

In the early months of his third term assignment, Sawatsky went through a period of uncertainty about his gifts for church planting. He thought of changing ministries and even of leaving the mission field. Much time was devoted to prayer and, oftentimes, with his wife as his constant prayer partner to seek the Lord’s direction. Over a period of waiting and at times even groaning in prayer, he began to sense the weakness of his current church-planting approach. There was little time devoted to equipping and training the local national leaders. It was during this time that he sensed that God was teaching him some extremely important lessons: “… God was preparing us for a ministry that would become the most productive period of our 18 year church planting career in Asia.”^[4]

The team approach to church planting

A paradigm shift in church planting began to emerge as he studied Jesus’ example as a teacher/mentor/equipper in the training of his 12 disciples. The “with Him” training principle was identified as a missing ingredient in Sawatsky’s church planting ministry. And from Apostle Paul, he learnt the important principle of “to faithful men” (2 Timothy 2:2) – to raise up a band of faithful, trained leaders and to “prepare God’s people for the works of service”, which is the “universal ministry of every believer”. He also realised that in planting churches, Paul never worked without a team. 

During this difficult three-month period of personal reflection and consultation with fellow missionaries, two additional missions strategies were identified: the preparation of training materials for lay people and a mission statement that would set the direction and priority for those working in the mission field. For the training materials, various courses were prepared under the Lay Assistance Program (LAP). And for the EFC Missions in Malaysia, this mission statement was adopted, "We exist to help fulfill the Great Commission by making disciples, incorporating them into disciple making churches, and through these churches plant other disciple making churches with the same objective."^[5]

With a more clear-cut philosophy of church planting, Sawatsky now prayed for a team that would plant a new church with him. The vision of a team approach to ministry and church planting was shared with a potential team of four men — Leong Chee Seng, Michael Lee, Ong See Lian and Lim Lee. Later, the team grew from the initial four to eight men and women. Sawatsky began to apply the “with Him” principle as he trained and equipped the team using the LAP courses to prepare them for future church leadership. For the next six months, he would meet twice weekly with the team using his living room as the classroom. It was decided that no public worship service would be held until the team was ready.

By May 1975, Faith EFC, located in Overseas Union Garden some 10km from Kuala Lumpur, officially held its first public worship service. For the next 18 months prior to his home assignment, Sawatsky continued to train and equip the team. Later, both Reverend Allen Tunberg and Reverend Loyd Childs from EFCA Missions were also involved in LAP, teaching and training in the new church plants as well as in some established EFCs well after Sawatsky and family had left for their home assignment. 

In 1978, Sawatsky completed a two-year master’s degree in historical theology at Regent College, Vancouver after serving for almost 17 years in the field. Upon his return for his fourth term assignment the same year, he was invited by both Faith and Emmanuel EFCs to plant two new churches. Faith EFC had chosen Subang, a new housing development 22km from Kuala Lumpur, for its first daughter church. Emmanuel chose the Chow Kit area in the heart of Kuala Lumpur for its church-planting site. 

From the experience gained and the training materials now available from the LAP, Sawatsky was able to accelerate the planting of new churches. But this came at a cost. Almost four evenings of each week were taken up with team training. To Sawatsky, the team approach to church planting had been such a transforming experience: “These were the best days of our missionary career — the most personally fulfilling, the most productive, and as far as I knew, the most strategic.”^[6]

The potential to carry out such a strategic approach had to be passed on to someone else as Ben and Muriel’s 10-year term in Malaysia would soon end. In 1968, the Malaysian government had introduced a law requiring all foreign Christian missionaries to leave the country after 10 years. With less than two years left for any significant input on their part, the priority would be to train national leaders to replace the Sawatskys and another missionary couple. 

The Sawatskys’ stay in Malaysia was unexpectedly shortened when they were told to return to the EFCA Missions Home Office in mid-January 1979. Sawatsky was given an eight-month extension to continue with his responsibility to the two church-planting teams and to prepare the teams for a new trainer.  

In mid-August 1979, the family arrived in Minneapolis where Sawatsky took up his new leadership responsibility as Asia director and Candidate director. He subsequently served in various roles in EFCA until he was appointed the executive director of international mission in 1992.^[7]He served in this role until 2004.

In the intervening years, Ben and Muriel became dual citizens of Canada and the United States in 1993. In 1994, he completed his Doctor of Missiology degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.                                                                   

Ben died on April 21, 2016 aged 81 from pneumonia, a complication from eight years of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Muriel had died three days earlier, aged 77, from cancer. They had been married for 58 years and “shared a life of ministry together, and God allowed them to pass into eternity within days of each other”.^[8]