John R. Gunn papers, 1908 -- 2002

John R. Gunn was born near the village of Camak, Georgia on August 2nd, 1877 and graduated from Mercer University, Macon, Georgia in 1900. While he was an associate minister in Central Baptist Church in Atlanta he met Nellie P. Higgins and married her in that same church on June 26 1902. After attending Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, he held a sequence of pastorates in Baptist churches in Dalton, Macon, Madison and Atlanta, Georgia, at North Baptist Church on W 11th St in New York, NY, in Nashville, in Memphis, Tennessee, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Pleasant Lake, Indiana. Morse Harrod, a physician from the First Baptist Church of Fort Wayne, heard John Gunn speaking at the American Medical Association in Nashville. Subsequently John Gunn was called to be Pastor at Fort Wayne and ministered there from 1917 to 1927, when he left giving the reason as his declining health. At the beginning of the U.S involvement in the First World War in 1917 he was the featured speaker for the community and this speech was later published. Later in life he was given the honorary title: Pastor Emeritus of First Baptist Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana. The family story on the subject of Rev. Dr. Gunn leaving the church in 1927 relates that he had all his teeth extracted, but the dentist, one of his parishioners, accidentally lost the impressions taken for the production of replacement false teeth. The resulting teeth were so ill-fitting that they affected his speech and he retired from the pulpit in some distress. Rev. Dr John R. Gunn found another door opening and began publishing a newspaper column of daily devotionals, "A Short Sermon for Today" reaching many more people than he could have done from the pulpit. This began in 1925 and ran for 36 years in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. Sitting in his small bedroom, typing with two fingers, he demonstrated his unique talent in interpreting Christian thought in a condensed fashion which was fresh and exciting. It was attractive to people of many faiths and remarkably timeless in its clarity. His life spanned turbulent and tumultuous times; he knew what it was to suffer personal tragedy and triumphs, as well as the failures and successes of the people to whom he ministered. He continued to write his daily column for the rest of his life until his death on Thursday November 15, 1956 at the Georgia Baptist Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia. For a further 15 years after his death the column continued to appear in this newspaper repeating selected previously published sermons through the work of his daughter, Dorothy E. Gunn. From 1964 – 76 through the work of his daughter, Nell G. Harper, his devotionals were also broadcast daily as radio mediations called, Be Still and Know by the Protestant Radio and Television Center of Atlanta (later renamed Day One) and were at one time carried by more than 2,000 stations. Through popular demand the recordings of these broadcasts became available on gramophone records and, during the Vietnam War, they were produced on audio cassettes for use on U.S. submarines. In addition Rev. Dr. Gunn was the author of 8 published books of selected sermons in his lifetime. Further volumes of sermons were published posthumously. Thanks to the http://facinglife.net/ web site, Rev. Gunn's sermons are now available on the Internet, where some of the radio broadcasts are also available as downloadable MP3 files. His legacy continues to extend to the next generation of outstanding ministers for the church, thanks to Jim and Grace Gunn's generous support of an FTE Ministry Fellowship.