“What others intended for evil, God intended for good”: A Conversation with Randy Alcorn

Have you ever taken a stand for Christ that really cost you something? Like a job, or a major cut in salary?  

We don’t hear many stories like that in America. We rarely hear about followers of Christ who really lose something because of their faith.

That makes Randy Alcorn’s story noteworthy.  When Randy and I talked recently for my Inspiring Courageous Faith YouTube channel, I asked him my favorite question, “What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?” His answer was rare because few people are willing to pay the price he paid for his faith.

In 1990, Randy was happy in a ministry that he never wanted to leave. As he wrote a few years ago, “I was the pastor of a large church Nanci and I had helped start in 1977, making a good salary and earning book royalties. ... I didn’t want to do anything else.” 

Randy was also on the board of a Christian pregnancy resource center in the Portland, Oregon, area. “I began participating in peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience at abortion clinics. We simply stood in front of the doors to advocate on behalf of unborn children scheduled to die.”

Portland was not an area that took kindly to pro-life efforts, and Alcorn was arrested seven out of the nine times he participated in these events.

Eventually, two different abortion providers won court judgments against Alcorn and several others; in the second, the judge “told the jury they must find us guilty and choose a punitive amount sufficient to deter us from ever coming to the clinic again.”  The jury awarded the clinic $8.2 million, about $250,000 per defendant.

One difficult part of the experience for the Alcorns was the negative feedback they received from some other believers. Randy told me about speaking to a group of pastors, and one man who had seen media reports of the trial asked, “Why are you pulling women’s hair and screaming at them at abortion clinics? Do you think that’s what Jesus would do?” 

Randy replied, “I’ll bet you have spoken against the liberal media and how they tell lies. I’ll bet you’ve actually said that from your pulpit.”

The pastor admitted he had. Then Randy said, “Then why are you believing those lies? Why did you believe that about me? Of course, I’ve never done those things. Just because somebody says you did this doesn’t mean you did.”

The court judgments directed Alcorn’s church to garnish 25 percent of his wages to the clinics. Randy didn’t want to put the church in the position of paying money to abortion clinics, so he resigned. He and Nanci formed an organization called Eternal Perspective Ministries, which paid Randy a minimum wage (which, by law, the clinics couldn’t touch) and Nanci the salary of an administrative assistant. 

They had no idea how they would get by, but they watched God provide for their needs. An anonymous donor even paid the tuition for their two daughters at a Christian school. And when Randy developed into a best-selling author, they gave away all his royalties. 

But here’s the part of the story that really amazes me:  On the eve of the second trial—the one that ended with the $8.2 million penalty—Randy’s lawyer called and said the clinic had dropped him from the lawsuit. He thought the clinic didn’t want Alcorn, an experienced speaker, testifying in court. But because the clinic made this decision so late, Alcorn had to agree to be released from the suit.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Who wouldn’t agree to be released from a lawsuit?

Randy sat down to talk about it with Nanci and their two girls. And their 11-year-old said, “Well, I think if the abortion clinic doesn’t want you on the case, God does.”

As Randy told me in our interview, “Nanci and I looked at each other. We couldn’t argue with it.” They didn’t know how God would provide for them, yet “We went forward not knowing. We were following God.”

Later, he wrote that the court judgment “was one of the best things that ever happened to us. Because what others intended for evil, God intended for good. My family faced this situation with the firm belief that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, and that no matter what happened, He would work things out for our ultimate good. That is exactly what He did. 

“The fact that we lost the case was irrelevant. We’re fortunate not to have to wait for eternity to see how God worked it for good. We’ve already seen it in countless ways.”

Randy discusses this and much more in the two-part interview on my YouTube channel, Inspiring Courageous Faith. I wanted to talk with Randy about his best-selling book, Heaven, and he went into depth on that topic.

He says the biggest misconception we have of heaven is thinking it will be boring. We had a fun time talking about all the hints the Bible gives us to indicate it will be anything but boring!

You can watch last week’s interview with Randy here, and click here to see part two.

—with Dave Boehi