Frank Dietz: Soldier’s face, gentle heart (1939 - 2021)

I can still see him, hands on his hips, standing in the entrance hall of the large house in Wassenaar, Holland, where about fifteen of us were living: ‘OK, let’s mobilise’. Gravelly, a North West Pacific accent, the voice had authority. So did the face. The skin was weathered, pockmarked, rough. In that face you could sense the wind and sun and dust that his German forefathers had stood up to as they built their farms in the new homeland. There was a toughness there. It was a face that you would expect to see in a trench, a dug out, or a sentry post. It was a soldier’s face, and it made perfect sense that he would be a pioneer in a Christian movement called, ‘Operation Mobilisation.’ (OM)

 Strictly I should not have been in that house back in January 1977. It was the venue for a mid-year new recruits conference, and, somehow, I had got there, even though I was not a committed Christian. The first few days were a conference blur of meetings and meals. However one thing I remember: we were told that the main leader was not there. He was coming. And when he did arrive, it was obvious why he was the main leader. There was something deeply settled about his inner self. He arrived during the day, and he spoke to us in the evening. There were no theatrics, no hysteria, no emotionalism. There was a report, followed by measured and clear preaching. He believed every word he was saying.

 This was Frank Dietz. Already he had pioneered India for OM and been director of the first ship, M.V. Logos. After these few months in Holland he would go on to take charge of OM’s second ship, M.V. Doulos, and that would lead him to become a prime-mover in bringing the South American church into modern mission. Along with that soldier’s face was a military discipline that had kept on obeying the command he had heard as a young man while angry with God for allowing two of his siblings to die in a car crash. The command was in the Bible: Preach the Gospel to the nations. He obeyed, and through OM ships and their work in India hundreds of millions have indeed heard the Gospel. 

 I became a Christian during that conference, and once this was discovered, some leaders – quite rightly – might have said, ‘OM isn’t a place for new Christians.’ I could easily have soon been on my way home. Frank must have been involved in a gracious decision. The other new recruits were sent to join teams in Europe. I was to stay in Wassenaar with Frank’s team till the summer. There was nothing I could offer them. It was just kindness, a desire to help me start my Christian life.

 Every morning, even when it was still dark, I would meet Frank in that large hall and we would go running. He believed in physical fitness. On our return it was time for our own personal prayer time, and after breakfast there was a two-hour prayer meeting. In the afternoon Frank would send me and a young Italian man out for door to door evangelism among the super-rich of Wassenaar; in the evening there would either be meetings or free time. Once a week there was a half night of prayer. Frank believed in prayer. And I believe he prayed for me, wanting me to grow as a Christian.

 There was talk of Frank visiting Switzerland for some church meetings. He wanted to take me and a young Filipino man. The Filipino would play the guitar. I could do nothing. It was again sheer kindness. Frank drove us all the way there and we stayed in the house of the then leader of OM in Switzerland. During the day Frank would draw the Filipino and I aside for a Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount. I can still remember his opening point: ‘Jesus saw the crowds…and did something’. And so we worked through the beatitudes. It is not so much what was said, but the fact that while this man had been used to preaching to hundreds if not thousands in India and on the Logos, here he was making it a priority to study the Bible with just two of us.

 Frank stayed in touch with me when I went to university later that year, and after I had graduated invited me to join him on the Doulos. And that was the plan in September 1982; but at a much larger new recruits conference my mind was changed and I went to Pakistan. Thankfully we never lost contact and I know he prayed for my ministry in the Iranian church. He had a very personal connection to Iran. He married a Finnish lady, Anneli, in Tehran in 1967. 

 Frank was certainly a tough soldier; but he had a gentle, caring heart. This was on full display in the last years of his life when this man of intense action gave himself up entirely to nursing Anneli when she suffered a stroke. 

I am deeply grateful that all those years ago that kindness thought it was worthwhile giving time to a nineteen year old taking his first steps on the Christian journey.