Rev. Lawrence Oscar Richards, PhD.

September 25, 1931 – October 16, 2016

Lawrence O. Richards (1931-2016) was the most prominent and prolific Christian education writer in evangelical circles during the last half of the Twentieth Century”, according to a biographical article on the Talbot Theological Seminary website. A graduate of University of Michigan, BA; Dallas Theological Seminary, ThM; and a dual program at Garrett Theological Seminary and Northwestern University, PhD, Larry authored over 200 books, years of Sunday school curriculum—preschool through adult, and pioneered methodologies in Christian education and church leadership. He wrote commentaries on every book in the Bible, a Bible Dictionary, Bible handbook, an expository dictionary which provides both Greek and Hebrew word studies on most key words in both the Old and New Testaments, wrote a number of specialty Bibles including best sellers The Adventure Bible, (NIV & NIRV) and The Teen Study Bible, (NIV & NKJV) which he did with his wife, Sue. His books are published in over 30 languages.

He was a brilliant teacher, speaker and preacher. He was a humble and good man who loved God, his wife, children, and dogs. He was preceded in death by his son Paul Richards, and survived by his wife Sue, son Timothy, two daughters Joy and Sarah and grandchildren Matthew and Meghan. He is missed deeply by all who knew him and many who only knew him through his writing.

His memorial service will be Nov. 12 at 3, at North Raleigh United Methodist Church. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project. Larry spent 4 years in the Navy during the Korean War and continued to have a heart for our veterans. Since Veterans Day is Nov. 11, it is a perfect time to remember our vets.

Arrangements by Mitchell Funeral Home, Raleigh, North Carolina

Simon W

07/04/2025

After clearing out my garage today July 4th 2025, I rediscovered my copy of The Daily Devotional Commentary. And this evening, sat at my dining table here in Derbyshire, United Kingdom, the words of Dr Richards are still as relevant and powerful as the day they were written. Thankful for his perseverance to run the race for which He was called. Every blessing in Christ Jesus.

Cyndi Braun

04/23/2024

I send my condolences. It is now 2024 and Mr. Richards books are still touching lives. I am in Oregon and I was going through our church library and found a book written by him. He probably knew Uncle Henry Hollman who was a professor of theology at Talbot. I thank the Lord for those who loved and was faithful to His Word.

Pamela C.

03/02/2025

Hello Richards family. Spending time in Dr. Richards’ 365 Devotional Commentary today. His work continues to bless many people. Hope all is well.

Larry Cockerham

01/30/2022

Dear Mrs. Richards, I was getting ready in my morning sermon to quote Dr. Richard’s from his intro to Second Peter Chapter Two, when on the adjacent page there was an illustration concerning his daughter, Joy. Since I also have a daughter that is afflicted and in a group home, I turned to see the date of The 365-Day Devotional Commentary. To my dismay, it was dated 1990. Since Joy was 28 at the time of the writing, she would now be close to 60 years old. I then checked the internet and found this obituary of Dr. Richards. Our daughter is now 43 and in a group home in Demopolis, AL. I hope Joy is okay, and I was so sorry to hear about Dr. Richards. I have used his works for many years as I’ve been preaching for over 40 years myself and I am now 72. Our going home time is ever nearer now than ever before and I know we’re all looking forward to seeing our families together whole again in heaven and enjoying eternity forever (Rev. Larry W. Cockerham).

Lawrence O. Richards (1931-2016) was the most prominent and prolific Christian education writer in evangelical circles during the last half of the Twentieth Century. He has written major works on overall philosophy of Christian education, church renewal, children’s ministry, youth ministry, leadership, ministry of the laity, small groups, spirituality and Bible teaching. A relational understanding of the church serves as a substructure to many of his innovative concepts of ministry.

Biography

Education and Writings

Lawrence (Larry) O. Richards was born September 25, 1931, in Milan, Michigan. His home environment was a positive one, with both parents providing ample affirmation. His father was an elder in the local Presbyterian church, and his mother often verbalized her faith in the home. Richards grew up in the religious education programs of his church, but after junior high school did not give much attention to his religious formation.

From 1949 through 1951, Richards attended Antioch College in Ohio. He had no clear direction and hence left college and served in the Navy from 1951-1955. He was stationed in New York City and, during this time, converted to Christ under the ministry of Donald Grey Barnhouse, one of the great Bible teachers of that era. He described his conversion as a conversion not from unbelief to belief, but rather a conversion to basic biblical Christianity (Downs, 1982, p. 115).

Following this experience Richards became an avid Bible student and formed some of his most basic theological convictions. After his Navy stint he resumed his academic studies at the University of Michigan where, in 1958, he received a B. A. in philosophy. He graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During his Michigan years he married Marla Hafner, and they now have three children, Paul, Joy, and Timothy.

His biblical curiosity was far from satisfied when Richards entered Dallas Theological Seminary, whose Th.M. curriculum required four years of Greek and three years of Hebrew, and provided a theological framework taught from a mildly Reformed and decidedly Dispensational viewpoint. His initial interest in Greek studies was turned to Christian education by Dr. Howard Hendricks, who challenged him that knowing biblical content was not sufficient if he could not communicate it adequately. Richards’s study of principles for communicating the Bible progressed through his academic and personal study and formed the basis for many of his future Christian education works. In 1962 Richards was ordained by the non-denominational Grace Bible Church of Dallas, Texas.

After graduating summa cum laude from Dallas Theological Seminary, Richards moved to Wheaton, Illinois, where from 1962-1965 he was an editor of children’s church materials for Scripture Press Publications, a large curriculum house servicing evangelical churches. He was also an Associate Pastor in charge of Christian education at a local church and taught a large Bible class. During this time Richards began to be disillusioned by the educational program of the church, even to the point of taking his children out of Sunday School.

From 1965-1972 Richards was an Assistant Professor of Christian Education in the Wheaton College Graduate School where he also taught New Testament and Old Testament courses. During this time he was also enrolled in Ph.D. studies at the joint program offered by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. His doctoral studies were in Religious Education and Social Psychology, with an emphasis in research methodologies in education, social psychology, and anthropology. He graduated in 1972, having written a dissertation on the relationship between the home and church educational programs entitled “Pre-evaluation Research on a Home/Church Christian Education Program” (1972). This research provided some of the foundations for his Sunday School PLUS curriculum.

In the summer of 1967, Richards and some of his fellow faculty members of the Wheaton Graduate School Christian Education department went to the school’s summer camp to conduct a seminar entitled “Trends in Education.” It turned out to be a revolutionary turning point in Richards’s career when the results of the seminar were published in the National Association of Evangelicals periodical United Evangelical Action and later in his first book, A New Face for the Church (1970). These works thrust him into the national evangelical spotlight and identified him as an advocate of renewal in the church. Richards (1979) would later write of this renewal movement:

Theologically, the past ten years have been a quiet but deep rethinking of the nature of the church. Stimulated by the attack in the 60’s on the Church as an institution, there has been a growing belief that we must define our educational mission in terms of the nature of the Church as Family and Body. Socialization, not a “schooling” education is the critical task…. Both theological and behavioral science input affirms the importance of the transforming community as the true educator of the Christian. “Talking about the faith” is clearly inadequate; community in every dimension of human potential, is increasingly seen to be the issue. (pp. 29, 31)

In 1972, Richards moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he embarked upon a career of full-time writing and speaking, in which he remains involved. During the Phoenix years he directed an internship program for seminary students and spent five years developing and testing his Sunday School PLUS curriculum. He also served as an elder at Our Heritage Wesleyan Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and frequently spoke at conventions as well as conducted seminars and Schools of Ministry at midwestern and western universities. Richards has taught courses at Princeton Theological Seminary, Talbot School of Theology, and in other places in the United States and around the world. He also designed and wrote the courses for a degree completion program offered at the College of Biblical Studies in Houston, Texas.

Richards is the author of some 200 works, some of which have been translated into 24 languages, making him the most prolific of 20th century evangelical Christian educators and probably the most influential evangelical Christian education theorist (Benson, 1984, p. 64). Some of his major works are being reprinted 20 or more years after their original publication date. Richards’s writing career divides into two primary sections. From roughly the mid-60s to the mid-80s of the 20th century, he wrote his major Christian education theoretical works, interspersed with teacher training guidebooks, parenting materials, biblical curriculum, and Bible study guides. From approximately the mid-80s to the present, Richards’s writing has focused more on writing devotional books, Christian life enrichment books, Bible study aids, and study Bibles.

Richards believes that, first and foremost, Christian education is a theological discipline, even though he will buttress his ideas with social science and educational theory insight. This emphasis on the primacy of being biblical and theological aided him in communicating his insights and making them palatable to his largely evangelical audience. For Richards ecclesiology is the most important theological topic, knowing that if the church could function according to a biblical pattern it would function in a renewed pattern. He writes:

Our choice of socialization as an appropriate approximation of the educational strategy to be adopted by Christian education, then, is rooted not in the social sciences, but in theology. It is because of the nature of the Christian faith, and the nature of the church itself, that we focus on modeling as the key method. (Richards, 1975, p. 81)

A couple of Richards’s Christian education theory works deserve special recognition. His Creative Bible Teaching (1970) was one of his earliest book reflecting more traditional evangelical Christian education concerns, namely communicating biblical content effectively. Its “Hook-Book-Look-Took” format for Bible teaching provides a solid template for effective communication of the Bible. It is particularly important because this format became the approach of almost all of the evangelical Sunday school curriculum publishers. A Theology of Christian Education (1975) is Richards’s most important theoretical work. In it he provides the seed ideas that are developed in depth in many of his other major Christian education theory books. Two central ideas dominate the substructure for this book: 1) faith-as-life is a lived-out reality, not simply concepts to be affirmed; and 2) the church is to function as an organism more than an organization based in the biblical concepts of the body of Christ and the family of God. He concludes that a modeling method of faith transmission in Christian community and the home (akin to socialization and social learning theory) is superior to the schooling model (cognitive processing) that was so prevalent in evangelicalism then and today. Both of these works are still in print.

Richards currently resides in Raleigh, N.C., where he and is wife are active members of the North Raleigh United Methodist Church. He serves as general editor for the 20 some volumes in the Bible Smart series (Nelson), of which he wrote the lead volume, The Bible, and also Moses, the Man and his Mission (2008). His Essential Guide to the Bible, to be published by Guideposts, is due for 2009 publication.One of Richards most exciting projects has been the revision of the NIV Teen Study Bible, which he developed with his wife Sue. This Bible which has been used by over three million teens, has been thoroughly revised for today’s young people and was released in July of 2008.

In 2006 and 2007 Richards wrote a series of six novels on The Invisible War, which traces the conflict between angels and demons from Creation to History’s end. The third volume in that series, the Blind Prophet, will be published by Tate Publishers in late 2008 or early 2009, with the other volumes to follow. Richards currently communicates through a weblog, which tracks and evaluates contemporary occult activities from a biblical perspective.

Addendum: Lawrence O. Richards passed away on Sunday, October 16, 2016.