My favorite professor at Ohio State, Henry H. Schulte, was a veteran big-city newspaper editor whose last career job was as Sunday Editor for the Chicago Daily News, a paper he remained at until it was "put to bed" in the late '70s, leading him into academia before retirement.

Among the lessons he taught me in his beginners' reporting class was not to be intimidated by people in power and to regard nothing as off-limits.

If I wanted to learn some things from the university president, for example, I should feel free to ask him directly—something I actually did as a novice reporter, leading to a personality profile that earned an A-minus from Schulte.

A mentor who encouraged me similarly in the area of Christian evangelism work was Oscar Woodall, a self-styled itinerant evangelist from Florida who died two weeks ago at the age of 79 after a long struggle with prostrate cancer and heart trouble. (A profile of him can be found on this website by scrolling down to the article, "Kindling a Light of Meaning," dated Sept. 22, 2004.)

Oscar, once the top-earning salesman worldwide for Metropolitan Life who helped revolutionize the insurance industry as a whole in the 1960s, had no qualms about talking to anybody anywhere at any time about their salvation.

You could be a Death Row inmate, mental patient, U.S. congressman or movie star (such as his former Air Force buddy Charlton Heston).

He could witness to thousands of businessmen in a banquet hall in the midst of a company speech as easily as he could gain a few minutes one-on-one with his waiter at a diner, his teller at a bank window or his housekeeper at a hotel.

What drove Oscar, who trusted in Jesus Christ as his Savior at age 40, was sheer gratitude to God and a near all-consuming desire to see unsaved people—"the up-and-outers as well as the down-and-outers," as he once summed it up—gain the same assurance of eternal life he finally obtained.

"In his mind, since no one ever told him in 40 years where he'd go if he died, he was going to make sure he told everybody he could," explained his friend, Pastor Keith Baxter of Tampa Bay Fellowship, in a phone interview I had with him last fall in preparing Oscar's profile. "He understood the love God had for him and he wasn't going to waste that but he was going to use it. It truly was the life of Christ and the Word of God working through him."

Oscar was testimony to the old saying that says there's nothing greater in life than to be something for somebody else. His ability to love expanded with his insistence on having God's will manifest itself through him. He had more to give of his life precisely because he had opened up more channels of consciousness to operate from.

The Apostle Paul says, "Owe no man any thing but to love one another." (Rom. 13:8). The message is if you love God it ought to show and be demonstrable in the details of your life. Oscar's love exuded an instinctive, intuitive knowledge readily apparent to unsaved men who almost had no choice but to instantly gravitate to his gospel presentation. There was something simply undeniable in his testimony. My pastor referred to it in a recent sermon as "inviting power."

Oscar's transforming power flowed freely from him as undiluted energy absent of ego and purely focused on the other person. It was light from the living Christ he infused into the people he came in contact with.

"He had ways to get people to think," says Baxter. "We used to do some prison work with him and we're talking about some pretty hardened guys, but when it came to Oscar, they pretty much just mellowed out."

Not only did Oscar see imprisoned men be saved, he returned to their cells to give them instruction in the Word and brotherly encouragement in their new walk as Believers. Some of these men even went on to live with Oscar for a period after their release from prison, all because Oscar and his wife felt such a desire to help former inmates who trusted Christ readjust properly to life back on the outside.

"Most people would go, 'No way am I going to do something like that—I'm not going to do that with my wife in the house,' but he just didn't care," says Baxter of Oscar's commitment to open his home not just to reformed felons but just-released mental patients and rescue mission referrals. "He just thought more about those folks than he did himself and that really is the love of God. That's really what love is—to regard other people more than yourself and that's just how he was."

In a 1986 biography on Oscar's life and work, written by David Enlow, there is a story of a young man, who gave his name as Barney Time, recommended to stay with Oscar and his wife by a local rescue mission that determined Time "needed a father figure to provide direction in his life."

Here's the passage from Enlow's book:

"When Barney came," (Oscar) said, "he told us that his mother was dead and that he was in the carnival business like his father. He couldn't read or write, but seemed to have a tender spirit toward the Lord. We would have daily Bible reading and prayer."

One evening, prior to their devotions, Woody found Barney sitting alone, somewhat downcast. When his host inquired as to what was on his heart, the guest began weeping.

"I have been lying to you people," Barney said, "and I cannot lie to God or His people any more. My name is not Barney Time; it is Joe Van Barneycastle. My mother is not dead; rather, several weeks ago while under the heavy influence of drugs, I beat her severely. I am a fugitive from the law."

Woody took the sobbing man into his office. After they had prayed together, (Oscar) asked, "Joe, what do you think should be your next step?"

"I need to turn myself in," came the prompt response.

"What else?" Woodall persisted.

"I guess I need to call my mother and ask her forgiveness," Joe replied.

Joe helped Woody to locate his parole officer to determine if he should turn himself in locally or go to North Carolina. The latter was suggested, then Joe called his mother and asked for her forgiveness. After a while, it was granted following an emotional struggle. Joe then spoke to his sister, who was a Christian and had been praying for him for many years.

That evening, Woody put Joe on a bus for North Carolina. Sometime later, word came that the "new creature in Christ" now was married after having made things right and found work.

Oscar's friend Russ Hargett, pastor of Suncoast Bible Fellowship in St. Petersburg, sums up the Florida evangelist's legacy, in part, as one "guaranteed to reach into several generations down."

"What he's instilled in the men (he's mentored) is now being instilled in their children and as those children grow up and have children, it will make it into the next generation," said Hargett in my conversation with him last fall, preparing Oscar's life story. "That's the kind of thing that swept Europe in the Reformation and it's going to do the same for us here. The bottom line is people are getting saved."

Among the hundreds of pieces of wisdom Oscar is remembered for is this one shared by Hargett:

"Oscar told us there are only two things eternal in this world—one is the Word of God and the other is the souls of men and women. Everything else is temporal."