She deliberately kept well below the radar. But around the world of gospel enterprise ‘Queen Jean’ underpinned, administered and supported servants of Jesus Christ, the prominent and the unknown alike. She passed from this life on January 13.
It appears that Jean Wilson never had more than three or four hours’ sleep a night. If she was not phoning across the world, she would be checking the proofs of Decision magazine, or waiting at Heathrow’s Arrivals having already arranged London accommodation for an incoming overseas visitor on behalf of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Jean Wilson spent 50 years with BGEA (and later, Samaritan’s Purse). At the age of 26 she had been asked by Billy Graham to set up a London office for him in the wake of his momentous 12-week nightly campaign at Harringay Arena in 1954.
Or she might have been checking the accounts of any one of a score of Christian organisations. The late George Hoffman once confided: ‘Jean, I’m hopelessly late finishing the accounts for TEAR Fund!’ ‘Come on’, came the reply, ‘sit down with me, George, and we’ll get it done together!’
Africa Enterprise evangelist, Orpheus Hove, wrote: ‘God had given her a gift of knowledge. I would meet her in Nairobi, Cairo or Kigali, and she would remember all three months’ money transactions between my office in Zimbabwe and hers in UK. A woman of love and passion for the work of the Lord’.
No Sunday attender in London’s All Souls Church would ever have suspected that the neighbouring dark-haired worshipper — whose hymn singing was hopelessly out of tune — was one of the great Christian workers in the world.
