“Dale Rhoton, Quiet Giant Finishes”
By Bill MacLeod, Director
Dale Rhoton, co-founder with George Verwer of Operation Mobilization (OM), was born in 1938 in Kansas City, Missouri, and passed away peacefully on May 31st at the age of 88. He was led to Christ by his older brother when he was 17 years old. Together with George Verwer and Walter Borchard, while college students, Dale helped lay the foundations of what would become OM with their pioneering first mission trip to Mexico nearly seventy years ago. Through Dale’s leadership in least-reached countries and OM’s Ship Ministry, countless lives have been touched around the globe. He led the OM Ships ministry out of Mosbach, Germany for many years.
Around 1995 I met Dale Rhoton. He had come to Portland to investigate the future visit of the OM Ship Logos II in May-June 1997, during Rose Festival month, as one of the ports of call on its West Coast Tour.
At that time, I remember joining him and a small group accompanying him and rather than looking for a coffee shop to chat, he asked if we could find a place where we might all pray together. I thought what a great idea – to focus on the Lord and get to know each other by pouring out our hearts to Jesus!
Around 1996, I became part of the planning team welcoming Logos II the largest literature ship afloat at the time, to Portland. I joined Terry Dirks of International Renewal Ministries, and Maranatha Church Pastor, T. Allen Bethel, Co-Chairs for that committee. For a week in Antigua onboard Logos II, we joined all the other planning committee team heads from each port city: Vancouver, Canada, Nanaimo Canada, Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, San Diego, CA, and Ensenada, Mexico.
Since OM’s and Coco-Cola’s headquarters are in Atlanta, I remember Dale sharing how Coke’s vision was to make their soft drink accessible to every person on the planet to within feet, not miles – and shouldn’t that be our goal to make JESUS that accessible to everyone on the planet?! He captured our imagination with that memorable illustration!
We have hosted several OM leaders over the years. We hosted George at MissionConnexion Northwest 2005, 2011, and one last time at Student Connexion in 2018, but I had always wished we had hosted Dale. He was the thoughtful, quiet, strategist behind firecracker George and was also the one who baptized George while they were still in college.
It may have been because of his quiet devotion and calm demeanor in our first meeting that Dale Rhoton became one of the very first individuals, who I felt I could entrust my vision with that the Lord had given me of what would become MissionConnexion. I remember he was very positive, as was George. I will always be indebted to Dale for his encouragement in that first encounter and hearing about his passing indirectly through Peter Lee, I had to stop and honor him and his influence in the founding of this ministry.
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