T.S. Mooney’s Legacy

The faithful Bible study leader died on his knees while praying for others.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

If you have ever fallen for the lie that your prayers are ineffectual, then you need to hear about a man named T.S. Mooney.

Alistair Begg told a story on his radio broadcast Truth for Life about Mooney, a man who never married, but made an enormous impact for the kingdom through prayer. Mooney, who was a banker by trade, taught a boys’ Bible class for fifty years in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Fifty years. Let that sort of commitment sink in.

Begg asked him one day about his plan and purpose for the boys.

“My plan for the Bible class has always been to give every boy a Bible in his hand, a Savior in his heart and a purpose in his life,” Mooney said.

Mooney prayed for each boy routinely, keeping up with them as they grew up. Begg said that when he visited Mooney in his apartment one day, Mooney had photos of men who went through his class as boys hung all over his apartment. Sprinkled all over his walls were photos of judges, surgeons, teachers, mechanics, plumbers and all sorts of other people – all of whom were influenced by Mooney’s teaching and prayers.

Mooney died in 1986. But he left quite a legacy, even in his death. Begg described Mooney’s posture on the day he died and entered heaven.

“The housekeeper found him in the morning – fully dressed and kneeling over his bed,” Begg said. “He had gone into the presence of Jesus on his knees.”

His housekeeper called for help and the headmaster and one of the men who had gone through his Bible class years prior showed up. As they pulled Mooney back from the bed, they found a little black book alongside his Bible. “They looked down to find their names amongst the list of many names,” Begg said. “It was morning. It was time to pray. And he was praying.”

Can you imagine a better way to die?

And can you imagine how those two people felt when they looked into Mooney’s little black book and realized he had been praying for them?

Sort of makes you want to start your own little black prayer book, doesn’t it?

*****

It’s been ten years since I wrote what you just read for a now-defunct blog, but I still think about Mooney’s legacy. Here’s what comes to mind:

He was a businessman/layman. He didn’t chase status or power or money. “As a businessman in the city he won the respect of a wide circle of commercial leaders,” his biography says [you can read excerpts from “Mission Completed” by following the link; the book is out of print now]. “It was an open secret that he could easily have risen to a high position in his profession if he had wanted to leave Londonderry with all its Church and Crusaders interests but this he did not want to do.” He found a ministry and stayed faithful.

He was faithful. He taught his Bible class for fifty years. Enough said.

He was single. In both Single Servings and Flying Solo, I wrote about singles who didn’t wait for marriage to dive into ministry. Singles aren’t less than.

He believed in the power of prayer. We could probably learn something from the way saints of old prayed. Something about engaging in the physical act of kneeling with the spiritual act of communing with God exhibits the belief that a person knows he is going to war. 

He finished well. What better way to enter glory than to do so in a posture of prayer for others?