In 1945, Bishop Frank Houghton, the General Director of the China Inland Mission, issued a challenge that turned Oswald’s world upside down: join the CIM as the Home Director for Australia and New Zealand.

By this time, Oswald had long been involved with CIM work, but not as a full-time staff member. His previous employer at the law firm, John Wilkinson, was the chairman of CIM’s New Zealand council, and had frequently got Oswald to help out with secretarial and administrative work. After dealing with local missionaries and donors, and arranging meetings and visits, Oswald had joined as a council member. But now, Bishop Houghton was asking him to join the agency full-time.

To be honest, it wasn’t the best moment for such a drastic change. Oswald’s family had expanded—he had married Edith Dobson in 1931 and they now had a nine-year-old son, John Wilbur—and they would have to uproot and move to Australia.

Besides, he was doing well at the Bible Training Institute, and the thought of leaving was unthinkable. Friends and relatives also discouraged him from moving. “Why, you would be leaving a larger job for a smaller,” they opined.⁶ Others suggested that God would hardly enrich the CIM by depriving the college of a good principal and leader.

But as Oswald and Edith prayed over the offer, they felt that this was what God wanted for them. So, despite all the logical arguments against it, Oswald decided to accept the offer. It was only then—after he had stepped out in faith—that the Lord began to smooth his path and confirm that he had made the right choice. Worries about who would take over the college were eased when a suitable successor was found, and a debt that the college owed for the construction of a new building was miraculously paid for by a donor just before he left. Then, when the Sanders moved to Melbourne in Australia, God provided a nice home even though housing was difficult to obtain at the time. Friends and relatives, meanwhile, started to change their minds and now affirmed his decision.

“We had to take the initial step of faith without any tangible confirmations and against the original opinion of our friends, and this was not easy,” Oswald wrote later. “But subsequent events provided us with absolute assurance that we had moved in the will of God.”⁷

But this was just the beginning of the journey. While Oswald had experience working in law firms and heading a Bible college, he found that dealing with missionaries was different. He had no field experience, and his well-ordered and business-like approach to problem-solving was not always popular, especially among some of the older missionaries. Over time, however, most of them began to value his decisiveness, insightful mind, and ability to get to the heart of any issue at hand. What made him stand out even more was his preaching and speaking; his sermons and speeches continued to touch, inspire, and galvanise those who heard them.

Then the May 1954 letter arrived, inviting Oswald to take the top post in the CIM. Remembering how God had repeatedly empowered him to take on seemingly impossible challenges in the past, he restrained himself from turning it down on the spot and, together with Edith, put it to much prayer. This time, God gave him several prods to show him that no matter what doubts he, Oswald, had about the job, God would see him through yet again.

Just as Edith was telling him that the move appeared to be “inevitable”, an old friend who had been staying with Oswald quoted from 1 Peter 5:1–7, where Peter exhorts elders to shepherd the flock with the right attitude. Oswald was particularly struck by how the passage read in the J. B. Phillips version of the Bible: “Accept the responsibility of looking after them willingly and not because you feel you can’t get out of it… You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern”.⁸

The words came like a blow. Clearly, God was telling him to accept the responsibility with the right heart, while at the same time giving him assurance that He would walk with him throughout the journey.

It was an assurance that Oswald would find himself drawing on deeply over the next 15 years, as he led the missions agency through the challenges it was facing on many different fronts. China was, for the time being, off-limits to its missionaries, and the CIM was pondering its future and considering ministering in Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. Internally, the organisation was grappling with a major restructuring of its leadership roles and responsibilities. Oswald had to travel around the region extensively, visiting missionaries to gain an understanding of their work, challenges, and needs— and to convince them of the need to adapt to the changing world. He also had to work with the various councils overseeing the different countries and regions—each with its own unique culture, traditions, and set of challenges—all the while attempting to keep the entire agency united.

Throughout his leadership of the CIM, Oswald would repeatedly feel overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy. But, as he discovered, this fear of not being up to the job could be an asset: it was a constant reminder to look to the Lord for help and to rely on Him completely.

“It all depends on your attitude to it,” he once wrote. “I’ve found that when the Lord has asked me to do some new thing for which I’ve not had the qualifications; when in conscious inadequacy I’ve turned to the Lord and said, ‘Well, Lord, You’re calling me to do it and I’m looking to You to provide,’ then, in every case He’s seen me through. That’s one of the lessons of inadequacy. It’s not something that the Lord takes away. He doesn’t necessarily make you feel adequate, but He does see you through.”⁸