Dwight L. Moody, the famed evangelist believed to have spoken to more people in the nineteenth century than anyone else, remains known as the greatest spokesman for the Gospel in that century, much as Billy Graham has been recognized as the greatest spokesperson for the Gospel in the twentieth century. Yet many people are unaware of the school D.L. Moody founded in 1886. After Moody's death, the school was renamed Moody Bible Institute.
MBI grew and grew, and quickly became more than just a school teaching gap men to help in churches across America. It became a pioneering book publisher that would offer inexpensive paperbacks on Christian living and understanding the Bible better. Today its bestselling books include Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages," which became the number one advice books on "The New York Times "bestsellers list in 2010. It entered broadcasting in 1926 with it first radio station; today its broadcasting network includes twenty-two owned-and operated stations, 1,800 affiliates, and three online audio channels with twenty-four hour-a-day global coverage.
The MBI Story looks at the impact of the institute during its first 125 years in terms of innovations, including the first missionary aviation operated by a Bible institute on flight program (still producing close to 50 percent of all missionary pilots more than sixty years later), one of the first correspondence schools in America, and an award winning film production company that advanced film techniques, including pioneering time-lapse photography and the first color motion pictures from inside the human heart. These creative nature and science films remain available in DVD form to home viewers and educators.
The book spotlights the vision of the founder and eight presidents who followed him and the continuing innovation of the institute, including the new Moody Theological Seminary, the first branch campus (in Spokane), and a distance learning center that offers a Moody education anytime, anywhere. It also looks at new plans arising from a set of "strategic initiatives" that promise to reshape Moody Bible Institute once more.
