Occasionally his sermons were published as pamphlets, such as The Ecumenical Dream…One Big Church!, reflecting his alarm over ill-considered ecclesiastical mergers and unions. Specializing in prophetic interpretation, he stressed the need for continual evangelization. He enjoyed a national reputation as a powerful speaker, preaching for conferences like Moody Founder’s Week, Moody Keswick, Winona Lake, West Coast Prophetic Congress and many others. A few months later he inaugurated a radio broadcast, later moving his congregation to a larger building and a successful television ministry called Grace Worship Hour. After serving briefly in Iowa, Wisconsin and Chicago, Dunn in 1951 accepted a call to pastor at Grace Presbyterian in Peoria. (’46), he transferred to McCormick Seminary in Chicago and then Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he acquired his Th.D. In addition to sports, he reported for the Record, traveled with the Ambassadors (Wheaton’s musical evangelists) and served on the Men’s Interhouse Council. Offering his life to God, Dunn enrolled at Wheaton College where he robustly participated in campus life, involved with cheerleading, tennis, ping pong and the Aristonian Literary Society. Regularly attending for years but still unsure of his beliefs, Dunn finally walked the aisle in 1936, publicly declaring his faith in Christ after hearing former hoodlum Anthony Zeoli testify to God’s grace. Oswald Smith’s Sunday School class at the famous People’s Church. As road-weary vaudevillians used to say, “If it’ll play in Peoria, it’ll play anywhere.” There Dunn’s fruitful ministry “played” for decades not because of chance, but as the result of, as he observed, “…many prayers, much planning, and sacrificial giving by hundreds of people.” Born to a godly family of Scottish heritage in Toronto, Ontario, Dunn was the first boy in Dr. Canadian Bruce Wallace Dunn, responding to a question on his Wheaton College application regarding his choice for location after graduation, wrote, “California – otherwise no preference.” As it happened, Dunn’s career did not move him westward but straight south to Peoria, Illinois.

Death by Arrogance by Bruce E. Dunn