“A little bumpy ride today, isn’t it?” Darlene Ankerberg said to the man sitting beside her on a flight to Los Angeles. “Are you a little bit apprehensive?”
“Yes, I really am,” the man replied. He tensed with each turbulent motion of the plane.
“Well,” Ankerberg said, “have you ever thought about if something were to happen — what would happen to you?”
The man gave Ankerberg his attention. “No, I’ve never thought about that.”
“Could I share my story with you?”
Over the course of the flight, Ankerberg shared the Gospel and talked with the man, who turned out to be a professor at a leading university. Ankerberg prayed for him to know Christ before disembarking the plane.
As they arrived in LA, the man turned to Ankerberg. “You made this trip tolerable and life changing for me,” he said.
“Then that was worth the whole thing,” she replied.
The desire to change lives for Christ saturates Ankerberg’s every interaction with habits of evangelism, apologetics, and prayer. While perhaps best known as the wife of John Ankerberg, Darlene is also a stalwart evangelist and prayer warrior, never backing down from an opportunity to invite her neighbors to Christ.
Darlene Ankerberg’s life stories inspire continual evangelism, faithful apologetics and discipleship, and fearless prayer in the face of spiritual warfare.
She grew up in a family culture immersed in evangelism. While her evangelist parents traveled for ministry, her grandmother and great grandmother cared for her and taught her to memorize the Scriptures, beginning with Psalm 23 and Proverbs 3:5-6.
To this day, she prays that Proverb every morning.
“Before my feet hit the floor, I go, ‘Okay, Lord, I trust in you today. Make this a good day,’” she said.
She also prays daily for God to show her someone to whom she can represent Christ. Some days that includes sharing the Gospel, but most days it means offering a word of encouragement, praying for someone, and just being kind to strangers.
“It’s easy to just start up a conversation,” Darlene Ankerberg said. “If you just say ‘Good morning’ or ‘How’s your day going?’ you would be surprised how they might answer.”
In an age of heads-down living, people order their coffees online and pick them up without ever making eye-contact, let alone engaging in conversation. Ankerberg believes Christians can stand out by interrupting screen-oriented habits with friendly greetings. Even ordinary places like car washes, drycleaners, and the local coffee shop can be mission fields for Christ’s love.
“You never know who you’re going to run into on a day-by-day basis with just the things that we have to do daily,” Darlene Ankerberg said.
She met her husband John Ankerberg at a Bible conference between her junior and senior years of college. He was already engaged in evangelism, with Bible studies in Chicago and speaking opportunities at 78 universities. They were married four years later.
Two weeks after their wedding, the Ankerbergs travelled to Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other nations hosting evangelistic meetings for two and a half months.
“It’s just been my life,” Darlene Ankerberg said. “I thank the Lord for that because it’s what I grew up understanding.”
When Al Metsker encouraged John to start a TV program, he initially declined. But after further encouragement, he started the “John Ankerberg Show.” The show took off with John inviting guests from cults and other religions to debate with Christian scholars.
Forty-six years later, the show remains the only TV show dedicated to apologetics, with guests from every spiritual background: Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, atheists, occult members, and many more. The lineup of Christian apologists have remained no less impressive: names like William Lane Craig, John MacArthur, D. James Kennedy, and Lee Strobel barely scratch the surface of the list.
“We have dealt with these subjects just to train Christians, but also that the non-Christians would listen and understand and hear the truth of the Scriptures,” Darlene Ankerberg said.
While John Ankerberg studies the Bible and the writings of its opponents, Darlene Ankerberg conducts the day-to-day operations of the ministry as CEO. She encourages the staff to remember that this has never been “the Ankerbergs’ ministry” — it has always belonged to the Lord.
“We’re all a family that are working each day to do the best that we can … so that many people will come to know the Lord,” she said.
That mission has translated into tangible opportunities across the globe, often in ways the Ankerbergs never anticipated.
When pastors in South Asia were struggling to move from evangelism to discipleship, the Ankerbergs started a 40-week discipleship program. They expected the video series to reach maybe 100 pastors, but it now reaches 36,000 Christians in the area, many of whom have planted their own house churches under severe persecution.
“The testimonies that we’re getting back are just unbelievable,” Darlene Ankerberg said. “We’re just very excited with what the Lord’s doing with this.”
However, the Ankerberg’s apologetic work has not always been met with such enthusiasm. They have received threats, called in police to defend their home, and hired guards for speaking events.
“The Lord’s always taking care of us and we never back down,” Darlene Ankerberg said. “When you’re really doing something for the Lord, you’re going to get attacked.”
More than human opposition, Darlene Ankerberg recounts numerous stories which she believes were attacks from Satan attempting to stop the ministry.
Once, when the couple was driving along the snowy roads from Chicago to New Hampshire to prepare for a crusade in Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe), the car hit a slick spot under and overpass.
The vehicle spun around and stopped, stuck in a downhill snowbank. The Ankerbergs were unscathed. While the couple waited for a tow-truck to haul them out, however, Darlene Ankerberg watched as an 18-wheeler hit the same slick spot and careened in their direction.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’m going to heaven. This is it. We’re going to die,” she remembers thinking.
She felt the impact of the semi-truck hitting the car with a crunching sound she will never forget.
Opening her eyes, she realized that the bed of the truck had landed on the roof of their car. The Ankerbergs crawled out the windows into the snow before the truck could settle further and crush them.
“The Lord protected us,” she said. “Our car was totaled, [but] we went on to Africa, had fantastic meetings that the Lord blessed.”
The Ankerbergs continue to reach thousands through the TV show, the Ankerberg Theological Research Institute, and their partnership with Faith Comes By Hearing.
Behind the scenes of every episode, speaking engagement, and apologetics event, Darlene Ankerberg is organizing the minutiae and praying for every detail.
“I don’t think we as Christians really grasp what prayer can do,” she said. “You’ve got to remember: He’s right here with us.”
Prayer has brought the Ankerbergs through countless dangers as they continue to reach out to the lost and deceived. While Darlene Ankerberg values experiences through which hundreds and thousands come to Christ, she encourages believers to focus on the daily opportunities to love their neighbors.
“Even if just one or two people came to see the light and came to understand what the Lord has done and all the fallacies of these things, then it’s been worth it all.”
Darlene Ankerberg is a member of the NRB Presidents Council. The “John Ankerberg Show” has been a member since 1982.
To learn more, visit the Ankerberg Theological Research Institute website: atriresearch.org.