Dr. Bryant L. Myers

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Bryant Myers at World Vision and meeting him a few times over the years. As a young professional then and even in later years, what I remember most was his deep passion for God’s mission and his genuine love for people.

Bryant believed wholeheartedly in the whole gospel for the whole person and the whole world. This was not just something he taught or wrote about. It was something he lived every day through his work, his relationships, and the way he engaged with those around him.

His work and writings shaped my graduate studies, especially his book Walking with the Poor , which has over the years become my go-to textbook whenever I want to refresh myself on transformational development and Christian witness. It inspired my work greatly as I led World Vision Partnership in developing the now popular Biblical Empowered Worldview approach, widely acknowledged as a tool for actualizing transformational development in simple and tangible ways in communities.

His faith, humility, and vision left a lasting impression on me. I am grateful for the opportunity to have known him and to have witnessed a life so faithfully devoted to God’s kingdom. His legacy will continue to inspire many of us for years to come.

Walking with the Poor is one of the first development books I read, and perhaps the one that has had the most impact on me. His thought and writing has had a profound influence on how Plant With Purpose works. Our approach and theory of change are deeply intertwined with his thinking. I am grateful for Bryant’s life and inspiration.

Bryant Myers had a large influence on the culture and practices of World Vision in its efforts to walk alongside the poor and vulnerable. With both of my parents having spent significant amounts of their careers working with World Vision (mom—30 years, dad—15 years), they were shaped by this, and it was evident to me as I grew up, despite not knowing the name Bryant Myers.

Later, in my own work in cross-cultural development (now with World Relief), inspired by my parents’ careers and my own felt calling, I engaged with Bryant Myers’ book, Walking with the Poor , in my own graduate studies with the Global Development and Justice (MAGDJ) program at Multnomah University (the program founders were directly influenced by Myers at Fuller Seminary).

It was a foundational text in our “Intro to Global Development” course and really set the stage for how we engaged in our learning throughout our master’s program. Seeing the image of God and dignity in each person, working in partnership with vulnerable communities, and looking at poverty from a holistic lens were all valuable learnings and principles I took away from both Myers’ book and my master’s education.

When Bryant Myers arrived at Fuller Theological Seminary, I was fortunate to become one of his first PhD students. For more than ten years, he was my mentor, teacher, and friend.

I came to Fuller primarily as a practitioner. Bryant appreciated my grassroots perspective and was genuinely intrigued by my Pentecostal background and my questions about identity, faith, and transformational development. But he would not let me remain simply a practitioner. Bryant pushed me to become a scholar, to think beyond my own religious tribe, and to take seriously what other disciplines could teach us about religion and development.

Bryant was also remarkably gracious. During difficult seasons in my family’s life, his compassion and patience meant as much to me as his academic guidance.

Bryant’s understanding of the convergence of stories transformed my approach to ministry. A community already has a story before we arrive. God is already at work in that story. When our story converges with God’s story and the community’s story, we don’t “bring” transformation to others; we enter a relationship in which all of us are changed.

That understanding continues to shape our work today, especially among vulnerable children in Ecuador. Bryant taught me to value relationships, to listen, and to recognize the voice and agency of those we serve.

My story converged with Bryant’s for more than a decade. I am a better scholar, practitioner, and person because it did.

Myers had a mind to really understand the roots of poverty beyond what most people see. He understood that love of neighbor and development work are so intricately intertwined, and he created a framework for so many of us to cling to as we worked toward becoming more fully human (as Paulo Freire says) ourselves while also working for that same wholeness and flourishing for the resilient people living in places of economic poverty that we really cannot ever fully understand. I’m so grateful for his work and witness in this world, and the many tools he gave us as development practitioners.

Professor Bryant Myers helped me understand God, God’s reconciling work, and my calling. His work to bring together the best thinking on poverty into one framework actually saved my faith and put me on a life-long path in global development. He directly impacted the trajectory of my career with the creation of a thoughtful internship for Fuller grads at World Vision International. His book, teaching, and leadership changed the world in significant ways. I’m sending prayers for his family and friends, and I am so incredibly grateful I was one of his students. He will be missed, but his legacy continues.

When I was hired by Ron Sider to serve as the director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, I had to attend board meetings for Evangelicals for Social Action. Bryant was the chair of the board. I remember being impressed by his leadership and command of the issues facing the church in promoting a holistic gospel. Bryant was someone I could look up to.

In a later career, I served with Eastern University’s School of Leadership and Development, where Bryant’s book, Walking with the Poor , was required reading. It was so rewarding to see our graduate students appreciate his writings, awakening them to a gospel much broader and more alive than many of them understood. And so we sent them out into the world, where many of them serve Jesus and the poor.

I first met Bryant in 2010 when I began my master’s at Fuller. During one of my first days on campus, I made my way to Bryant’s office, hoping I’d get a chance to meet him. He wasn’t in, but on his door was a handwritten sign-up sheet for students to join him and his wife Lisa for a cohort that would meet weekly with them. I signed up for one of the last available spots on the list.

I had no idea what an amazing blessing I was about to experience. Our weekly times with the Myers were truly beautiful. They had us in their home for meals frequently. They were even so gracious as to host my seminary graduation party. I grew to know both of them well, and they grew to know and love us.

Bryant was truly my mentor and my friend. The Myers walked with me and my family through a season of great blessing and challenge, as we adapted to the highs and lows of life at Fuller and in southern California.

Bryant helped open the door for me to do my Fuller practicum at World Vision. He later gave me a positive reference to join World Vision as an apprentice. I now lead the team at World Vision focused on our organizational Christian witness—a team that he helped establish during his days with us.

One of the greatest honors of my life has been teaching his course on Poverty & Development as an adjunct at Fuller.

Bryant was a living expression of the love of Jesus Christ. And for that, I will be forever grateful for him.

Bryant was so full of wisdom. I remember reading Walking With the Poor early in my career and being astounded as the spiritual, practical and technical pieces suddenly fell into place. What a great title for a book whose ideas were grounded not simply in scholarship, but in decades spent walking alongside communities across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Sitting with him and Kwame Bediako, another pioneering theologian and thinker, in rural Ghana in 1991 and listening to them talk changed me forever. Finally, here was a framework that made sense of the world as we were experiencing it. It was the moment I understood development as participation in God’s work of restoring people, relationships, communities, systems and creation, not mine.

Bryant combined great intellect with deep humility. Despite being busy shaping the way an entire generation of Christian development practitioners thought about poverty, transformation and mission, he was extraordinarily generous with his time. He invested in us, consistently encouraging us to find our own words and fresh expressions of Transformational Development for a new generation.

So many of the ideas that now feel “normal” within World Vision trace back to Bryant’s pioneering work: development as restoration rather than service delivery; accompaniment rather than control; communities as agents rather than beneficiaries; faith and development as inseparable; sustainability through local ownership and systems strengthening; and poverty as a relational and spiritual reality, not simply an economic one.

Bryant’s fingerprints are all over World Vision’s understanding of Transformational Development today. We will all miss him. It is a great loss. But I am deeply grateful for what he leaves behind. His legacy will continue to shape World Vision, and those of us fortunate enough to have known and learned from him, for many years to come.

While I did not know Bryant personally, I’m deeply grateful for his life and work. When I started my career as an economics professor, I was struggling with the purely materialistic anthropology at the heart of my discipline. Walking with the Poor helped me see that human beings are highly-integrated body-soul-relational creatures, which profoundly changes, well, everything. Moreover, Bryant explained that this anthropology flowed out of the relational nature of the Triune God, reframing my understanding of how God relates to His world and His people. Truly transformational. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of Bryant Myers!

Walking with the Poor by Myers was the first book I read starting my Master’s in International Development at Eastern University. This book opened my eyes and heart to a more faithful way of walking with the poor. The book sits on my bookshelf a decade later, well loved, with its words highlighted, underlined, circled, starred, written in the margins, and pages dog-eared. I’ve come back to it time and again. The physical state of the book reflects the journey I’ve been on to love God and others more fully—personally and professionally. I will be forever grateful that Myers took the time to share his own journey so we can learn to walk together.

It was a privilege to work with Bryant at World Vision. I remember him as a thoughtful colleague whose compassion, humility, and deep respect for people shaped both his work and those around him.

Through Walking with the Poor , Bryant gave the global development community much more than a respected book. He offered a way of seeing: that poverty is not merely a lack of material resources, but a web of broken relationships—with self, community, creation, and God. He reminded us that meaningful development begins by recognizing the dignity, gifts, and agency of every person, and by walking alongside communities rather than presuming to lead from above.

Bryant’s scholarship carried authority because it was joined with faith, practical experience, and genuine love for people. His ideas influenced practitioners around the world, but his life conveyed the message just as powerfully as his writing did.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have known and worked with him. His wisdom and witness will continue through the countless people he taught, encouraged, and inspired—and through the communities served by those who learned from him. May Bryant’s family and loved ones find comfort in knowing how widely his life bore fruit, and how deeply his contribution will continue to matter.

I met Bryant my first day at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2006, and for three years his classes felt like “home.” As his student and his TA, I appreciated how accessible, relatable, silly, humble, and most importantly, faith-rooted his approach to global development was. He taught a generation of missions-minded do-gooders that holistic development was the most effective and true witness to the gospel, and equipped us to practice it in a way that gave God space to be acknowledged, experienced, and ultimately honored.

Personally, Bryant opened the door for me to work at World Vision through the Fuller Apprenticeship program. Next month marks 17 years for me with this incredible organization, and as a member of the Faith and Development team, I put his principles into practice daily. For his kindness, his counsel, his belief in me, and his seemingly never-ending diagrams … I remain forever marked and grateful. Thank you, Lord, for your gifts to me through Bryant.

I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bryant Myers, but his work continues to shape both my own walk with Christ and the ministry I lead. The Four Key Relationships framework he introduced in Walking with the Poor —with God, self, others, and world—forms the backbone of Attune’s foundational attunement exercise, which we call the Key Relationship Lens. Through it, we invite leaders to bring a specific situation before God and reflect on how he may already be at work in each of these relationships—cultivating what is good, healing what is broken—and then to pause and listen for his presence and guidance in how they might join him.

This simple practice has helped many grow in spiritual attunement and come to see more clearly how God is actively bringing shalom to every corner of creation. Dr. Myers’ teaching grew out of Christian relief and development work, but I’ve watched these same principles form Christians across a wide variety of sectors—helping them live more fully according to God’s will and ways. I’m deeply grateful for his life and legacy, and for how his framework keeps opening space for people to encounter God in the ordinary relationships of their everyday lives.

Bryant Myers passed away this week, leaving a remarkable legacy in International Development. For many years, he helped Christian relief and development organizations, seminaries, churches, and practitioners see poverty and the people experiencing it in new ways. He worked in both the practical setting of World Vision and the academic world at Fuller Theological Seminary. Still, what stands out to me is not his titles or books, but how he encouraged people to think differently.

Bryant had a unique way of slowing conversations. While others rushed to answers, he would stay with the question a bit longer…