Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Vivian Osburn.
Vivian Osburn was one of the leaders of the very first Camp Farthest Out at Lake Koronis in 1930. She led physical coordination there, but her influence on CFO went far beyond those early camps. She served the camps for nearly sixty years, first from Des Moines and later from Houston. She learned from Glenn Clark at Macalester College, made her home a place of prayer, helped take CFO to Mindanao, and helped launch the Nine O’Clock Prayer for the 1980 Golden Jubilee.
She had one subject all her life. “For my one and only theme is always Jesus.”
Vivian grew up in the Presbyterian church in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. Her father died when she was five. As a little girl, she said yes to Jesus at a Lutheran service held in their church. “And I opened the door… of my little girl heart… and said… Jesus… come in.” Her mother was a firm Presbyterian and had a simple rule for dealing with teenage girls. “I say little and pray much.”
From about the age of seven, Vivian suffered from erythema induratum, painful sores on her legs that would not heal. Doctors in Wisconsin could not cure them. Neither could specialists at Rochester in 1931. The scars remained with her for the rest of her life.
At Macalester College in St. Paul, Vivian worked in the dining hall. A friend urged her to go see Glenn Clark. Clark prayed with her in Old Main. “But suddenly the whole room was filled with the light of the living Christ.”
She joined his Friday prayer group and his Tuesday evening meetings at his home. When her mother was in the hospital, Clark rode the streetcar to pray with her. Her mother died in 1928. Vivian came to regard Glenn Clark and George Washington Carver as her two spiritual fathers. On one occasion she knelt between them in Clark’s home while they blessed her and prayed that she would become a blessing to many generations. She carried that blessing with her.
Vivian was teaching school at Wheaton, Minnesota, and living with her sister Gracia when a letter arrived. She was being sent east to train with Gerald Stanley Lee in physical coordination for the first Camp Farthest Out. “To have that training… For that first camp. That was a real thrill.”
At Lake Koronis in 1930, Vivian led physical coordination. Glenn Harding remembered her as one of the rhythm leaders. “There were two rhythms leaders and Vivian led the one, the more fundamental one in my mind.” Campers balanced balls and oranges on their heads as part of the exercises.
Vivian led physical coordination at Koronis for about seven years, and she continued leading morning meditation there much longer. Decades later, Norman Renshaw could still tease her about it. “1930 she started at it and she’s pretty effective.” Then came the warning: “So keep out of her way.”
At Koronis in 1934, Vivian met Edward Osburn, a high school teacher from Carroll, Iowa. A friend had been trying to get him to come to CFO for five years. Vivian and Edward took a half-hour walk together. The following summer he proposed during a moonlit drive. “And he was stuck with me… for the remainder… of his life… not just 30 minutes…”
Her legs still had not healed. Before she returned to Rochester, she and Edward spent an evening praying with Glenn and Louise Clark. At Rochester, a doctor offered a new injection treatment from England. It worked. “On my wedding day, I did not have to use those great big rubber, thick rubber-like tires, bandages.”
Doctors had told Vivian and Edward that they could not have children. Edward was not impressed. “Well, the dreams of youth fall thick in the blast, but we’ll be married anyway.” They married in the spring of 1936. In time, the doctors were proved wrong. Meredith was born on Christmas Day 1938, followed by Miriam and Edward. Vivian never lost the scars from her childhood. “Sometimes if I didn’t have those scars I’d almost think it was a dream but when I see them I say thank you Father I know your power.”
In 1946 the Osburns moved to Des Moines. Their old house had an upper room on the third floor, and they named the house after the man in 2 Timothy who refreshed Paul. “We have lots of fun at our house because we call it the House of Onesiphorus.” Glenn Clark said people came there almost as if they were coming to a shrine.
When Vivian found there was no prayer group in their Methodist church, she started one herself. She rose at 5:45 every morning and spent an hour in the upper room before going out to substitute teach. She did that for nineteen years. Prayer was not something she talked about only at camp. It was built into the way she lived.
She and Edward tithed and gave beyond their tithe. “Because I am a very rich woman, and Glenn Harding made me so.” She kept the travel schedules of CFO speakers in her Bible so she could pray for them. Roland Brown had prayed in her upper room. In those years, her home became part of the quiet infrastructure of CFO—a place where people prayed, rested, and were remembered before God.
Around 1960 Edward suffered a serious heart attack and recovered. Vivian continued serving at CFO camps and retreats. But late in the 1960s, Edward died. At the fortieth anniversary of the first camp at Koronis in 1970, Vivian and Glenn Harding were the only surviving leaders of that first camp. She had come back to the place where so much of her life had begun.
She admitted that widowhood could be lonely, but she also found something in the life of Jesus that met her there. “Since Edward has been in the other part of the kingdom, that it was good for me to realize that Jesus, too, had lonely days.” She could still joke about getting older. “I’m not Phillips 66… but I’m Osburn 66… at the 40th year… of the camps… 1970.” Afterward she moved the House of Onesiphorus to Houston.
Vivian never saw CFO as something that belonged only in America. In 1976 she and Thelma Lee went to England and told CFO there about the American camps. The following year, in February 1977, they went to the Philippines and started the first CFO on Mindanao. They paid their own way. “And Vivian and I raised our fare and went down there.”
Verla Goff remembered what that meant. “Well, they were the pioneers on Mindanao.” Vivian was already an older woman by then, but age did not seem to have much to do with whether something needed to be done. If God opened a door, she went through it.
In 1978 Vivian and a committee of longtime CFOers began preparing for the Golden Jubilee in 1980. While looking through an old copy of Sharing magazine, she found the wartime story of Britain’s Big Ben silent minute. Norman Renshaw told them how Britain had kept the practice.
Vivian and the committee asked CFOers around the world to pray at nine o’clock each evening for the peace of the world. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The prayer continued after the Jubilee. In 1982 a second line was added: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”
Thelma Lee told a camp in 1983 where the idea had come from. “This is what Vivian Osburn started.” Vivian was still urging people to pray at nine in her Christmas newsletter in 1987. She and a friend would call each other at nine o’clock, pray together, and hang up. She died about 1988.
Vivian’s ministry began with meditation and physical coordination, but the exercises were never the point. “You are going out into the silence to be changed.” She taught people to have a definite place and a definite time for meeting God. She taught that the Holy Spirit could skim off what was spoiled. “But remember his goal is… A perfect glass of jelly.”
And she taught people how to look at one another. “Look at them and love them until they do look beautiful.” She had no interest in becoming a religious celebrity or pretending to be somebody she was not. “And to tell you the truth, she isn’t. She’s just Vivian Osburn.” That was enough.
Vivian spent nearly sixty years helping people find Jesus in prayer, in silence, in movement, in friendship, and in the camps. She was there at the beginning at Lake Koronis, and she was still looking for ways to send CFO farther when she was an old woman. Her life kept pointing in the same direction. Jesus.
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.