Allegra McBirney has had a wide ministry with children, not only as the mother of 6, but also as a missionary and author of many children’s books and magazine articles. She is the author of dozens of books for adults, and has had a teaching ministry which has reached women in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. For many years, she also wrote and presented her own radio program, “A Time for Sharing”, carried by a Christian network across the United States (and translated for foreign broadcasts), which, although directed to adults, often featured her children’s stories—with warm listener response.
Jack and Allegra McBirney with their son Mike in 1955
(Image courtesy of the ELCA Archives, Used by Permission)
Allegra has a degree in Creative Writing from Stanford University, but her most important credential as an author and teacher is her love for the Lord. It is her heart’s desire to bring others to know Christ, receive Him by faith as their Savior, and then also establish a close—and exciting!—walk with Him as their Shepherd, Lord, and King!
Allegra’s husband Jack graduated from Stanford University in engineering, but soon after becoming a Christian, he left his very successful engineering career, choosing rather to invest his life in service to Christ. He and Allegra, together with their 6 children, became missionaries, with a family outreach of God’s Word to children and teenagers; and home Bible studies for adults.
When their missionary work was successfully completed with the establishment of a Bible-teaching church, they returned to the U.S. where Jack earned a Master’s Degree in Christian School Administration, and served the Lord through founding two greatly needed, and very effective, Christian schools in the San Francisco area. He also traveled periodically to Russia—even immediately after 40 sessions of radiation for cancer—motivated by his burden to lead communist teachers to Christ and introduce a Christian curriculum into former communist schools there. But that was his last teaching ministry, and in God’s timing, Allegra’s dear Jack was promoted to Heaven in 2011.
Allegra continues her outreach of the Gospel through what she calls her “one-person publishing company.” Her books are primarily based on remarkable true testimonies, the information for which she has gathered over a period of many years. It has been her desire to develop only stories based on fact, not fiction. She’s convinced that true stories of Christ’s actual involvement in lives are far more wonderful and worthwhile than anything fiction could invent. Allegra also wrote, and illustrated, a series combining Creation and Salvation—which has brought reports of hundreds of adults, as well as children, coming to faith in Christ through God’s Word, which is interwoven with God’s wonders in those little books.
All 6 of Jack’s and Allegra’s children received Christ, by faith, at an early age; and they were as essential in their missionary service as were their parents! The family worked and prayed together—and rejoiced together over every spiritual victory that resulted! Now, as adults, the children have continued to serve the Lord not only through their churches in the United States, but also through various ministries in Africa, Europe and South America.
(Compiled from various biographies written by Allegra McBirney.)