Edna Jean Horn

RADIO PIONEER

Edna Jean Green was born on October 23, 1909, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Salvation Army officers. She was the oldest of six children. Her parents eventually left the Salvation Army and assumed the leadership of a Holiness church in Ionia, Michigan.

Edna Jean started preaching in her parent’s church at the age of 12. As a teen-ager she had her own tent but was accompanied by her father because of her young age. They traveled extensively throughout the Midwestern states conducting open-air, brush arbor and tent meetings. Other meetings were conducted in churches and meeting halls.

Edna Jean was widely accepted by various denominational churches. In 1925, she received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which gave her ministry a new fire and intensity.
After this experience, her meetings were marked by many supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit. There were reports of a ball of fire sweeping over the heads of the congregation. At times Edna Jean was lifted off the platform and translated down to the floor by the power of the Spirit and then lifted back up again. She was always unaware that this had happened until the congregation mentioned it to her.

In 1928, Edna Jean started a radio ministry as a guest preacher in Detroit, Michigan. In 1930 she started her own program, originally called The Woman’s Radio Pulpit. She was the writer, director, producer, and sound technician, and also–along with her husband, Lewis H. Horn, and later her children–provided musical talent. She continued this program, which was broadcast all over the United States as well as in Haiti and Mexico, and picked up in other parts of the world, on a weekly basis for the next 54 years.

In all her years on the radio, Edna Jean never asked for money on the air or sent out requests through the mail for donations. She trusted God to meet the needs of the radio ministry, and He provided supernaturally the entire time.

Edna Jean received an Angel Award by Religion in Media for her program, then known as Church by the Side of the Road Broadcast. In 1943 she became the only female charter member of the National Religious Broadcasters. This organization gave her numerous awards for her program throughout the years. She remained a member until her death in 1984.

In addition to producing her radio program and raising two children, Edna Jean spent her life pioneering and pastoring churches with her husband, who was himself an ordained minister.