Francis Higgins was born in Ontario, Canada on August 19,1865 to an hotel-keeper. His father passed away when he was seven, and his mother remarried when he was nine. They then moved to the wilderness with his pioneer step-father.
He made it through the fifth grade, but had to drop out to help on his step-father's farm.
As a child, Frank wanted to grow up to be a minister. He would gather some of his school friends together and practice preaching to them. When he couldn't get a group together, he would simply stand on a stump and preach to the surrounding trees.
He knew that to be a preacher he needed to have some more education. So, at the age of 20, he enrolled in the sixth grade in Toronto, and went to school for five years to complete his Sophomore year.
He moved to Minnesota in 1890 hoping to complete his high school education. He moved in with a Methodist woman who encouraged him in his desire to become a preacher. However, after enrolling in Hamline University in 1893, the Methodist church decided that his grades were too poor to be a suitable minister.
While in Minnesota, Frank would go door to door selling soap to raise money. He also would use an axe and saw to chop firewood for the locals. Frank didn't know that this last venture would be how he would serve his Lord in the ministry.
Frank met and married Eva Lucas in October of 1895. Together, they moved to a small town called Barnum which had invited Frank to preach to their Presbyterian congregation while he studied for his ordination. This would be the door through which Frank would find God's calling on his life. Barnum was filled with farmer families and lumberjacks.
One of the lumbermen took Frank down to a logging community and introduced him to the men. He was called to preach on the spot by some of the jacks. He said that he didn't have any notes on him. The jack replied, "It's a sorry preacher that doesn't have at least one sermon in his heart!" Frank tried to remember the sermon that he had preached the day before. He retold his sermon, "The Friend of Sinners", to the men to the best of his ability. Frank ended with a prayer for each of the men. The lumberjacks, with tears in their eyes, asked him to come preach to them again.
Miss Eva was the best woman for this man's work. Once when Frank told the boys to stop by when they were in town, Miss Eva found herself with a house-full of 30 lumberjacks. They were hospitably received by the lady of the house!
For years, Frank worked in the church in Barnum and visited the logging camps. But, in 1899 he realized God's calling on his life was to the lumberjacks.
He was contacted a dying lumberjack in a log cabin deep in the woods. The attending doctor told Frank the man might make it if he were in a hospital in Duluth. Frank, himself, took the man to the hospital, but he was told there was no hope. While praying for the dying man, the man begged him to do more for the lumberjacks. He told Frank that he had heard him preach one night while out on the river, and that he had gotten saved. The jack said that it was the first sermon he had heard in 20 years.
"Go back to the camps and tell the boys about Jesus" were the words spoken by the dying jack. These words continued to ring in Frank's ears.
A few weeks later, Frank resigned from the Barnum church. He gave up his hopes to minister in a city church and gave himself fully to the ministry of converting the lumberjacks.
Frank moved to Bemidji, one of the roughest logging communities in Minnesota, and took up the minister's position in their church. He was invited to speak to the lumberjacks by the logging camp operators, who realized that saved loggers who didn't drink or gamble worked better than unsaved ones who did. There was also opposition by the Labor activists who thought the workers needed better working conditions instead of preachers.
One of the jacks once asked him what his greatest ambition in life was, and he responded, "To pilot men to the skies." Frank preached and worked with the lumberjacks, to them he was "The sky pilot". Frank not only came to preach, but he would stay a few days and get up, eat, and work with the jacks. He was a friend and fellow worker with whom they could relate. The lumberjacks viewed Frank as one of their own, and listened to him when he preached.
Frank would sometimes bring an organ with them and spend time singing hymns with the lumberjacks. Sometimes, Miss Eva would come and play the organ while her husband ministered. He often brought books, tracts, and Bibles for the jacks to read, and upon occasion also taught some of the men how to read. He also provided emergency transportation for the lumberjacks.
Frank would walk between logging camps in the summer, carrying everything he needed in a heavy pack on his shoulders. When Frank moved between logging camps in the winter, he started using a sled and dogs to get from place to place, and found that this helped when he needed to move an injured jack or pregnant woman to a hospital.
Lumberjacks would often go to local saloons and waste their money. The saloon owners were known for spiking the free drinks and then robbing the jacks while they were passed out. Frank would offer to hold their money for them when they went to the saloon, and when they came back the next morning he would return their money along with a stern mini-sermon.
Frank was always doing right by the lumberjacks. He would often pick up a drunk out of the gutter and take him to warm room, or go into the saloon and encourage a drunk jack to leave. He also helped the younger lumberjacks get onto trains and home for a visit with most of their earnings.
The lumberjacks were often taken advantage of. There were many who came through to rob them of their income- from the logging communities to "evangelists". Frank wanted to make sure that he wasn't associated with these. He came to the camps often and never accepted donations until the last days of the logging season. He was a sincere friend to the jacks, and they knew it!
Once, when Frank was walking with a friend of his through Duluth, his friend met an acquaintance on the street. When the man was introduced to Frank he exclaimed, "Are you Frank Higgins, the sky pilot?"
Frank told the man that he was the same, and the man said, "I have always wanted to hear you preach. I'd go any distance to hear a sermon from you."
Frank smiled, stepped off the curb, turned around and said, "Then take off your hat. You're in church." And proceeded to preach a message.
Passers-by stopped to hear the sermon from the large lumberjack. But, it was the acquaintance that never forgot it, for that was the day he accepted Christ as his Savior.
One of his better known converts was John Sornberger. John was once a prize fighter, who became a murdering drunk. Frank helped this man find Christ and clean up his life. He even advocated his pardon with the Governor.
A lumberjack asked Frank why the preachers waited for people to come to them. "There are thirty thousand men in these woods, and only about 30 of them hear a sermon a year!" There was no ministry to the lumberjacks; no one was trained for that type of work.
Frank had gotten caught out in the woods with the jacks one Sunday. He decided to have his services with them since there were plenty of elders in his church in Bemidji that could handle the services there. When he got back to the city, he found out that they waited for a few and then closed services when he didn't show. He was given an ultimatum by the elders, the church or the jacks.
"I have made a decision! This pulpit is vacant right now! A thousand men could take this church. The boys in the woods have only me."
That's how the Sky Pilot ministry started. "They're going to hear the gospel if I have to tell it to every one of them myself." Frank said.
His wife moved to a farm she owned in Delano and that became Frank's base of operations.
It was about that time that a lumberjack dying from pneumonia asked for Frank Higgins to come pray for him. Frank led the man to Christ on his death bed, and the man exclaimed, "You and Jesus are the only friends I have."
Frank knew he had to do something to reach more jacks. He started to recruit new sky-pilots from among his own converts. When the Presbyterian Home Mission wanted to start a ministry for loggers in 1902, Frank already had men ready to send on circuits to preach to the 30,000 men in different camps across Minnesota. This ministry was known as the "Parish of the Pines".
By 1909, Frank Higgins was a well known preacher. An interview with him in Harper's Magazine opened the door for Frank's ministry to move beyond Minnesota. He received invitations to preached all over the United States. He spoke to lumberjacks in the Northwest, running into men in Washington that he had known from his logging camps in Minnesota.
In 1914, Frank developed cancer in his shoulders from the heavy packs that he carried during the summers. He had multiple surgeries, but the cancer spread.
Once after one surgery, the doctor said that Frank needed a transfusion. In a few hours, eight rough lumberjacks showed up at the hospital. They said, "IF there ain't blood enough in us eight men, say the word and every man in Northern Minnesota will be on his way down here tomorrow!"
Frank realized that his days were numbered and he went on preaching as much as he could. He was constantly in pain, and he barely slept because of it, but he never complained. He had no church or organization; his congregation was built by the men of the wood. And they picked up his mantle when his days were ended.
He passed away on January 4, 1915 back in his Canadian home at the age of 49. His body was sent to his daughter, who lived in their home near Delano, Minnesota. The funeral was held at Delano city hall on January 9th, and there he was buried.
Even after his death, the sky pilots who were trained by Higgins continued their ministry as long as there were logging communities to preach to. The sky pilots were in operation through the southern United States and the Pacific Coast up through the 1940's.
Oh, for the days when I could go back into the woods, take the boys by the hand, and call them by name. I wish I could turn back the curtain of time and do it all over again. But that I cannot do, and if I have come to the end of the trail you will have to do it for me. -Frank Higgins, Sky Pilot
Frank's life shows us that God will use anyone who is willing. The Methodist church may have deemed Frank an unworthy preacher, but the Lord had other plans for this "uneducated" man. It seems that what the Religious crowd views as unworthy the Lord uses with great power!
