David Ring

David Ring was born on October 28, 1953, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the seat of Craighead County. Deprived of oxygen for about eighteen minutes at birth, he developed cerebral palsy. He was the youngest of eight children. His father, Baptist pastor Oscar Newton Ring, died in 1964. His mother died of cancer about four years later, leaving him orphaned in his early teens. Relatives moved him among homes. He later described constant physical pain, public ridicule, and deep discouragement. After his mother's death he dropped out of high school for a time and said he attempted suicide more than once before a sister urged him back toward education and church.

Encouraged by a sister, Ring returned to Liberty High School in Liberty, Missouri, and graduated in 1971. School accounts associated with his testimony say classmates voted him most popular, elected him class vice president, and that he served as manager for football, basketball, and track teams. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from William Jewell College in Liberty in 1976 and was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha. He was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister.

Ring entered full-time evangelistic speaking in 1973 and built a national itinerary of church rallies, school assemblies, conventions, and corporate events. Ministry materials said he reached more than 100,000 people annually for decades. He appeared on The Old-Time Gospel Hour with Jerry Falwell, The 700 Club, Bill Gaither Praise Gathering events, John Hagee's Cornerstone, and Focus on the Family with James Dobson. In the 1990s he was described as a staff evangelist at First Baptist Church in Orlando while continuing to travel. His signature challenge, delivered despite speech affected by cerebral palsy, was: "I have cerebral palsy... What's your problem?" Variants included "What's your excuse?" and the reminder that cerebral palsy did not "have" him.

Ring married Karen. They made their home in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised four children: April, Ashley, Nathan, and Amy Joy. Later ministry materials also mentioned grandchildren. He often cited marriage and family as part of the ordinary life others once told him he would never have. Friendship with gospel musician Mike Speck and with childhood friend David Wideman figured in his public story; Wideman's perspective shaped The Boy Born Dead.

Ring preached evangelical Christian conversion, perseverance, and refusal to use hardship as an excuse for spiritual passivity. He argued that complaining kept people focused on circumstances rather than on what he called the bigger picture of faith. Philippians 4:13 and themes of availability over ability recurred in sermons and clips. He presented disability not as proof of divine absence but as a stage for testimony, humor, and challenge.

For roughly fifty years Ring was among the best-known American evangelists who spoke openly from lived disability. Churches, youth rallies, and Christian media repeated his slogan and circulated video of his testimony. After his death in September 2026, ministry partners and congregations that had booked him shared remembrances and asked for prayer for his family. Listeners often said the line about excuses stayed with them long after a single night's rally.

Contemporary profiles associated with his early career said that by 1978 he had been named among outstanding young men in America. His wider recognition came less from civic medals than from repeated national Christian media appearances and a publishing record that kept his story in print for new generations of church audiences.

Ring co-authored Just As I Am: The Life of David Ring (Moody Publishers) and The Boy Born Dead: A Story of Friendship, Courage, and Triumph (Baker Books, with John Driver and David Wideman). He was a frequent guest on Christian television and radio. Numerous church-recorded sermons and testimony videos circulated on YouTube and similar platforms into the 2020s.

No major public controversies were widely documented in mainstream obituaries and profiles consulted for this memorial. Public discussion of Ring focused on his disability, conversion narrative, and itinerant preaching rather than institutional scandal.

David Ring died in his sleep at home on September 26, 2026, at age 72, according to English Wikipedia's updated biography. Friends and ministry voices, including Tim Lee Ministries, announced that weekend that he had "went to heaven" Saturday morning and asked for prayer for his family. A Knoxville-area church that expected him for Sunday worship learned he had not checked into his hotel. A confirmed public cause of death was not made available in early reports. Funeral details were not widely published at the time of those first announcements.