James O.A. Luckman was born in 1908 in Capetown, South Africa, where his father worked for a British steamship line. After his father's death, his mother and he moved to New England, and he later graduated from Gordon College in Massachusetts. Emily Margaret Stewart was born in 1912. In 1932, James helped to build a leprosy hospital in east Africa. James and Margaret married in 1937 in Connecticut. From 1937 to 1941, James was pastor of Beth Eden Baptist Church in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. They returned to Ethiopia as missionaries in the 1940s, and later moved to Massachusetts for James to direct missions and public relations at Gordon College. In 1949, he assisted with organizing Billy Graham crusades in New England. Between 1950 until 1959, the family returned to Ethiopia as missionaries, where James became personal friends with Emperor Haile Selassie and became fluent in Amharic. They founded missions around Ethiopia and Eritrea, and also started Christ Chapel in Addis Ababa. James pastored Dunlap Baptist Church in Seattle from 1960 to 1965. They returned again to Ethiopia in the 1960s, but came back to the United States for health reasons. Their son Stewart Luckman became an art professor at Bethel College. Margaret died in 1996 and James died in 1998. They are buried in Washington state.