[1] His parents, Martin Adolphus Lunn and the former Martha Bratton, reared 6 surviving children, four boys and two girls, with three others dying in infancy.

[2] The son and grandson of farmers, Lunn was raised in a conservative religious household which strictly observed the Sabbath and regarded the playing of musical instruments in church to be an unacceptable nod to secularity.

[3] The family relocated to the city of Des Moines when George was just a boy, and he quit school at the age of 12 to work there as a paperboy.

[1] In 1893 the 20-year old Lunn was approached by the congregation of a small church in La Platte, Nebraska, located five miles south of Bellevue, and was asked to become their pastor.

[6] He returned home to Omaha to take over a Presbyterian pastorate for the summer, where he was convinced to take a position offered him as a chaplain in the United States Army, holding the rank of Corporal as part of the Company A of the Third Nebraska Regiment.

[7] Following his release from the military, Lunn enrolled at Union Theological Seminary—an institution which he felt was less conservative and constraining than was the Princeton Seminary.

[1] Closely concerned with matters of ethics and poverty, Lunn became a Christian socialist, testifying the social gospel from the pulpit.

[1] Lunn nevertheless attempted to speak, reading from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and wound up as one of four people arrested on charges of "inciting to riot"[9]—charges later dropped when the tension of the situation lessened.