2025 Missions Conference Schedule

Wednesday 11/5/25 - Philippines

5:00pm - Soulwinning 
7:00pm  - Preaching by Bro. Raymond Cooper


Thursday 11/6/25 - Bahamas

10:00am - Musical Instrument Museum 
3:00pm - Wedding (dessert provided - everyone is invited!)
5:00pm - Soulwinning 
7:00pm - Preaching by Pastor Jonathan Shelley

Friday 11/7/25 - Mexico

10:30am - Preaching by Bro. Chris Segura 
2:00pm - 5:00pm Roller Skating 
5:00pm - Soulwinning 
7:00pm - Preaching by Pastor Bruce Mejia

Saturday 11/8/25 - Caribbean  

10:30am - Tribute to Bro. Kevin Roe 
1:00pm - Church picnic (lunch provided)
5:00pm - Soulwinning 
7:00pm - Preaching by Bro. Sean Conlon

 
Sunday 11/9/25 - Greece

10:30am - Preaching by Pastor Anderson
1:30pm - Soulwinning (option #1) 
3:00pm - Soulwinning (option #2) 
6:00pm - Preaching by Pastor Anderson

UDATED - Schedule for FWBC Missions Conference (Jan 22-26, 2020)

UPDATES ARE IN RED

Wednesday - Australia

5:00pm - Soul-winning @ FWBC
7:00pm  - Preaching (Pastor Kevin Sepulveda)
Song - "Jesus Loves Me” in English


Thursday - Africa

10:00am - Preaching (Bro. Chris Segura & Pastor Oscar Bougardt)
Song - "Jesus Loves Me” in Yoruba
1:00pm “Deported” Premier / Soul-winning @ FWBC
3:20pm “Deported” Premier / Seminar at FWBC (Learning a Foreign Language)
5:40pm “Deported” Premier / “Little Africa” Soul-winning

8:00pm “Deported” Premier / Testimonies from Africa and Australia

Friday - Asia

10:00am - Preaching (Pastor Anderson) “The Spiritual Condition of Asia”
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in Korean
1:00pm -1:45pm - Seminar (How to organize a missions trip)
2:00pm - 2:45pm - Seminar (Internet technology and evangelism)
3:00pm - Soul-winning in Chinatown and “Little India”
5:30pm - Testimonies from Asia
7:00pm - Preaching (Pastor Roger Jimenez)
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in Tagalog

Saturday - Caribbean & Americas

10:00am - Preaching (Bro. Corbin Ressl)
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in Navajo
1:00pm -1:45pm - Seminar (How to do Rez’ Soul-winning)
2:00pm - Soul-winning on the Gila River Indian Reservation
5:30pm - Testimonies from Canada, Caribbean, & Latin America
7:00pm - Preaching (Pastor Bruce Mejia)
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in Spanish


Sunday - Europe

10:30am - Preaching (Pastor Anderson)
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in German
1:30pm - Soul-winning in South Phoenix
4:00pm - 4:45pm - Seminar - (Starting a Soul-winning Club in Europe)
5:00pm - Testimonies from Europe
6:30pm - Preaching (Pastor Patrick Boyle)
Song - “Jesus Loves Me” in Romanian

Contest Winners (Where in the World is Pastor Anderson?)

The correct answer was...Guyana! Here is a list of the people who got it right. If you are on the list, email us at Faithful Word Baptist Church (faithfulword1@gmail.com) with your mailing address, and we will send you your prize. Here is the list:

Fernando the Baptist
Sheila Jackson
WK
Daniel Jones
Felicia Hope
Shedrock
Jose
Bobbi Hursem
Filip Skomerza
Jessica's Video Blog
Judith Flores
Rudy Thomas
Richard Tanner
Ann
Nicola Wray
Seraph
Last Days Prophecy Watchman
David Gruse
Frank
Michael K
Myslav
JS Whosoever
Lishacole
Ph1611
Pastor Enrique Reyes
Kaci T.
Tomislav Pavic
Tim C.
Taci Kaylor
S.T. Rubhen
Jerry
Paul Niven
Moishe Platinumberg
HawkeyeFultz
Alisha
Jamie Burcham
Freddy
Melvin Vertinos
Steven from Canada
Sotirios
Jordan Huguet
Kimberly Padget
Findantruth
Molly B.
Jon Brickley
Jared
Michael Davis
Osmar Ponce
Jimmy Bundy
Ashlyn Thrasher
Janell the Baptist
Dory Coverdale
CrossFit Therapeutics
Bilal
<\\\>
Larry Keown
Ross and Jennifer
Rich/Jen Garza
James Stampone
mmmmm i dunno
Jonathan and Stephanie Spurgeon
Chris Mierzwa
Josh Blacker
Simon Zelotes

If you are local and go to FWBC, you will get a different prize, but if you live somewhere else, here is what you won:

Where in the World is Pastor Anderson?

Pastor Anderson took a short missions trip this week, but where did he go?

Guess which country based on these pictures, and everyone who guesses correctly will win a small prize.

If someone already told you where Pastor Anderson went, or if you already knew somehow, you are disqualified (honor system).

The only way to guess is by leaving a comment on this blog post. Don't post your guess anywhere else. Only here. One guess per person.

This contest lasts one day only, so it will end Monday morning, December 10.

Comments are moderated, so don't worry if your comment doesn't get published. We still got your entry.

Check the blog in the next few days for a list of winners, so we can get you your prizes.

My son Isaac and I riding in the back of the truck.

Out soul-winning.

Like a boss!

Raising food.

Eating at the ubiquitous KFC.

All white?

"...him that pisseth against the wall..." - KJV Bible

One more clue. Here is a video of me on location:


UPDATE: CONTEST IS OVER. ENDED AT 8:33AM on MONDAY MORNING. CORRECT ANSWER WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON PASTOR DONNIE ROMERO'S LIVE "WEEK IN REVIEW" VIDEO ON THE STEDFAST BAPTIST CHURCH YOUTUBE CHANNEL TODAY AT 2PM CENTRAL TIME (TEXAS TIME). LIST OF WINNERS WILL BE POSTED ON THE BLOG THEREAFTER WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR CLAIMING YOUR PRIZE.

Jamaica Missions Trip was a Huge Success

Regardless of the fact that I was banned from Jamaica, the Jamaica mission trip was still a huge success. Out of the 39 people who were planning on going on that trip, 37 of them made it to the field. The only two people who didn’t end up going were my son Isaac and me.

On a week-long mission trip, those 37 people got approximately 800 saved through personal soul winning, either one-on-one or in very small groups. Jamaica is an extremely receptive place, and people were ready to hear the Gospel.

Not only did the team do a lot of personal soul winning, but they also preached to many large crowds. I saw video footage of members of the team preaching to public school assemblies of around 500-600 teenagers. Not only that, but they also got to preach to smaller groups in individual classrooms. Sometimes they were given an entire hour to teach the Bible in these classes. In addition to the preaching they did in the schools, they were also able to preach in police departments to the police force, and they were even allowed onto a military base to preach to the military.

Thousands of people heard the gospel, and over 7,000 DVDS and flash drives were handed out, mainly the DVD “New World Order Bible Versions.” Not only are there now a lot of Baptist materials floating around Jamaica, but the media coverage of me getting banned will potentially cause millions of people all over the Caribbean to hear the Gospel message online.

With all of the negative publicity, you would think that some of the preaching engagements would have gotten canceled, but they all went off without a hitch. In fact, the only place that canceled anything was a left-wing university that decided not to show the movie Babylon U.S.A., probably for political reasons. The fact that our soul winners were received so well goes to show that it wasn’t the people of Jamaica that didn’t want us there.

As with other times I’ve been banned from a country, the media attention boosted internet traffic and millions of people heard the Word of God preached online. The trip itself was a major success, and it wasn’t slowed down whatsoever by me getting banned. Those 37 people accomplished a lot in Jamaica, and the 11 people in Aruba who my son and I were able to win to the Lord, definitely benefited from the change in our plans.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”—Romans 8:28'

Here is a sermon where I preached about the successes over there. The sermon is called "The Word of God is Not Bound" 

Portrait of a Mooch-in-ary

Missionary Vince Larue (photo courtesy of YouTube)

Vince Larue is a phony missionary who exemplifies everything that is wrong with IFB missions. He is the quintessential false teacher and a lazy “moochinary.” Before Larue was sent out as a missionary, he admitted that he had never made more than ten dollars an hour, but he is doing a lot better financially these days thanks to IFB churches across America.

Larue is not a church planter or the pastor of a church, and he doesn’t exactly have a reputation for knocking a lot of doors. He was basically sent out to attend a Ruckmanite college to learn Spanish, which he had supposedly already learned. I guess he needed to be trained to better articulate Ruckman’s bizarre teachings in the exact Chilean dialect.

The people at the church Larue attends in Chile might be surprised to hear that “Vicente,” as he calls himself on Facebook, was overheard saying in front of a few people that, “Hispanic people just don’t understand the Bible.” This was said in the context of a conversation about Spanish Bible versions. LaRue hates the Reina Valera Gomez version and has called its translator, Dr. Humberto Gomez, a "gringo." Vince has also criticized my good friend, Pastor Roger Jimenez, rudely calling into question his intelligence. Ironically, Larue seems to have a disdain for Spanish-speaking Christians.

The people of Chile need the gospel, and Vince LaRue wants you to think he’s the great white hope that’s going to save them. He wants you to think he has a special burden for South Americans, but I doubt that's the case. The truth is that Valdivia, Chile, happens to be home to a Ruckmanite college, which was the real reason Larue was conveniently “called” to that location. For all we know, that could be the only Ruckmanite school on foreign soil.

In a recent missions letter, Larue laments the fact that his tracts are getting wet and cites rain as his "most consistent adversary." Why doesn’t he focus on actually talking to people? To be honest, I’m glad he doesn’t do much one-on-one witnessing because Vince is not even saved. I have had discussions with him in the past where he has said some pretty weird stuff. The guy is an extreme hyper-dispensationalist who has told me that people in the Old Testament could lose their salvation by shaving their beards.

Vince doesn’t just believe in dispensational salvation. Like most sign-holding street preachers, he preaches that you must repent of your sins to be saved. He mocks the true Gospel, calling it “neutered” and compares independent Baptists who preach right on salvation to Billy Graham. He has talked out of both sides of his mouth about repentance with me and others in the past, but he has recently come out as a full-blown repent-of-your-sins preacher by calling the free gift of salvation a “false gospel.”

“O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Matthew 12:34

Of course there are some legitimate missionaries out there winning souls, but unfortunately, there are plenty of others who are as bad as Vince Larue. Unless you are a socialist who wants to pay anyone and everyone to go to school, you probably don’t want the money you put in the offering plate to feed greedy missionaries who teach works salvation. Friends, please get to know the missionaries you support, and pull the plug on Larue and others like him.

“Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Philippians 3:19

Here is a sermon on Common Sense Missions.

Guyana: a New Kind of Missions Trip

Several months ago, we took a missions trip to Guyana, which was an amazing success. We were able to preach the Gospel to about 4,500 school students, many of whom made a profession of faith. We handed out 8,000 DVDS and were able to personally win 169 people to the Lord through one-on-one soul winning. We got all this done in about four and a half days with a team of only nine people.

Our new DVD, “Guyana a New Kind of Missions Trip,” includes the seven sermons I preached in Guyana schools as well as one that I preached in a conference room in Trinidad on the same trip. In addition to those eight sermons, the DVD also includes footage from some of the planning and behind the scenes aspects of the trip, so the DVD is about four hours long in total.

The reason the DVD is called “A New Kind of Missions Trip,” is that most missions trips are more about building a building or handing out tracts. People love to go on missions trips, but we need a new kind of missions trip that is more effective at getting people saved. What we accomplished in those schools and elsewhere in Guyana had much greater eternal value than what is done on the average Baptist missions trip.

We are hoping that this DVD provides a pattern and a framework for others to follow. We want people to emulate what we did there—not just in Guyana but in other countries as well. Maybe there’s something you would do a little differently, but we want you to see what is possible and be inspired to plan your own highly productive missions trip.

We praise God for the many souls saved, but unfortunately, the door is now closed for us in Guyana. We ended up getting banned by the government from every school in the country. The reason we were banned is because the Hindus were so upset with the success of the mission. Guyana is about 25 percent Hindu, so 108 Hindu temples got together and took out a full page ad in the newspaper condemning the school system for allowing us to preach. We were in the media for a couple of weeks, until the government got involved and said we would no longer be allowed in the schools.

The newspaper ad called what we did a “military-style assault with the Gospel.” Because we were so efficient and effective, they speculated that some foreign government must be financing us or that we had some kind of special training. They just couldn’t believe that a team of nine guys from an independent Baptist church in Arizona could have this much of an impact.

Due to the nationwide publicity in Guyana, we have had a spike in internet traffic from that country. I pray that many more will hear the Gospel as part of the ripple effect from our visit. There are many other countries where we can do the exact same thing we did in Guyana, so the plan is just to move on the next country. There are plenty of fish in the sea!

Check out this groundbreaking new DVD to see for yourself what had the Hindus so upset. “Guyana a New Kind of Missions Trip” is available for free here at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, or if you don’t live in the area, you can purchase the DVD from Framingtheworld.com.

A Strategy to Evangelize the Entire World 4: All Nations

"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:8

Missionaries

As our church reproduces itself across America, churches like ours could strategize with each other in the area of foreign missions. Instead of one church supporting a hundred missionaries they know very little about for a ridiculously low amount of money (e.g. $50 per month), each church could pick perhaps four countries to emphasize. They could fully support missionaries to go to those countries and start independent Baptist churches that would carry out steps 1,2, and 3 of the strategy in their area (see previous blog posts).

Missions Trips

Not only do we want to send out full-time missionaries and establish churches in some of our focus countries, but we also want to continue this new style of missions trip where we preach in schools, do door-to-door soul winning, and heavily distribute our audio and video materials. Our church has already carried out missions trips to South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Trinidad, and Guyana, where the Gospel was preached door to door as well as in schools, churches, and other venues. We plan to continue the work in those countries, and we also have a trip to Mexico planned for July of this year.

Start Where it is Receptive, Safe, and Legal

When it comes to foreign missions, we are starting with the countries that are the most receptive and where it is safe and legal to go soul winning. Hopefully, soul winning in those other places will eventually become receptive, safe, and legal, but let’s start with the low-hanging fruit before tackling the harder countries. If God sees us getting the gospel to every person in the receptive areas, don’t you think he’s going to open doors for us in other places too? In the meantime, we are at least reaching some people in those harder to reach countries via the internet.

Internet Ministry

Through YouTube and putting sermons on the internet, we literally have people in every country on earth who listen to the preaching that comes across the pulpit of Faithful Word Baptist Church. We’ve already translated preaching, documentaries, and other materials, into over 115 different languages, which includes every major language in the world. Just one upload on YouTube of Despues de la Tribulacion, the Spanish version of After the Tribulation, has over 10 million views and was shown on TV in Nicaragua multiple times! We’ve also been mentioned in the media in most countries of the world.

Distribution of Audio and Video Materials

Not only are we spreading the Gospel via the internet, but we also send out our DVDs, CDs, and flash drives to foreign countries every week. For example, we've been sending packages of materials to Bro. Richard Symes in the Philippines who has been preaching in schools, soul-winning one-on-one, and consistently getting hundreds of people saved. We also have had our full-time guy in Botswana distributing materials non-stop for the last 6 months

“And the gospel must first be published among all nations.” Mark 13:10

Here is the sermon: A Strategy for Reaching the Entire World with the Gospel.

A Strategy to Evangelize the Entire World 1: Exponential Soul-winning

“But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Matthew 13:23

I believe that this verse about bringing forth fruit to the tune of 30, 60, or 100, is referring to actual soul-winning numbers. A fruit tree brings forth fruit after its kind, and a Christian brings forth other Christians. Ideally, fruit trees produce fruit every year, and those are realistic annual soul-winning numbers because people who go out once a week for over an hour in a receptive area will likely win about 30 souls per year. Those who are even more dedicated and go out for several hours might win 60 or 100 souls per year. If more people achieved even close to these numbers, we could easily evangelize the entire world in a very short time.

We know that the majority of people will never get saved, but when I say evangelize the world, I mean that everyone would hear a clear presentation of the Gospel. Reaching the world begins with winning one soul at a time.

Here’s the math. Let’s say that I am the only saved person in the entire world, and imagine that I decide to win just one person to the Lord each year. Not only do I get that one person saved, but I train him to be like me, meaning I teach him to be a soul-winning Christian.

After one year of that program, there are now two Christians in the world. Since I make that guy like me and he wins and trains another person, by the end of two years, we have four people. After six years, we have 64 people in our church. At that point we are still a small group, but once we get about 10 years in, there are 1,024 of us. Just to simplify the numbers, let’s say that we had 1,000 people at the ten-year mark. By the time we are 20 years in, we are up to 1,000,000! Keep in mind, these are not just converts but people who are each winning one soul per year. The number of soul winners keeps increasing exponentially until by the time we get to year 32, we have over 4 billion. Now we know 4 billion people aren’t going to get saved, but long before we get to that high of a number of people out soul winning, everyone in the world will have heard the gospel multiple times.

There are millions of saved people in this world, so when I look at these numbers, it shows me that the vast majority of Christians are bringing forth no fruit. They never win anyone to the Lord, and they certainly don’t train anyone to be a soul winner. This is why we need to shoot for winning 30, 60, or 100 people to the Lord each year instead of only one. Those are the biblical numbers, and that level of productivity will help make up for the Christians who do nothing.

Planting churches all over the United States and sending out foreign missionaries are important goals for each local church, but don’t underestimate your own personal reach. If you win enough people to the Lord, some of them will become soul winners themselves and reach people in their own circle of influence, which will likely extend to another city, state, or country. Whether you are a man or woman, a child or an older person, you can have a part in this task of evangelizing the world.

If you have never presented the Gospel or have gotten a little rusty, you can start out as a silent partner. Being a silent partner was how I learned soul winning at age 17. After a couple of hours of listening to an experienced soul winner present the Gospel, I started talking myself and improved over time. Some people are silent partners for months before they feel comfortable doing the talking, and that’s fine. The important thing is that you get started right away. Meanwhile, you can speed up the learning process by watching Pastor Jimenez’ Soul-Winning Seminar, which has a wealth of information beneficial to both beginners and experienced soul winners.

Here is the sermon: A Strategy for Evangelizing the Entire World

Most Recent Missions Trip to Guyana & Trinidad and Tobago

“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” John 4:35

Our most recent missions trip to Guyana proved very fruitful. I was part of a team of nine guys, and we were all just blown away by how receptive people are down there. When we first asked people if they knew for sure they were on their way to heaven, hardly anybody gave the right answer. The people of Guyana love the Bible and are often affiliated with some "Christian" denomination, but they are lost.

Day 1 (February 28, 2017)

A few of the guys got there ahead of us and started winning souls before they picked us up at the airport. They had 16 people saved during that time. On my first day there, we preached the Gospel in two schools and made appointments to preach in several more. The students were very attentive, and hundreds raised their hand and prayed to receive Christ. In addition to that, 73 of the people we dealt with one-on-one that day got saved.

Day 2 (March 1, 2017)

The next day went even better. We preached in several more schools including a large Catholic school where they split us up and had us preach to several separate classes. Thankfully, our guys had sermons ready since we thought I was going to be preaching to the entire student body all at once. Each guy preached two or three different sermons to an average class size of 30-75 students. It seemed like almost every student raised their hand to get saved. At each school, we talked to a lot of students and teachers one on one, and many of them got saved. We also gave out DVDs of our films to the students and teachers at every school we visited.

Day 3 (March 2, 2017)

We returned to preach to the rest of Central High School, a school where we had preached to half of the students the day before. We also stopped by the Catholic school, St. Rose’s, to drop off more USBs and DVDs, and then we headed to Georgetown and did some tourist stuff. We visited the ocean, shopped for souvenirs, and handed out DVDs. People liked that we were missionaries and gathered around to hear what we had to say, resulting in more salvations.

Day 4 (March 3, 2017)

We left Guyana on the fourth morning, but three members of our team stayed behind to preach in more schools. The rest of us flew to Trinidad, where we had 54 people show up for the preaching service. Many of those in attendance were die-hard listeners, but others were just visitors that the listeners had brought. Eleven visitors got saved that evening, and four people were baptized early the next morning.

We would have baptized a lot more, but the hotel was strict about not allowing cotton clothing in the pool, so we were only able to baptize those who had swim trunks. Later that day we went soul winning. We had 15 soul winners out, and eight people got saved. Trinidad wasn’t quite as receptive as Guyana, but the soul winning still went well.

Totals for This Trip

To summarize the whole trip: In four and a half days we preached to 4500 school children. We handed out approximately 7000 DVDS and over 300 flash drives. I baptized four people, and we saw 169 people saved through personal soul winning.

The salvation number of 169 is very conservative and only includes people that we dealt with one-on-one through personal soul-winning, not the school students who heard the Gospel in a large group.  The majority of school students raised their hand and prayed a prayer after hearing the plan of salvation, and if I had to guess, I’d say there were over 1,000 saved, but we are only officially counting those who we were able to deal with on a more personal level. Our goal is to keep returning to Guyana and preach in a total of 111 schools over the next two years. We can potentially reach an entire generation in that country with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

One of the great things about the trip was that several people other than myself got to preach. All of us did a lot of soul winning. My son Solomon won ten people to the Lord on the trip and was excited about the fact that several of them were teenagers around his age. Everyone on the team had an amazing time and gained valuable experience.

Please let me know if you are interested in joining us on a future missions trip. We are going to Malawi, Africa, in April. When it comes to soul-winning, South America and Africa really aren't that different. We are going to the poor people of this world that are receptive to the gospel, and we need more laborers.

“Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:37-38

Here is a video of Peter James preaching at a school in Guyana.

Why "Faith Promise" Missions Can be Dangerous

In churches that have “faith promise missions,” they hand out cards, and people pledge to give a certain amount weekly, throughout the year. I’m not against churches that do this, but I don’t personally believe in it because I wouldn’t want someone to invoke the wrath of God when they fail to keep their promise.

People have a tendency to break financial vows even when they make them in church. This used to bother me when I went to a church that had a faith promise missions program. I remember there would be two figures in the bulletin. There was the total promised and the total collected, and those two figures were always different. The promise was always a little higher than what was actually coming in. They would make it sound like getting 75 percent of what was promised was good, but I remember being nervous about it. It always made me think of Ananias and Sapphira.

“But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.” Acts 5:1-11

When I decided to relocate to another state mid-year, I didn’t forget about my faith promise. I added up how many weeks were left in the year and paid off what I still owed. God didn’t tell me I had to make that promise to begin with, but since I had, I needed to keep it. I could have mailed the offering in each week, but I didn’t know how my job was going to go at my new location, so I just paid it off in advance to be on the safe side. I was poor in those days, but I scraped up the money by selling some stuff before I left.

That’s great if you can give sacrificially to legitimate missionaries on a regular basis, but don’t be too quick to make a vow to God. Whatever promises you make to God, you had better keep. Better yet, don’t make a financial vow at all.

“When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.” Ecclesiastes 5:4-6

Here is a sermon to go with this article.