Wayne Myers, who boosted church construction for hundreds of congregations and promoted a tradition of giving generously all over his 75-plus years of ministry in Mexico, died peacefully at his home in Mexico Metropolis on February 1 on the age of 102.
Identified for his motto, Vivir para dar y vivir para servir (“Are living to present and live to again”), Myers constructed relationships with pastors of megachurches, midsize churches, and runt village gatherings, frequently guest preaching at and leading fundraisers for them. By partnerships with church leaders, he cared for widows and orphans, distributed food in distant aspects of the country and in Indigenous communities, and arranged weeks-long evangelistic campaigns.
From the pulpit, Myers repeatedly smiled on the congregation, praising God no topic his circumstances. He frequently exclaimed, “¡Aleluyita!,” adding his dangle Spanish customization to the customary praise. Identified for the simply and financial integrity of his ministry, Myers on the total proclaimed that a lifetime of reliable obedience to the Lord is “dulce como un mango” (“sweet as a mango”).
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Myers touched hundreds of Mexican evangelical churches, a truth he on the total acknowledged thru self-deprecation.
“We’ve got now not raised 6,000 churches; now we get helped to diagram them up,” he as soon as mentioned. “If I had raised 6,000 churches, Paul the apostle would demand for permission to head away heaven to seem my techniques.”
Many local leaders saw him as primarily the most influential missionary in Mexico within the final hundred years.
“Paul mentioned that he had on himself the marks of Christ,” Efraín González, senior pastor at Centro de Avivamiento Naucalpan, mentioned at his memorial carrier final week. “Mexico might per chance thoroughly direct that it bears the marks of Wayne Myers’s ministry.”
William Wayne Myers became born on August 31, 1922, to farmers in Morton, Mississippi. He gave his existence to Christ as a younger person when his cousin, who became serving as a missionary in Argentina, shared the gospel with him all over a take a look at with home. His cousin furthermore told his new Christian relative to attend a neighborhood Baptist church.
“That church took me to the foot of the Snide,” Myers later recalled. “But they left me there!”
At some stage in World Wrestle II, Myers enlisted within the US Navy, the achieve he served aboard the USS Endeavor. At some stage in his 19 months on what would change into the country’s most embellished ship, he became struck by the faith of some of his fellow sailors.
“I saw a diminutive community of believers fat of the Holy Spirit. … They prayed laborious!” Myers later shared. While on the initiating intimidated by the community that prayed so loudly that “their prayers might per chance well be heard from the strict the total methodology to the bow,” he in the end joined them.
One night, within the midst of a five-hour prayer session with the community, Myers mentioned he encountered the Holy Spirit for the first time.
“The glory that resurrected Jesus from the grave washed in each achieve me, revealing Jesus to me in a complete new dimension,” he later recalled. “He known as me to again him.”
After his defense force carrier, Myers attended a Bible college in Pasadena, California. There, to boot to attending 22 hours of lessons a week, Meyers started to hope wherever between 4 and 15 hours a day. At some stage in even handed one of those times, “[God] urged me in an audible instruct, ‘Son, I’m calling you to Mexico to again my total body, to now not steal a body for your self,’” he mentioned.
Obedient to his calling, Myers left for Mexico, unable to talk Spanish and with out a affirm drag space. “I had one ingredient going for me after I went to Mexico,” he later remarked. “I knew that I knew nothing.”
At some stage in his first years there, Myers floated from city to city, serving in varied churches’ formative years’s ministries and organizing diminutive evangelistic occasions. He helped fundraise for local pastors who wished to part the gospel on the radio, work he persevered all over his existence.
In the 1960s, Myers befriended Gordon and Freda Lindsay, the evangelists and missionaries dreary Christ For The Worldwide locations college (CFN) in Dallas, joining forces with them on their church infrastructure initiatives. After Gordon handed away in 1973, Myers persevered partnering with Freda, accompanying her on in a foreign places country ministry trips to promote CFN missions initiatives. In 2023, the ministry even named an award in his honor.
Though Myers’s preaching and private faith had stable charismatic influences, he never aligned with a particular denomination and served alongside churches across the theological spectrum. Before all the pieces of his ministry, Myers mainly served with Assemblies of God and fair Pentecostal churches. But as nondenominational churches turned extra customary, he prolonged his counsel and sources to the Mexican evangelicals planting these congregations.
“I loathe sectarianism since it is miles born of a spirit of superiority, and that is the reverse of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who got right here and served us even to the dying on the Snide!” he mentioned.
When Myers became making racy to trudge to Mexico, he mentioned he heard God give him sure instructions concerning the financial reinforce of his ministry. He might per chance now not describe private desires, he might per chance now not aquire anything else on credit, and he might per chance now not borrow cash from somebody.
These requires financial prudence formed Myers’s household existence and ministry. Miguel, who Myers and his main other, Martha, took in at age 12, recalled how Myers as soon as pawned the household refrigerator in enlighten to satisfy his financial pledge to again a diminutive congregation.
Myers frequently preached on generosity. He believed with out a shadow of a doubt that “we handiest dangle what we give away,” explaining that what Christians gave away became an investment in heaven. He furthermore taught that now not giving to God in step with revenue compelled God “to decrease our revenue to take a look at our giving.”
Irrespective of his willingness to evangelise at churches love Casa de Dios, controversial pastor Cash Luna’s $44 million cutting-edge work congregation, Myers never wavered in his messages on Christian financial charity.
Previous Mexico, Myers supported orphanages in Central The US, Asia, and Africa and primarily based an initiative to again pastors’ widows. Myers furthermore helped fundraise and diagram connections for missionaries who translated the Bible into varied indigenous languages in Mexico and across Latin The US.
Over time, the church construction ministry that Myers had started years earlier added 6,000 roofs to congregations in Mexico, as effectively as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Philippines, Kenya, and South Africa. Myers kept a handwritten log of initiatives he believed God had requested him to enhance. (Some mentioned the number had surpassed 10,000 by the end of his existence.)
As he grew older, Myers struggled to gradual down. When he became 90, his doctors urged him that his coronary heart became handiest working at 50 percent and told him to radically decrease his ministry commitments. Nonetheless, Myers persevered to evangelise as much as four times a week, and on the age of 101 he became silent preaching one-hour sermons, intriguing those price to present their hearts to Christ if they’d now not done it earlier than.
“We honor the legacy of an actual hero of the faith,” wrote Marcos Richards, pastor of Comunidad Olivo, even handed probably the most ideal churches in Ciudad Juárez and Myers’s end buddy. “An example love few others of generosity, integrity, and dedication to the gospel.”
Myers is survived by his three biological formative years, David, Rebecca, and Paula, along with Miguel and several other grandchildren. His main other, Martha, died in 2021.
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