Died: Wayne Myers, Missionary Who Taught Mexican Evangelicals To Live To Give – Christianity Today

Wayne Myers, who boosted church constructing for hundreds of congregations and promoted a culture of giving generously within the route of his 75-plus years of ministry in Mexico, died peacefully at his house in Mexico City on February 1 on the age of 102.

​​Identified for his motto, Vivir para dar y vivir para servir (“Are residing to present and are residing to support”), Myers built relationships with pastors of megachurches, midsize church buildings, and tiny village gatherings, repeatedly customer preaching at and leading fundraisers for them. Through partnerships with church leaders, he cared for widows and orphans, disbursed food in far flung parts of the nation and in Indigenous communities, and arranged weeks-lengthy evangelistic campaigns.

From the pulpit, Myers always smiled on the congregation, praising God no topic his conditions. He repeatedly exclaimed, “¡Aleluyita!,” at the side of his comprise Spanish customization to the in vogue praise. Identified for the correct and monetary integrity of his ministry, Myers usually proclaimed that a existence of faithful obedience to the Lord is “dulce como un mango” (“candy as a mango”).

Myers touched hundreds of Mexican evangelical church buildings, a fact he usually acknowledged by self-deprecation.

“We personal got no longer raised 6,000 church buildings; we personal helped to attach them up,” he as soon as acknowledged. “If I had raised 6,000 church buildings, Paul the apostle would count on for permission to go heaven to leer my systems.”

Many local leaders seen him as the most influential missionary in Mexico within the closing hundred years.

“Paul acknowledged that he had on himself the marks of Christ,” Efraín González, senior pastor at Centro de Avivamiento Naucalpan, acknowledged at his memorial carrier closing week. “Mexico may per chance per chance thoroughly voice that it bears the marks of Wayne Myers’s ministry.”

William Wayne Myers used to be born on August 31, 1922, to farmers in Morton, Mississippi. He gave his existence to Christ as a younger person when his cousin, who used to be serving as a missionary in Argentina, shared the gospel with him at some level of a search the advice of with house. His cousin also informed his contemporary Christian relative to abet a neighborhood Baptist church.

“That church took me to the foot of the Sinful,” Myers later recalled. “But they left me there!”

Right by World War II, Myers enlisted within the US Navy, where he served aboard the USS Accomplishing. Right by his 19 months on what would change into the nation’s most embellished ship, he used to be struck by the religion of about a of his fellow sailors.

“I seen a little community of believers tubby of the Holy Spirit. … They prayed onerous!” Myers later shared. Whereas before the total lot intimidated by the community that prayed so loudly that “their prayers is at risk of be heard from the stern the overall formulation to the bow,” he at closing joined them.

One night, within the middle of a prayer session with the community, Myers acknowledged he encountered the Holy Spirit for the first time.

“Right by five hours, that glory that resurrected Jesus from the grave washed in all places me, revealing Jesus to me in a total contemporary dimension,” he later recalled. “He called me to support him.”

After his navy carrier, Myers attended a Bible college in Pasadena, California. There, as smartly as to attending 22 hours of classes a week, Meyers started to pray wherever between 4 and 15 hours a day. Right by such a cases, “[God] informed me in an audible notify, ‘Son, I’m calling you to Mexico to support my total physique, no longer to spice up a physique to your self,’” he acknowledged.

Obedient to his calling, Myers left for Mexico, unable to talk Spanish and without a direct trudge back and forth plot. “I had one divulge going for me when I went to Mexico,” he later remarked. “I knew that I knew nothing.”

Right by his first years there, Myers floated from metropolis to metropolis, serving in a host of church buildings’ younger of us’s ministries and organizing little evangelistic events. He helped fundraise for local pastors who desired to half the gospel on the radio, work he continued within the route of his existence.

Within the 1960s, Myers befriended Gordon and Freda Lindsay, the evangelists and missionaries on the aid of Christ For The Worldwide locations college (CFN) in Dallas, joining forces with them on their church infrastructure projects. After Gordon passed away in 1973, Myers continued partnering with Freda, accompanying her on in a foreign country ministry trips to promote CFN missions projects. In 2023, the ministry even named an award in his honor.

Though Myers’s preaching and personal faith had solid charismatic influences, he never aligned with a direct denomination and served alongside church buildings all the method by the theological spectrum. At the starting up of his ministry, Myers primarily served with Assemblies of God and fair Pentecostal church buildings. But as nondenominational church buildings become more in vogue, he prolonged his counsel and resources to the Mexican evangelicals planting these congregations.

“I detest sectarianism because it is born of a spirit of superiority, and this is the opposite of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who came and served us even to the dying on the Sinful!” he acknowledged.

When Myers used to be making engaging to transfer to Mexico, he acknowledged he heard God give him clear instructions regarding the monetary toughen of his ministry. He couldn’t disclose non-public needs, he couldn’t purchase the rest on credit ranking, and he couldn’t borrow cash from any individual.

These calls for monetary faithfulness fashioned Myers’s family existence and ministry. Miguel, who Myers and his wife, Martha, took in at age 12, recalled how Myers as soon as pawned the family refrigerator in show to fulfill his monetary pledge to abet a little congregation.

Myers repeatedly preached on generosity. He believed without a shadow of a doubt that “we handiest comprise what we give away,” explaining that what Christians gave away used to be an funding in heaven. He also taught that no longer giving to God per earnings compelled God “to gash our earnings to match our giving.”

Despite his willingness to evangelise at church buildings tackle Casa de Dios, controversial pastor Money Luna’s $44 million negate of the art congregation, Myers never wavered in his messages on Christian monetary charity.

Beyond Mexico, Myers supported orphanages in Central The US, Asia, and Africa and based an initiative to abet pastors’ widows. Myers also helped fundraise and attach connections for missionaries who translated the Bible into a host of indigenous languages in Mexico and all the method by Latin The US.

Over time, the church constructing ministry that Myers had started years earlier added 6,000 roofs to congregations in Mexico, as smartly as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Philippines, Kenya, and South Africa. Myers stored a handwritten log of projects he believed God had asked him to toughen. (Some acknowledged the number had surpassed 10,000 by the discontinue of his existence.)

As he grew older, Myers struggled to decelerate. When he used to be 90, his medical doctors informed him that his coronary heart used to be handiest working at 50 p.c and informed him to radically gash his ministry commitments. Nonetheless, Myers continued to evangelise up to four cases a week, and on the age of 101 he used to be restful preaching one-hour sermons, spirited these show cover to present their hearts to Christ within the event that that they had no longer done it before.

“We honor the legacy of a reliable hero of the religion,” wrote Marcos Richards, pastor of Comunidad Olivo, one of many most realistic church buildings in Ciudad Juárez and Myers’s discontinuance friend. “An example tackle few others of generosity, integrity, and dedication to the gospel.”

Myers is survived by his three biological younger of us, David, Rebecca, and Paula, at the side of Miguel and loads of different grandchildren. His wife, Martha, died in 2021.