Died: Wayne Myers, Missionary Who Taught Mexican Evangelicals To Stay To Give – Christianity Lately

Wayne Myers, who boosted church construction for thousands of congregations and promoted a conference of giving generously all over his 75-plus years of ministry in Mexico, died peacefully at his home in Mexico City on February 1 at the age of 102.

​​Identified for his motto, Vivir para dar y vivir para servir (“Stay to give and are residing to reduction”), Myers built relationships with pastors of megachurches, midsize churches, and exiguous village gatherings, veritably guest preaching at and leading fundraisers for them. Thru partnerships with church leaders, he cared for widows and orphans, disbursed food in a long way flung parts of the country and in Indigenous communities, and organized weeks-long evangelistic campaigns.

From the pulpit, Myers repeatedly smiled at the congregation, praising God no topic his circumstances. He veritably exclaimed, “¡Aleluyita!,” adding his bear Spanish customization to the conventional praise. Identified for the factual and financial integrity of his ministry, Myers regularly proclaimed that a lifetime of devoted obedience to the Lord is “dulce como un mango” (“sweet as a mango”).

Myers touched thousands of Mexican evangelical churches, a fact he regularly acknowledged via self-deprecation.

“We bear now no longer raised 6,000 churches; now we bear helped to develop them up,” he once said. “If I had raised 6,000 churches, Paul the apostle would query for permission to leave heaven to examine my methods.”

Many local leaders saw him as essentially the most influential missionary in Mexico within the final hundred years.

“Paul said that he had on himself the marks of Christ,” Efraín González, senior pastor at Centro de Avivamiento Naucalpan, said at his memorial carrier final week. “Mexico might perchance perchance thoroughly stutter that it bears the marks of Wayne Myers’s ministry.”

William Wayne Myers modified into once born on August 31, 1922, to farmers in Morton, Mississippi. He gave his lifestyles to Christ as a teen when his cousin, who modified into once serving as a missionary in Argentina, shared the gospel with him right via a discuss over with home. His cousin additionally advised his new Christian relative to attend a neighborhood Baptist church.

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

At some level of World Warfare II, Myers enlisted within the US Navy, the build he served aboard the USS Enterprise. At some level of his 19 months on what would develop to be the country’s most decorated ship, he modified into once struck by the faith of a pair of of his fellow sailors.

“I saw a puny neighborhood of believers paunchy of the Holy Spirit. … They prayed laborious!” Myers later shared. Whereas at the initiating intimidated by the neighborhood that prayed so loudly that “their prayers would be heard from the stern the overall methodology to the bow,” he at final joined them.

One night time, within the middle of a prayer session with the neighborhood, Myers said he encountered the Holy Spirit for the most fundamental time.

“At some level of 5 hours, that glory that resurrected Jesus from the grave washed all over me, revealing Jesus to me in a total new dimension,” he later recalled. “He referred to as me to reduction him.”

After his armed forces carrier, Myers attended a Bible school in Pasadena, California. There, as well to attending 22 hours of classes a week, Meyers began to pray wherever between 4 and 15 hours a day. At some level of one in every of these instances, “[God] urged me in an audible express, ‘Son, I’m calling you to Mexico to reduction my total physique, no longer to take a physique for yourself,’” he said.

Obedient to his calling, Myers left for Mexico, unable to talk Spanish and with out a explicit destination. “I had one thing going for me after I went to Mexico,” he later remarked. “I knew that I knew nothing.”

At some level of his first years there, Myers floated from metropolis to metropolis, serving in diversified churches’ children’s ministries and organizing puny evangelistic events. He helped fundraise for local pastors who wished to share the gospel on the radio, work he continued all over his lifestyles.

Within the 1960s, Myers befriended Gordon and Freda Lindsay, the evangelists and missionaries at the support of Christ For The Nations school (CFN) in Dallas, joining forces with them on their church infrastructure initiatives. After Gordon passed away in 1973, Myers continued partnering with Freda, accompanying her on in one other country ministry trips to promote CFN missions initiatives. In 2023, the ministry even named an award in his honor.

Though Myers’s preaching and personal faith had stable charismatic influences, he by no methodology aligned with a explicit denomination and served alongside churches across the theological spectrum. Within the starting build of his ministry, Myers mainly served with Assemblies of God and just Pentecostal churches. However as nondenominational churches modified into more traditional, he prolonged his counsel and resources to the Mexican evangelicals planting these congregations.

“I detest sectarianism since it is born of a spirit of superiority, and right here’s the opposite of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who came and served us even to the demise on the Depraved!” he said.

When Myers modified into once preparing to depart to Mexico, he said he heard God give him certain instructions concerning the financial strengthen of his ministry. He might perchance perchance no longer assert personal desires, he might perchance perchance no longer aquire anything else on credit, and he might perchance perchance no longer borrow money from any individual.

These calls for financial faithfulness formed Myers’s household lifestyles and ministry. Miguel, who Myers and his fundamental other, Martha, took in at age 12, recalled how Myers once pawned the household refrigerator in show to fulfill his financial pledge to lend a hand a puny congregation.

Myers veritably preached on generosity. He believed with out a shadow of a doubt that “we finest bear what we give away,” explaining that what Christians gave away modified into once an funding in heaven. He additionally taught that no longer giving to God per income compelled God “to decrease our income to match our giving.”

Despite his willingness to evangelise at churches like Casa de Dios, controversial pastor Cash Luna’s $44 million advise-of-the-work congregation, Myers by no methodology wavered in his messages on Christian financial charity.

Previous Mexico, Myers supported orphanages in Central The United States, Asia, and Africa and based an initiative to lend a hand pastors’ widows. Myers additionally helped fundraise and develop connections for missionaries who translated the Bible into diversified indigenous languages in Mexico and across Latin The United States.

Over time, the church construction ministry that Myers had started years earlier added 6,000 roofs to congregations in Mexico, as well to Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Philippines, Kenya, and South Africa. Myers stored a handwritten log of initiatives he believed God had asked him to strengthen. (Some said the number had surpassed 10,000 by the atomize of his lifestyles.)

As he grew older, Myers struggled to dumb down. When he modified into once 90, his medical doctors urged him that his coronary heart modified into once finest working at 50 p.c and advised him to radically decrease his ministry commitments. Nonetheless, Myers continued to evangelise up to four instances a week, and at the age of 101 he modified into once aloof preaching one-hour sermons, fascinating these indicate to give their hearts to Christ if they had no longer performed it sooner than.

“We honor the legacy of a valid hero of the faith,” wrote Marcos Richards, pastor of Comunidad Olivo, one in every of the finest churches in Ciudad Juárez and Myers’s shut buddy. “An instance like few others of generosity, integrity, and dedication to the gospel.”

Myers is survived by his three organic children, David, Rebecca, and Paula, along with Miguel and several other grandchildren. His fundamental other, Martha, died in 2021.