FirstLove Ministries - with Joe Jacowitz

Selling Jesus

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And so most of what is done in the name of ministry today is not biblical ministry.

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30 years ago when we began our ministry, I found out the hard way the abuses, the greed that the

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Christian publishing industry is steeped in. I was shocked the sin of charging for conferences, charging for the word, charging a price for spiritual and doctrinal ministry.

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And I saw personally how God will provide if you just trust him, if you just ask him.

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Without faith, it's impossible to please God. And I ended up becoming a business executive, a vice president of this company or that company.

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God doesn't intend for money to control ministry. Allow me to introduce you to our guest in this episode,

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Joseph Jakowicz. Joe has been the pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California since 1990.

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He and his wife Sherry have been married since 1978 and have five children and eight grandchildren.

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Most importantly for this podcast, Joe is the president of First Love Ministries, which is one of the few ministries that truly lives out the

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Dorian principle of freely giving and doing ministry by faith and funding everything through the provision of God, through the free generosity of the body of Christ.

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This is the first in what we hope will become a series of episodes in which we interview ministries that have rejected the

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Jesus trade and are living out the command of Christ and the example of Paul refusing to sell

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Christian ministry, but rather relying on God for all necessary finances to function.

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Although we may not always share all peripheral convictions with these ministries, we do share the core conviction of freely giving and taking a stand against the peddling of God's word.

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If you lead a ministry that seeks to reflect God's heart by not commercializing Christianity and you'd like to share about your ministry and God's faithful provision as Joe has in this interview, please feel free to reach out to us at the email in the description.

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I was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1955 and raised in a

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Jewish, conservative Jewish home and I was brought up in the traditions of the fathers and went through six years of Hebrew school and the

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Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and was very religious in this conservative branch of Judaism.

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But two weeks after graduating high school in 1973, I joined the

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US Marine Corps where I heard the gospel for the first time at age 18. And after about three years of searching for truth,

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I put my trust in Jesus Christ as my Messiah, my Lord and Savior and became born again.

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I graduated from Bible college in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in pastoral theology.

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My wife, Sherry and I have been married for 45 years. We have five children and eight grandchildren and I've been pastoring for 41 years.

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The last 34 of those years has been the pastor of Christ Bible Church located in Pleasanton, California.

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It's a long story how I moved or we moved from New York to California. That was in 1983, but that's another story.

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But I'm also the president of First Love Ministries. How did First Love Ministries begin?

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Let's hear some about the history, the theological convictions that you have and the core values.

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Okay, well, First Love Ministries derived its name from the term first love that our

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Lord mentioned in Revelation chapter two verse four where he says to the Ephesian church that you have left your first love.

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Therefore, remember where you have fallen, repent and do the first works. And the focus there being on your first love emphasizes that the heart knowledge of Christ is critical, it's supreme.

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Of course, theology and sound doctrine is very, very important. But maintaining your first love in your relationship with the

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Lord Jesus Christ as a professing Christian and as a local church is extremely important.

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It's an existential issue. If you lose your first love, the Lord will put out your lamp stand and your individual walk will suffer greatly.

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And so it's critical to maintain the knowledge of Christ, your love for Christ, your daily walk with Christ.

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And the ministries of first love were created in part to strengthen the church in this goal, to maintain your first love with the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Along those lines, it's very important, therefore, to maintain the balance between word and spirit.

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And so the problem is some churches overemphasize the head knowledge, the theology part.

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And you really can't overemphasize that, don't get me wrong. Sound doctrine and understanding the whole counsel of God and proclaiming the whole counsel of God is very important in terms of sound doctrine.

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But it must be balanced with the work of the Holy Spirit, the growth of sanctification, the

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Spirit of God in our personal walk with the Lord, the Spirit of God working in our church ministry and in the use of our spiritual gifts.

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And so maintaining this balance between word and spirit through the heart knowledge of Christ is the core principle of first love ministries in many ways.

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Now, first love is made up of four organizations, First Love Missions, First Love Publications, First Love Radio, and Grace Bible University.

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These four ministries are set up in a way that would minister in different formats.

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Each organization under the overall head of first love ministries has a separate calling, has a separate mission, but all four organizations overlap with one another and they are integrated with one another and they support one another and complement each other.

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The first principle of our core values is what we call proclaim.

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That is, we proclaim the word of God. Our primary ministry has to deal with proclaiming the word of God through radio, proclaiming the word of God through in -person missions where we go on short -term mission trips overseas, as well as we set up branches of first love missions in various countries and we send out missionaries.

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So we send the word of God out through missions and the Great Commission, of course, is at the heart of our missions work.

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And we proclaim the word of God through Bible study courses, which is focusing on the second half of the

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Great Commission where Jesus says, "'Teaching them all things that I have commanded you.'"

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And then we proclaim the word of God through the printed page, through first love publications in books, booklets, and tracts.

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So our entire ministry revolves around proclaiming the word of God through missions, through radio, through Bible study courses, and through publications where the

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Lord brings forth any fruit that comes from our efforts, from preaching and teaching, from personal evangelism, from personal testimonies.

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We're involved in street evangelism, open -air evangelism, prison ministry, campus outreach all over the world, military evangelism, special events where we go into conferences and we set up exhibitor booths and we give away all of our publications free of charge.

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And so we focus on these things and we use technology to the fullest limit.

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We use social media through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and CDs and Vimeo and as many open doors and outlets as we can.

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The second principle is equip. First it's proclaim and then it's equip. Equip would mean our method is to adapt to the local culture and the indigenous situation, whether it be missions or otherwise.

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And we do this so as to better foster relations with the local church and local communities in order to address the specific needs that are unique to each location geographically.

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So we go into local churches, we help the pastors, we have pastors conferences, we teach them an overview and summary of all the major disciplines of the pastoral ministry in providing pastors conferences as well as Bible conferences.

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We do this free of charge. We pay our own expenses, transportation costs. We print books and materials locally at local printers.

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When we have our conferences, we provide that free of charge. We pay for the expenses of the venues.

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And so we equip through conferences, we equip through church functions and events.

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We equip people through short term missions work. We equip the saints through literature, seminary and Bible Institute training through Grace Bible University.

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And the last principle we use besides equipping and proclaiming the word of God is developing.

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Develop, we call it develop. And develop is basically that in developing a biblical worldview, we believe that the

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Bible is the core prism, the core truth that we have a view of life and the world.

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And it's the bedrock, the foundation of all that we do or think or view reality from, which is the scripture, the

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Bible, the word of God. And in a practical way, this means that the way you approach every decision in life, no matter how great or small, can and should be answered through the filter of the word of God.

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We should be answering the question, what does the Bible say? And so we develop a worldview and we develop the particulars and the practical applications of all this through the precise interpretation, meaning and application of the word of God to every area of life.

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And so those are our core principles and the three things that we do to actually get the word down to the local level, the indigenous level in every context.

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That's awesome, thank you. The main interest of our call today is the issue of being able to do ministry without selling it, without selling the gospel, being able to actually spread the gospel.

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So that's the point of this podcast is to help people understand how is it possible to do ministry at scale and give everything away from conference venues to paying for print copies of books and all of that.

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That's what we're most interested in hearing about how you guys are able to make that work.

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And also for it to be an encouraging model for others to see and follow because that's what we wanna cultivate and encourage more and more is for people to do things like you guys are doing.

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So could you speak to us a little bit more about how does this work? How are you able to do this?

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I think it's probably pretty obvious that you have supporters, right? Free donations of people.

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Maybe you could give us a little bit of insight into how this works and how it has grown just for people who are so used to, like you have to charge for everything to cover the costs, right?

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There's no way, there's no possible way we could have a conference without charging people hundreds of dollars to enter the conference because where would we get the money to pay for the venue?

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You know, that kind of mentality. Maybe you could walk people through how that's possible to do. Well, most people, as you suggest, cannot imagine buying a

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Christian book or signing up for a Bible conference without paying for it because they've never heard of that before.

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And the reason why they've never heard of such a thing as faith ministry, as getting everything in the form of teaching, the preaching of the word of God, getting ministry, bringing ministry to yourself without paying a financial price for it, it's because it's almost never ever done.

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There's very little record of this throughout church history. There's very few examples of ministries that operate purely by faith.

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That is purely by trusting in God alone and praying to God alone and waiting on God alone to provide financially for you.

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You know, to have the funds for it because no one is doing it. Now, when I say no one,

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I'm not suggesting that absolutely no organization is doing this.

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I know of three organizations and First Love Ministries is one of them that operates purely by faith.

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I'm sure there are more throughout the world, but they are so obscure. They're so inconspicuous because in alignment with their core convictions, they don't promote themselves.

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They just go vertically to God for provision rather than relying upon business principles and marketing to sell themselves or to beg for funds or to ask for money.

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And so that's the reason why most people have not heard of the few faith ministries that are extant out there.

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It's because of this reasons. But if for example, I'm a student of the history of faith missions and faith ministry.

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A few conservative evangelical Christians have heard of a man by the name of George Mueller or Hudson Taylor.

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Hudson Taylor was the founder of China Inland Missions in the 19th century. George Mueller founded the orphanages in Bristol, England in the mid 19th century.

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Charles Spurgeon operated purely by faith. Most people have heard of Charles Spurgeon.

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These were contemporaries of one another and this is the way they operated, but they stood out as rare exceptions in the 19th century.

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Before that, George Mueller, a hundred years before he was born, found out when he was growing up about a man named

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August Herman Franca. Franca in the mid 18th century was a

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German seminary and university professor who started an orphanage in Halle, Germany purely by faith.

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And so when Mueller was born, who was also raised in Halle, Germany, he heard of Franca, his reputation and the history of him.

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And he was amazed by his legacy and he began to study Franca. Franca was one of the founding members of a group of contemporaries called the

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Pietans, the Pietan movement of the mid 18th century that was characterized by a revival in Germany.

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The comparable movement called the Puritans mainly in England started in the mid 17th and 18th centuries in England.

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And those two groups operated about the same time. But the Pietans were known primarily for trusting

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God alone and praying to God alone for the funds they needed to conduct ministry.

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The Puritans, on the other hand, as godly a group of teachers and pastors and authors and men that they were, did not operate purely by faith.

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They sold their materials. And going back to the invention of the printing press in the mid 1400s, since that time when the first Bible was published, they began selling

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Bibles and from there they sold Christian books. And that practice has continued for seven centuries right up to today, selling of Bibles and selling

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Christian books. And there is in my study of the history of faith ministry, as well as the history of the

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Christian publishing industry of which I've been a publisher, a Christian publisher for 30 years, so I know how it works.

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I know the secular publishing industry and the Christian publishing industry inside out.

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And most of their activities are a stench that rises to high heaven.

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It is so filled with evil and wickedness, greed and avarice and profiteering and marketing that there's really very little to do with pure biblical ministry connected with it.

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But when you go back to the foundings of the printing press and the foundings of the original seminary that started in the third century, you see that the beginnings of the publishing ministry in particular was not based on a biblical construct or a biblical structure.

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It was woven through with greed and finances and the buying and selling of products.

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And so for the last seven centuries, that's the way it's been within Christianity since the printing press was invented.

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And you will not find, if you do a search, you will not find any articles or books written by the

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Puritans, by the Pietans. Many of your listeners will have no clue or little clue or other listeners who may hear this podcast or broadcast, for example, on our radio station, have any idea of what we're talking about because they have no idea of the history or do they have no convictions about these matters like you and I do.

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So that's why I'm taking a little extra time to go into some of the history because the history is very important.

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So when we look at the publishing industry, for example, nothing takes place today except on rare occasion.

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If in the case of somebody giving a book to someone as a gift, no book transfers to someone else without a financial transaction taking place.

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So that assumes there needs to be organizations and companies or quote unquote ministries that publish and print books and materials.

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And then they market those books and distribute them for a price. But if you look at the 99 .9

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% of what takes place under the Christian publishing ministry in the name of quote unquote ministry, if there wasn't the buying and selling, there would be very little distribution of Christian material.

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But when you distribute material, you're talking Christian material, you're talking about ministry.

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And when you define what ministry is, you're giving to someone else without charge, without price, without expectation of any kind of return.

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As our Lord Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And we are given gifts freely by God and we're not to sell those gifts.

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One of the characters in the New Testament died because they held back money.

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There was another unconverted man who made a profession of faith and he tried to sell the gift of God for money.

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And Peter said, you're filled with bitterness, you're filled with all kinds of evil.

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When we talk about the very definition of ministry, it is the one -way giving of a gift, whether it's a spiritual gift, a financial gift, the gift of some kind of blessing, whether it be teaching, without money and without price.

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The Lord Jesus said that you cannot serve God and money.

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And so when the financial transaction is taken out of the way, it opens up ministry 99 .9

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% to flow freely based on the proper motive and the resources of the giver to the receiver.

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And so most of what is done in the name of ministry today is not biblical ministry.

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And of course, in the book, The Dorian Principle written by Conley Owens, he makes this point, but 30 years ago when we began our ministry,

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I found out the hard way the abuses, the greed, the unscriptural marketing that the publishing industry, the

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Christian publishing industry is steeped in and doesn't conduct business without this method of operating.

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And I had a rude awakening. I was shocked. And as I studied the history of the

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Christian publishing industry, I became more and more astonished at the practices that dominate the church.

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As I studied the history, going back 700 years since the invention of the printing press, why is it that you have some of the most well -known and popular writers and authors like John Bunyan, who wrote the second most popular book ever printed,

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Pilgrim's Progress, and publishers of Bibles, including the King James, the original authorized version, and others who published many other popular

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Christian books going right up until today, and many contemporary authors as well who are very good authors that you never find in their radio broadcasts, in their television broadcasts, any reference made in their writings, their books, no articles.

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I've never found one article or book or treatise written on the abuse and the sin of selling the word of God, whatever form you sell it in, whether it's books, the printed page, or other form.

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So you can have a radio broadcast by a popular Christian radio broadcaster who will teach on the importance of faith and rebuke false teachers, rebuke the audience for not trusting

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God for all their needs and how their failures are due to the fact that they're not trusting

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God, but then at the end of the broadcast, they'll come on and say for a gift of $25, we'll send you this 30 -page pamphlet or booklet that we wrote, and it undermines and contradicts the very thing, the very topic they just taught on concerning faith, the importance of faith, and they don't even realize it.

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And so you have no books or material written by the most conservative, even reformed

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Christian authors who are known and renowned for all of their teachings being rooted in sound doctrine and well -studied theology, but there's no documentation in the form of books and articles going back 700 years exposing the sin of merchandising the word of God through the printed page by selling it.

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Why is there such a disparity and contradiction in these two things? That is, no books and articles on exposing the evil of selling the word of God through the printed page, through publishing, and all of our modern teachers, for example, on what they teach.

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The reason why is is because if they teach on it, they will have to stop the practices that they control and run and regulate their ministries by, which is selling the word of God.

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And apparently, most of their consciences have not come to the point where they can actually do that.

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That is, they can preach against the practice that they themselves are engaging in. And that's why you have this huge black hole, this huge vacuum of material, a lack of material on exposing the sin of, and the error of charging for conferences, charging for the word, charging a price for spiritual and doctrinal ministry.

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Yeah, it's a massive, massive blind spot. And that's what we're trying to highlight over at sellingjesus .org

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for sure. And this is really refreshing to hear from your perspective, especially from your history with the publishing industry.

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So, can you tell us a little bit more of how you came personally to these convictions about not selling ministry?

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Was it because of how put off you were by the mainstream Christian publishing industry when you saw the dark underbelly of it?

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Or was it something else that you came to the table with? Well, my journey in arriving at these convictions began 48, 49 years ago when

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I became a Christian. Fortunately, one of the believers who first discipled me in the first year of my conversion gave me a biography of George Mueller.

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And I forgot the title of it. It was written by Roger Steer about George Mueller, the man of faith, who never asked anyone for any money, who never even made his needs known.

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He went directly to God and prayed and asked God for the funds. In the end, over a 73 -year ministry in Bristol, England, I discovered in his biography that he provided for over 10 ,000 orphans and about 150 full -time

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Christian workers for over 73 years without ever letting his needs be known.

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He went directly to God in prayer. And with that duration, 73 years, providing for these 10 ,000 -plus orphans over that duration and these hundreds of Christian workers without asking anyone for money is a miracle.

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It's incredible. It doesn't just happen randomly like that.

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And I was blown away. I had never heard of anything. Of course, I was a new Christian just under a year.

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But that prospect that God provides simply by faith and prayer, and in my study of the

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Bible and in the verses quoted by the author in his book from Scripture that God can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us.

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And without faith, it's impossible to please God. And whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

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And you have not because you ask not and you ask and don't receive that you may consume it upon your lust.

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And all of these principles of trusting God by faith to provide for any one of your legitimate needs,

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God can do things that beyond your wildest imagination, of course, as long as it passes the test of Scripture, what you're asking for and your motives are pure, but God can do great things.

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And once I got that principle deep inside of me, my conscience was kind of convicted.

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And from that moment forward, I felt uncomfortable asking for money for things. And as time went by in my own prayer life,

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I saw that God answered prayers of mine to provide for things that could only be provided for by him, including my own financial needs.

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And so additionally, when I saw the abuses of many so -called pastors and televangelists, the charlatans that are giving

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Christianity, giving Christianity a black eye, that are bringing great reproach upon the name of Christ and violating

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Scripture by their shameful and blatant pandering for funds, and the hypocrisy of it all, how bad a position that they are putting

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Christians in and having to defend the faith and try to rehabilitate people who have been turned off by such charlatans and having to answer for them and give defenses of the true faith, it has really grieved me.

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Then in 1988, when I began partnering with Chapel Library, this faith ministry that has distributed through this little church of about 50 people in Pensacola, Florida, they have this worldwide literature distribution ministry where they distribute millions of publications every year in about half the countries throughout the world just from this little organization.

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And then I moved to Pensacola myself and worked with them for two and a half years, shoulder to shoulder, and starting

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Mount Zion Bible Institute and working with the leadership there. Every morning, we as a staff of about nine, 10 people, we would pray for an hour beginning our day, asking the

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Lord to provide financially and seeing God just lay it on the hearts without asking anyone for a dime, without promoting our needs, we would see checks come in.

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I firsthand as part of the leadership saw amazing answers to prayer and there was no fooling, there was no pulling the will over people's eyes.

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I saw firsthand and I got to know the leaders, Pastor L .R. Shelton Jr. and Mike Snyder personally, very good friends.

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And these were honest men who had no hidden agendas, they were not greedy. I saw the lifestyle that they led.

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They weren't getting big salaries, they were operating on a very tight budget. Most of the time they had enough funds come in just for one day or for one week and how they provided for nine, 10 full -time salaries.

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I saw it work myself, I was part of the ministry. My faith was challenged, my faith was engaged, my faith grew and I saw personally how

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God will provide if you just trust Him, if you just ask Him. And so I could not go back to any kind of compromised or any other method of ministry when

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I saw that God got more glory through such a ministry than any other kind of ministry.

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God got the most glory from such a ministry because people would look at such a ministry and examine the principles and they'd ask questions, they'd ask for a statement of faith or a financial statement and ask, how do you guys do this?

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How do you guys feed millions of souls with the printed page, with the gospel, with the word of God through these various means when there's only 50 of you that make up this church or there's only a handful of you, where do you get the money?

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You don't ask for money, there's no large marketing campaign going on, you haven't hired any contractors, any

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SEO organizations, search engine optimization organizations to market you through digital media and social media on Facebook, you just go to God.

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How do you do it? Faith in the promises of God. And so I could not go backwards,

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I could not do it any other way. And so until this day when

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First Love Ministries began, and we still partner with Chapel Library very closely, we have a budget of $6 ,000 a month.

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I receive no salary, I'm a full -time pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, and my salary comes from the church.

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All of our staff members are volunteers, we have about 50 or so. Some go on the mission trips with us, some work in the literature, others work in missions and in Grace Bible University.

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There's a leadership board, I'm the president, we have a vice president and so forth, but no one receives a salary, it's all volunteer.

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And God provides, we've given away almost 400 ,000 books free of charge since 2006, and it's growing.

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Our budget is growing, and God is increasing His provision. How do you do it, people say? Every Saturday morning, our staff gets together for an online prayer meeting, for a phone prayer conference, and we cry to God for Him to provide.

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We remind God that His own promises are at stake, and we plead with God for the wherewithal and the means to be able to bring the gospel through these various means around the world, and He provides.

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And our faith has grown, it's taken a long time, 30 years of ministry for our faith to grow.

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At the beginning, we could maybe trust God for a hundred a month, but now we can trust God for thousands a month.

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And this ministry began with just me and my wife at our kitchen table, just putting tracks and putting publications in bubble mailers and sending them out to people who ask us.

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That's how it began, and now we have a warehouse in Milton, Florida, where all of our publications are kept.

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We have staff members who fill the orders that come in online at FirstLoveMinistries .org.

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Most of our orders come from online orders. We take anywhere from five to 20 cases, boxes of books and publications on every mission trip we go on, and we distribute it at our conferences free of charge.

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We hire local printers, contractor printers, in the local areas of our branches in Kenya, in Nepal, in Nigeria, in India, and in other countries.

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And we print our books locally to save money and shipping costs, and we distribute there.

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And so we do it all by faith, and our branches, our branch pastors in these countries pray with us, their churches pray with us, that God would provide.

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And that's how my convictions were developed right up until this day. That's beautiful.

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How has doing ministry this way been more rewarding and more joyful than the alternative?

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Well, the alternative allows a person to be involved in quote unquote ministry if the ministry is controlled by marketing and finances and business principles.

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A person can be involved in ministry without his or her faith growing. The Bible says that without faith, it's impossible to please

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God. And not only in a personal redemptive way, not only is faith required that leads to salvation.

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Of course, we're not saved by our faith, we're saved by grace through faith, by Christ alone, not by works.

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But in everything we do for God, God intends faith to be at the root and the center of it.

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Without faith, it's impossible to please God. And this includes ministry.

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Ministry is intended to operate and to be held so that the individual believer has his or her faith grow, that the believer can see

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God answering prayers for the growth and fruitfulness of our ministry.

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So the believers to be praying as he or she evangelizes, for example, that God would bless the word that was evangelized, that was shared.

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Faith is to be engaged when we share the gospel in our outreach, both in the local church and on an individual level.

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We're to trust God that he will save the souls that we're witnessing to. The same is true with a spiritual gift that we exercise as a believer in the local church, among other believers.

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We're to trust God to reveal our gifts to us. We're to engage our faith that our gifts will bring forth fruit, more fruit, and much fruit, so that faith is engaged in the exercise of our spiritual gifts.

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And the same thing is true with the financial, needs of the ministry.

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We are to trust God that he will provide. He said, without me, you can do nothing.

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The Bible says, who is sufficient for these things? We cannot serve God acceptably, profitably, and fruitfully without trusting

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God to bring forth fruit. And that also includes trusting him for the financial needs of the ministry.

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And so ministry, as the very definition and meaning of the term, is intended for us to trust

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God for faith to be engaged and activated in God providing for the spiritual, the financial, and the ecclesiastical needs of the ministry.

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Faith is to be engaged. And so if you just approach ministry, and it's easy to do this, just to create a structure, a business model, hire people, raise the funds through marketing and promotions and the exercise of business principles, why do you need faith?

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Why bother trusting God? You know, 20 of my 41 years as a pastor,

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Andrew, I was a bivocational pastor, meaning I worked a full -time secular job when the church was very small.

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And I have five children and the church couldn't afford to pay me full -time.

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So as a pastor, I had to get a secular job to supplement my income.

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And I ended up becoming a business executive, a vice president of this company or that company.

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And so I was very successful in what I did, but I learned business, every aspect of business, from the marketing to the finances, sales to management, motivating employees, business productivity, every facet of business

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I learned inside out from an executive point of view, because I had a lot of pressure on me. I had to perform.

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I had to bring forth profit for the shareholders. And so all I need to do,

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Andrew, today, if I took the business principles I learned through 20 years as a business executive and applied it to my ministry,

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I could be the next Joel Osteen and have the second biggest church in the

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United States. There's nothing fancy schmancy about Joel Osteen. He's just using business principles with a very schmoozy kind of personality, very slick way of communicating, okay?

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He's formed a niche. He's got an approach through the word of faith approach and health, wealth, and prosperity approach.

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All I need to do is take that approach, apply the business principles, and man, why even bother trusting

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God? But God does nothing except through faith that would be lasting and fruit that would roll over to the next life that would cause us to receive rewards in heaven, fruit that God commands in John 15.

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He says that, "'I have ordained that you would bear fruit "'and that your fruit should remain.

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"'And no fruit is done without faith. "'It could be small faith, mustard seed like faith, "'or big faith, "'but faith must be at the heart.'"

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And so I say all that to say, personally, my faith has grown tremendously and has caused my personal walk with the

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Lord to be very vibrant, much more fulfilling, and greater, infinitely greater than if I didn't have faith operating at the heart of my ministry every single day because I've seen how

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God has been faithful in keeping His promises and providing for us. I've seen how God has answered prayer.

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I've seen how God has many times brought us to the point of almost bankruptcy, almost having to close our doors at First Love Ministries, almost having to say, "'We can't do it, we're gonna have to shut down.'"

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God has brought us to the edge of the cliff in testing our faith many, many times, but He never pushed us off the edge of that cliff.

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He always provided at the last minute many times and brought us back from the edge and gave us periods where the regular flow of support would come in.

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And our supporters, financially, we've never asked any of them. Many of them send in one -time gifts and we never hear from them again, but there are many of them who have caught the vision and they say to us, they write, "'We love what you're doing.

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"'We see God alone is getting all the glory. "'You're not promoting a person. "'You're not promoting man.

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"'You're not asking me for money.'" And most people are very sensitive about being asked for money, but most people are not stupid.

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They know when a charlatan is trying to talk them out of their pocketbook and they don't like to be asked for money.

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And we leave it to the Lord to raise up listeners because that ensures us with the knowledge that God is providing for this ministry because he's laying it on the heart to have this vision of what we're doing.

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He has them contact us. God is really good at selling himself.

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He doesn't need me in a very schlocky, slick way to persuade people why they should give and give them a guilt trip.

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You see, giving is really an act of worship and we're to give cheerfully. And when

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God lays it in the heart of somebody to give, he does so in a way that he is so pleased with that gift because it's given to glorify him.

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It's given as an act of thanksgiving and praise rather than based on some guilt trip that I would give somebody.

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No, no, that's not the way we worship and it's not the way we give. Amen. Yeah, I would say that faithlessness is one of the most respectable sins these days in the

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West, isn't it? That's a really refreshing word from you. Thank you for that. If you had just a few minutes to speak, sit down and speak to some of the big mainstream publishers like Crossway and Zondervan, what would you say to them?

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How would you encourage or admonish them? Yeah, that's a topic along with the ones

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I've already addressed that's very close to my heart because every single day I eat, drink, and sleep the abuses of the large publishers throughout our nation, the so -called

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Christian publishers. A lot of people may think in hearing this interview that I'm very harsh and very unforgiving.

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I'm not, I'm not a harsh person. I really am not. I don't like addressing these issues.

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I don't like to be considered like a black sheep among many of my conservative and reform brethren who use these ministries and work closely with them very happily.

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I don't work with them. I only work with those secular publishers that I have to work with because I have no other choice, but I don't endorse them and their practices.

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A lot of people don't realize that there is no large Christian publisher today that is not owned by a secular parent company.

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Zondervan, Baker, most of the large Christian publishers have been bought out by secular publishers.

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Why? Why would a secular publisher want anything to do with Christian literature?

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That's not what they're all about. That's not what they're in business for. Ah, but if you sniff back to the source of their motives, you need to think about the fact that the

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Christian publishing industry is almost a $5 billion a year industry, just the

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Christian publishing component of it. And there is money to be made because Christians among any other marketing target group buys books more than anyone else because they are intellectually oriented in studying the word of God.

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Most Christians, that's how they grow. That's how they learn their Christian faith is by reading biblical topics in books.

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And so they've got a guaranteed group of people, just like industry leaders who sell food and who sell energy.

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There's a guaranteed market because people have to eat and they have to stay warm.

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And the Christian book industry is like that. Their audience buys books.

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That's what we do. Even though everything is shifting from publishing now to visual, the handheld device, yet Christian publishing will never go out of business because you have the third world that cannot afford a lot of the technology that is being shifted to.

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I would say to the Christian publishers, and so I say all that, let me back up a little bit.

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The Christian publishing industry is in most ways, not always, so let me not over -categorize it, is evil in most of their practices.

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They are doing a very great disservice. And I understand there's a lot of objections to what

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I'm saying people have. Well, you've got to pay the printers, don't you? You've got to buy the books.

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But there's a long story that's the answer to that. And that is not a good reason or a biblical reason even to justify their evil practices.

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There needs to be an opening up of their understanding. There's such a lack of spiritual understanding of the meaning of ministry.

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If they would come to a conviction that is the heads of these Christian publishing corporations, if they would understand the meaning of ministry,

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God doesn't intend for money to control ministry.

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We all pay lip service to the fact that our ministry is God's ministry. And so I would say to Christian publishers who are still being led by Christians, I would say you need to repent.

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You need to repent of ignorance of what you're doing and how it's leading people down a wrong path, an unscriptural path of ministry.

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It's causing people to think wrongfully about their motives to give and why they're giving.

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And you don't even realize that a lot of your practices are being motivated by money and by marketing principles rather than by worship, by trusting

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God, by giving God all the glory. There needs to be a focus on the vertical in ministry and anything horizontal, that is the methods we use in our ministry, the horizontal implementation of having to hire a printer, having to get all of the things actually done to get the end product published, like the printing of books, the sending forth of missionaries overseas and the raising of their support and their transportation costs and so forth.

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These things need to be provided first and foremost through a vertical channel to God.

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That's where God gets the glory. That's where God hears the prayers. That's what motivates

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God the most to provide all of these things for his ministry. But if we take the focus off of God and focus 99 or 95 % on a horizontal focus where we're so caught up in our time, in our occupation, with the raising of funds, with getting price quotes from one contractor to another, and we don't have time left to pray and to plead with God and to weep before God, appealing to God to justify and support his own reputation, his own promises that he gave us, lest his reputation be tarnished because he has not provided for his ministry, then we've got to focus on the wrong thing, on the wrong thing.

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And there's gonna be a lot of shock, Andrew, on Judgment Day when our works are gonna be tested by fire.

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If you read 1 Corinthians 3, it's the scariest passage of scripture for Christians who are involved in ministry.

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All of us are involved in a ministry. All of us have gifts in which we're given by God to serve him, but those works and those gifts will be tested on Judgment Day to see what kind of motive they're rooted in.

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And the Bible says they're either rooted in wood, hay, and stubble, that is the motives of self and selfishness, and some other unscriptural motivation other than the glory of God, or gold, silver, and precious stones, that is the glory of God alone as the motive.

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And God says our motives will be tested on Judgment Day by fire, as well as our works, to see if they were born, and they were issued, and they were produced by the spirit of God, rather than reliance upon our natural talents and abilities, our ability to do great marketing, and we'll be given rewards based on the spiritual motivation and fruitfulness that the

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Holy Spirit brought forth. And there's gonna be a lot of rude awakenings, Andrew, on that day to find out that most of the works of Christians, not all, but all of these works are rooted in selfishness, in greed, in expediency, using the arm of the flesh, rather than prayer and faith.

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The hardest thing in the world to do is to get on your face and wait before God and cry to God in prayer.

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That exercises the soul, that exercises the spirit. That's hard to do for the flesh.

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The flesh can't do that. We need a spirit of prayer. We need the spirit to help us to pray as we ought to pray.

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But most people are not, most believers are not willing to go to that extent and wait on God and trust in God.

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Wow, thank you so much for that. That's a good wake -up call for a lot of people,

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I'm sure, to hear, and much needed. Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us.

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I really appreciate it. My pleasure, thank you for having me, Andrew. May God be glorified. All right.