January Newsletter

Hello friends and family,

What a year 2012 was! Let’s believe for a great increase in all God has in store for us in this upcoming year. We are so thankful for all of the salvations, healings, the thousands that were reached outside the four walls of the church, evangelism teams, and directors that were put in place. As we thank Him for what He has done in 2012, we are crying out for a greater anointing and more fruit than ever in 2013.

Over the past year, we continued to lay a foundation for the future. One aspect of the foundation of any building or structure is that it usually goes unnoticed and unappreciated, but would crumble if it wasn’t built correctly. I’ve never walked into an impressive building and thought, “what a beautiful foundation.”   Instead, the foundation is what a building is built upon.  We want a foundation that will stabilize everything God envisions and will be too strong for the enemy to weaken. Two KEYS for the foundation of this ministry is prayer and the Word of God being top priority. With that said, we are endeavoring to press forward in 2013 to see great fruit come out of the foundation God has formed and is continuing to form.

As many of you know, one of our long-term goals is to raise up equipping evangelists in these last days, even when the office of the evangelist has been put on the back-burner of most Christian movements in America. I want to take a moment to highlight one of these young men that I have supported financially with your help. He is beginning to take his first steps into the evangelistic ministry, and has been working with me for around six months.  He has been eagerly gleaning from me as he assisted me in many travels, and worked administratively with me in the office.  His name is Ryan Scalise.  He is married to a wonderful godly wife, Gina (who currently attends C.F.N.I., where she is being trained for full-time ministry).  Ryan is also in the process of getting his credentials with the Assemblies of God. Our goal is for him to begin travelling full-time mobilizing and equipping churches, and raising up evangelism directors throughout America.

A new opportunity we have is something that you have heard me allude to for years and is now seeming to be more of a reality than a dream; it is a training program for the evangelist. I have spoken with a couple of fruitful ministries about the possibility of partnership and was asked to put together a proposal. This has tremendous potential to be a place for evangelists to come and be trained. We would be able to provide a major need in the body of Christ that is not being met in this hour. So PLEASE PRAY that God will give us wisdom from above and great favor.

Part of the foundation that was laid in 2012 is that our national evangelism directors network “R.E.A.C.H. America” has become much stronger and grown healthier than ever before. Our past two monthly conference calls to continue training and encourage had over 25 people, and the last one was around 35 people (evangelists and evangelism directors from over 10 different states).  We were privileged to have Evangelist Steve Hill on the last call challenging an encouraging us in our call as an evangelist. I’m not aware of anything like this taking place, so THANK YOU for helping us make this possible. The majority of people on the calls are evangelism directors we have set in place. We’re able to be a constant voice of training and encouragement to undergird these men and women who need to stay focused and strengthened. We have invited Evangelist Sergio Scataglini to speak on our next call. PLEASE PRAY for this network as well. We are continuing to add to it every month.

We are also planning to host a conference this fall for evangelism directors and their teams around America here in Dallas, TX. We have a few great speakers who gave us a verbal commitment to be apart of it which include, Evangelist Steve Hill, Evangelist Daniel Kolenda (President of Christ for all Nations founded by Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke) and Evangelist Scott Hinkle (just to name a few). This will provide the best training and strategies by seasoned veterans. There will be well over 100 combined years of on-the-field training for all who come. If you would like to attend, we will have the dates in our next letter.

I will be going into a new region with a strong leader who has a position of overseeing hundreds of churches and is very interested in the model we implement. We have talked about our partnership and how we could work together. So please pray that our meeting this month will go well and God’s blessings will be on our time of ministry together. It is a great door of opportunity for the expansion of evangelism in this city.  Everything we do is an effort to reach more souls for Jesus.

Thankfully, we were able to directly impact 38 churches in winning the lost this past year. The number may be larger, but I’m being conservative because many events that our ministry participates in is involved with many more churches and regions. I just want you to know the impact of our partnership on a local church level, which is where the rubber meets the road in the kingdom of God. If it doesn’t happen through the local church, it’s probably not going to happen.

We always like to end our letters with a BIG thank you for all of your prayer and support because we are VERY thankful for you! For those of you that have been standing with us for years, you have been able to witness our efforts and prayers being answered together. Many of you have just become partners with us and our prayer is that through the grace of God, we will all see these “God dreams” become a reality in the days ahead.

In short, our goals are 1) to mobilize as many churches as possible to reach the lost in their city; 2) to raise up as many evangelism directors and evangelists as possible; 3) to see a training school for evangelists open; 4) to see a healthy evangelism director in every church in America that is empowered by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is the vision God had given us, and we believe it is part of God’s plan to save America. I’m believing that AMERICA SHALL BE SAVED!!  Too many of us still have lost loved ones in our family that need to be reached.  We are sowing seeds that will reap a harvest of souls!

Thank you for partnering with us in the Great Harvest,

Joe Oden