December 2025 Member Letter

December 4, 2025

Dear Brethren,

The Church of God, a Worldwide Association, will celebrate 15 years of operation as an organization on Dec. 23, 2025. That means that January 2026 will mark the beginning of our 16th fiscal year. I bring this up because this month, the Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD) will once again gather for its annual meeting at our headquarters in McKinney to review and approve a new strategic plan, operation plans for each department, and a new budget for 2026. God has blessed us with the financial resources to spread the gospel in a greater way this coming year than we have experienced in our previous 15 years. For that, we are very thankful and very excited!

I have to admit that for most of my ministry I had never used or even heard the term strategic plan, as applied to the Church. A strategic plan was something I associated with businesses—not with the Church. The application to the Church was something that I came to rather late in my ministry. After all, I knew the mission of the Church because it was laid out in Scripture.

Each year, beginning in 2012, I have been required to present a strategic plan, a series of operation plans, and a budget to the MBOD for its approval. To be clear, everything we do must be driven by Scripture, and it is in Scripture that we are told that our mission is to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God to the world as we sow the seed in all nations (Matthew 24:14; 13:18-23) and that we are to make disciples and care for those whom God chooses to call throughout the world (John 6:44; Matthew 28:19). That is a simple, yet profound “strategic plan.” It gives us our mission, but we must still determine how to accomplish that mission. There is no doubt about our mission, but how to accomplish it is not clearly laid out in Scripture. When this mission was given in the first century, the means of spreading the gospel were very different than they are today. So, each year we discuss the various ways to accomplish that mission, which was given by Christ to His apostles almost 2,000 years ago.

Recently, out of curiosity, I did an Internet search as to the maximum number of people the apostle Paul would have preached to during his ministry. Most estimates suggested Paul could have reached between 20,000 and 50,000 people during his ministry, taking into account the populations of the various cities that Paul visited. Two of our recent Life, Hope & Truth Presents videos currently have more than 300,000 views each. These are our most viewed programs, yet they are only two of the more than 40 we have produced so far. Our most popular booklet for downloads is the Book of Revelation, and it has more than 150,000 downloads. Our capacity for reaching people today is incredible when compared to just 50 years ago, let alone during the time of the apostle Paul. But how can we use these opportunities to our advantage when spreading the gospel? That is where our strategic plan and our operation plans come in.

As a small organization, we don’t have unlimited financial resources, but we have been blessed with an increase in our income virtually every year since we began, and through diligent oversight of those funds, we have never overspent our budget in any of our 15 years of existence. Because of those two factors—increased income and disciplined spending—we have added additional funds for spreading the gospel this next year, while also constructing a new building on our property that will serve as an education center and auditorium.

With these important factors in place, we have developed a most aggressive and far-reaching plan for 2026. In developing our plan, the five administrators from headquarters (Dave Myers, Doug Horchak, Clyde Kilough, Britt Taylor and I) get together and discuss these three elements: the strategic plan, the operation plan for each department and the budget. Normally we schedule three sessions for open-ended discussions, beginning after the Feast and concluding the week before Thanksgiving. We are required to present these plans to the MBOD two weeks in advance of their annual meeting.

This year the meeting of the MBOD is scheduled for Dec. 8-10. So, our deadline for submitting our plans was Monday, Nov. 24. I am pleased to say we have never failed to make our deadline. This year we sent digital copies of each document on Thursday, Nov. 20, several days in advance of our deadline. These documents are now in the hands of the MBOD for their consideration in advance of the annual meeting.

Our strategic plan doesn’t vary that much from year to year, and this year is no exception. We have more funds than any year in our history, and we now have a plan for using those funds to (1) preach the gospel to the world, (2) sow seed and make disciples in all nations and (3) care for the brethren wherever they have been called. We have members in more than 40 countries, and some areas are very poor and require a greater investment for their most basic needs. Let me list our three basic strategies as proposed for this coming year:

1. Preaching the gospel into all the world. In 2023 we added a regular video program to our efforts for preaching the gospel. The Internet has no boundaries and can reach virtually the entire world. We plan to substantially increase our advertising budget for 2026.
2. Infrastructure development to provide care for the members around the world. Our membership is in approximately two equal parts—the United States and areas outside the United States. Providing pastors for all our congregations and proper facilities for Sabbath services is a priority for the Church. Each year we increase our investment in this infrastructure.
3. Leadership development and training. It is our plan to expand in all areas of leadership development. We currently have seven distinct programs that are being used to provide education for the brethren and to develop future leaders for the Church. This next year alone, we have six U.S. pastors who will retire from the full-time ministry—the most we’ve had in any one year. And in addition, we have two international pastors who will be retiring in 2026. To this point, we have been able to provide new pastors for all the areas where pastors have retired. But we cannot slow down! We must continue developing leadership programs and investing resources in the future for the Church in all areas of the world. Currently, we have three U.S. pastors who are serving outside the U.S. This is truly a sacrifice for them and their families, and we are very thankful for their willingness to take on these assignments. These moves are interim measures to assure continuous pastoral care in all areas while we continue leadership development to fulfill needs within and outside the U.S.

Please pray for the success of our upcoming meetings with the administration and the Ministerial Board of Directors. And please pray for our successful use of the resources God has provided for us as we look ahead to a new fiscal year.

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks