January 2025 Member Letter

January 9, 2025

Dear Brethren,

As we begin a new fiscal year here at the office in McKinney, Texas, we are still wrapping up from 2024. It takes about three weeks after a new fiscal year begins before we can fully assess the financials from the previous year. As it stands today, the fiscal year 2024 is on pace to set all-time records in virtually every category—especially in our income and the results of our media efforts. 

While news from the Church this past year is very encouraging, the news from the world is quite different. Just consider the terrorist attacks in Magdeburg, Germany, last month and in New Orleans, Louisiana, a few days ago. The New Orleans attack was especially gruesome, with at least 15 dead and 35 injured. While the deaths of innocent people are always difficult to understand, the act of being mercilessly run down by a vehicle as you are walking along the streets of a major U.S. city is beyond imagination.

Wherever you look, violence is increasing at an alarming rate. With so many examples being cited—shootings, vehicles being used as weapons, attacks in our schools, drug violence, etc.—one must be blind not to see that this is far from normal. Ezekiel wrote of such a time: “Make a chain, for the land is filled with crimes of blood, and the city is full of violence” (Ezekiel 7:23).

Man doesn’t have an answer as to how such violence can be stopped. In recent days, some officials in New Orleans acknowledged that it is impossible to stop such random acts of terrorism from being perpetrated by radicalized individuals. So, their conclusion is to expect more of these events. Of course, for us, it is clear that the return of Jesus Christ is the only solution for bringing an end to the violence, hatred and evil that we are seeing daily in the news. The message of the return of Jesus Christ is the message that we have been commissioned to take to the world, and we are doing just that with an ever-expanding presence in media.

For the world, this next year doesn’t appear to promise anything better. But what does this coming year hold in store for the Church? I don’t have the answer to that question, but one amazing statistic was recently provided to me from our Personal Correspondence Department (PCD). In 2024 we answered 34,941 requests/inquiries submitted to the Church, an average of approximately 100 per day, in comparison to 11,415 in 2023, approximately 30 per day. What an amazing increase! Our Media department’s efforts are truly expanding at an incredible rate—a 200 percent increase in one year in PCD is extraordinary. We have now built a solid base of members, coworkers and donors from which to launch new and ever more ambitious programs in the year ahead.

While we are very thankful for the good news, we are deeply saddened to see the suffering all around us. I don’t recall a time in my life when things were so unstable and filled with so much evil, with no appreciation for the value of a human life. But I expect that things will only get worse in this next year. Of course, we do not look to the world for answers. It is through our hope in God and our faith that He is in charge of our lives that I believe we will accomplish much in the year ahead. I can’t make any specific predictions, but I believe this coming year will produce opportunities for preaching the gospel that we could not have imagined back in 2020 when we were in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let me take you back for a moment to Friday, March 13, 2020, when everything changed. For the next three years, we lived under the shadow of a strange virus that changed our lives in everything—from our work to our schools to our churches and to our social life. March 13, 2020, was the day that society in the United States and most of the world simply shut down, choosing isolation over interaction. Whether the reported death toll was entirely due to the COVID-19 virus is debatable, but the fact that people died—including a number of our brethren—is indisputable. While visiting Peru in 2023, I learned of several deaths among the brethren, some whom I had known from the past. To say that people died is one thing, but to know brethren who died strikes much closer to home and has a profound impact upon you.

In the United States we watched services over the Internet for 14 weeks from March to July of that year, but in Chile the government refused to allow people to meet in person for 17 consecutive months. The amazing thing about Chile is that the congregations actually grew during this time away from services. The attendance, once brethren were back together, was higher than it had been when the pandemic began. This was true in other areas of the world as well. If there was one lesson to be learned from all this, it was, once again, our need to rely on God and look to Him to complete His plan in spite of how things may appear. We must remind ourselves that God’s purpose, as stated in Hebrews 2:10, is to bring “many sons to glory”—not a few, but many. We must never limit God and His ability to add to His family, no matter how dark things may look. In 2020 there was much uncertainty, but today in 2025, we see amazing opportunities for moving forward.

On Jan. 1 we began our 15th fiscal year. Beginning a new fiscal year requires a lot of planning. The final three months of 2024 were a blur for me! In October my wife and I traveled to keep the Feast of Tabernacles in Tucson, Arizona, for the first half and then Santa Marta, Colombia, for the second half. In November we held planning meetings with Feast coordinators, camp directors and the administrators of the Church. We completed an aggressive budget for 2025, with increases in every area, and it was then approved by the Ministerial Board of Directors in December 2024.

My goal for this next fiscal year is to encourage all of us to draw closer to God, to accept His will in matters beyond our control and look for those open doors He has always provided. We must keep in mind that God’s plan will not be thwarted by Satan or any of his instruments. By drawing closer to God, we can “shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15). As the world grows darker, we should become brighter by comparison as God’s representatives, His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are His children and are tasked with taking this message of hope to the world. We must echo the words of the apostle Paul: “woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16).

Thank you so much for your unwavering support for the fulfillment of our mission! And thank you for going above and beyond in your generosity. In 2024 God blessed us far beyond what we could have imagined back in 2020. We are moving forward with a solid plan for this new fiscal year. What will the results be? We simply don’t know. What we do know is that God will be the One to make that determination, and in the midst of all the uncertainty in society, what could be better and more reassuring than that!

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks