“for ‘WHOEVER WILL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED’. How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10:13-14 (NASB)



About a year ago, I moved back to Lindale Texas after being away a long, long time. It was a sweet time of renewing relationships because there are still many of my old Agape Force friends who live in the area. Some of them go to Church together and so my first Sunday morning back, I went to worship with them. One of the first people I saw when I walked in the sanctuary was Irvin Plummer who came to know the Lord when I was on the Houston team. When I saw him I started weeping.

In one person, he personified everything that we were all about. What we gave our lives for was to see people saved; To see the hardest to reach, the ones that no one else cared to reach come to know Jesus.

I could have spent those years ministering in a Church. Over the years I’ve done a lot of that too. Churches have outreaches and people come to altar calls and that’s good, but in Agape Force we were going after people that would never darken the door of a Church.

To see Irvin, who was probably as down and out when we met him as a man could get; to see him still serving God. All the years, all the sacrifice, all the pain, everything we went through was worth it if just Irvin got saved. But it wasn’t just him. He was one of many.

For weeks afterward, every time I saw Irvin I went through the same experience. Now I’m caught up to speed a little bit, but I still get these feelings of awe and strong emotions, because Irvin is evidence of the fruit of our ministry, a living token of God’s faithfulness and power to save.

When we went into a place to minister, we operated on faith and hope. We would work and pray and trust, but hope is in things that are not seen yet. Agape Force’s ministry had to be classified as short term in most cases. Even if we stayed on a team for a year or more, the long lasting results of what we were doing was not for us to see. We had to operate in total faith that what we were doing was going to make a difference.
We’d get really pumped up and believe that we would reach thousands, and we would get to see wonderful short term results time and again. But we were sowing into peoples lives then, seed that is still bearing fruit now.

I was there when Irvin started taking his first toddling steps along the journey that is serving God. Seeing him now is such a big payoff for me. I thank God for all He allowed me to be a part of during those years with Agape Force.

Jim Berrier