Jason Woolford was a United States Marine when he found Jesus. In 2010, he became the Executive Director of Mission Cry (Christian Resources International). Their goal is to put Christian books and Bibles on bookshelves around the world. So far, they have sent $350 million in Bibles and Christian teaching tools to over 173 nations.
Questions:
Jason Woolford came to Christ during his service in the United States Marine Corps.
What is a “book missionary?”
What impact do your books have on new believers around the world?
Jason’s son was miraculously healed of a brain tumor.
Website: https://missioncry.com
To learn about Evangelism Coaching, you can call the Host of the Evangelism Podcast, Daniel King.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jason Wilford was a United States Marine. When he found Jesus in 2010, he became the executive director of mission cry. Their goal is to put Christian books and Bibles on bookshelves around the world. And so far they’ve sent over $350 million worth of Bibles and Christian teaching tools to over 173 nations. Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionary, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. We have a very special guest with us, Jason Woolford. He was a United States Marine when he found Jesus in 2010, he peak game the executive director of mission cry, which is also known as Christian resources international. And their goal is to put Christian books and Bibles on bookshelves around the world. And so far they’ve sent over $350 million worth of Bibles and Christian teaching tools to over 173 nations. So brother, Jason, it is so wonderful to have you on the evangelism podcast today.
Jason Woolford (01:46):
Man, and God, so glad to be here today. I appreciate you so much. I’m thankful for just who you are as a brother in the Lord and being an evangelist man you know, being about your father’s business. So glad to be here as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:01):
Well, let’s start at the beginning, how you became a Christian. I know your, your testimony is that you came to Christ during your service in the United States Marine Corps. And I see there on the wall behind you, you’ve got some memorabilia from the time when you were in the Marines, how did that happen? How did you become a Christian?
Jason Woolford (02:20):
Yeah, so man, I was in the Marine Corps and you know, I tell people all the time before I was a, a minister, you know, each one of us has a testimony and a lot of times we try to clean that testimony up when we become believers. But my testimony was that I was a fall mile fornicating, United States Marine. And I met these two dark greens as we called them in the Marine Corps back in the day we in the Marine Corps, we were all green, right? Marine Corps green but there were two black guys that were men of men Marines and Marines. And I really liked them and appreciated how they were, but there was something different about them. Soon. I would find out what was different about them was that they were believers in the Lord Jesus.
Jason Woolford (03:03):
And you know, they kept inviting me to come to church with them. And eventually I went and I got saved in a all black church in Oceanside, California. And you know, after about six trips to the alter, the pastor said, you know, brother, you, you only got to come once if you mean it. And I figured I had a lot of meds, so I had to keep coming, but man, that’s how I got saved. And just a couple of weeks later, I met my wife who was a Christian, who was a Marine bad news for her was she had been a Christian since she was 15 and we were both 20. And I had been saved about a minute. So I was a big work in progress for her, but that’s how I came to know the Lord through evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:44):
And so now you lead this, this absolutely tremendous ministry called mission cry. How did you go from being saved to now actually being in the ministry?
Jason Woolford (03:56):
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that my wife and I learned and understood through the word of God was who was living in giving to him. And after our Marine Corps careers of understanding how to live and give to God he had blessed us. We were in SA Southern California. We were both vice-presidents of big companies 20 years ago called to, to Michigan or went to Michigan for a business opportunity. And then that’s when I got called to ministry. And man, you know, it was just how God is. He’s so good. And he’s so faithful. You know, I went to Bible college and I wasn’t tough enough to be a pastor. I said, mama, I’m going to be an evangelist I get in and get out and I don’t have to deal with a church people and I’ll be right.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:41):
I think evangelists are a little bit like Marines. They’re the first ones to go into new territory.
Jason Woolford (04:48):
That’s right, man. We’re first in first to fight were evangelists are a force in readiness, you know, in the Marine Corps. And people always say, Oh man, don’t go in the Marine Corps. They’re the first ones that get sent. Well, we’re the first ones that gets sent because anywhere around the world, we have Marines, ammo, food tanks already on ships. So when something breaks out, that’s why the Marine Corps is there first because we are a force and readiness. And really man, that’s how we’re called to be as, as believers will be a force in readiness. But to answer your question, you know, from, from the business world to just 11 years ago giving up all of that stuff and hearing from the Lord saying, you know, I want you to, even though you’re a full-time evangelist and working full-time, I want you in full-time ministry.
Jason Woolford (05:31):
And so we took a huge step of faith. I quit a job that was, I, you know, I was making about $130,000 a year and on track to be the director of a company. And you know, I just felt like, man, I got to honor God in this because as you know, those that are watching, some of you are called to a marketplace ministry. And then there’s people like my brother and I that are called to full-time ministry, a different different ministry and both are as equally as important. But nevertheless, we, we were called called out. We stepped out in faith and through a whole bunch of crazy events, trusting God, almost losing everything that we had once again God showed up at the last minute and this ministry called and said that the seven board members had heard from the Lord that I was to be the president and the minister of this ministry.
Jason Woolford (06:20):
And, and so man, I was praying and like, God, show me, you know, if this is your will. And, and I found a document that I’d written 10 years prior in Bible school. And and I had forgotten, I re wrote it. And they said, if you were going to be in ministry, write a ministry business plan of what that would look like. And so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve found it. And I, I forgot, I even wrote this thing and it said mission to send the true inspired word of God to every home in every nation around the world, a vision to do this empowered by so long story short, I’d read that. And I was like, man, I bought became a Baptist right on the right on the spot with predestination non-planned. But my point is, is it was so miraculous of how God was speaking. And, and so we said, yes, and that’s how we ended up here at mission cry and you know, men now we just, last year we sent 1.3 million people, a free Bible or Christian book in 24 nations just last year. And so it’s amazing what happens when you, when you honor the Lord.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:22):
Wow. That’s amazing. My first exposure to your ministry was a few years ago when we were doing a nationwide outreach in beliefs, and we had scheduled 10 evangelists to come to do 10 crusades simultaneously in 10 different population centers across the nation of beliefs. And we got connected and you sent an entire shipment, a huge 70 foot container full of books to give away to the people of beliefs. And then after our big event was done, you continue to go back to the nation of beliefs. I believe you sent an even more shipments of books. Kind of tell me about what impact your ministry was able to have in the nation of beliefs.
Jason Woolford (08:15):
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, in part of that, that, that motivation came about by two people first John boy, and then you, and I know you guys know one another, but you know, it started with with him saying, Hey, is it possible for me to get a box of books to send to Billy’s? And I was like, man, yeah, I can do that. And then I thought, what w you know, I can do a palette now I can do a container. I can do. And you know, what I’m saying is there’s certain things as believers that we know that we can do. And so I asked the Lord, I said, Lord, what is it besides everything? What is it that you you can do that I can in this country. And I thought, like he said, give a, give a Bible. And the Christian book for single person in the entire country believes. And I said, well, that’s definitely out of my, out of my scope. And but long story short through, through prayer and trusting God we sent enough Bibles and Christian books to reach every single home in the entire country that believes. And so the impact has been phenomenal. The reports that we’ve gotten back you know, from people holding crusades to now being able to have Bibles and Christian books true miraculous.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:23):
I do a lot of traveling to different nations around the world. And I often visit pastors and church leaders and I’ll spend time with them in their homes. And I’m a book guy. I love books. I’ve got a huge library. I probably got about 5,000 books in my library. And so, you know, I studied for my doctorate. I’ve been doing lots of reading, but I’ll, I’ll go to these, these pastors houses in different countries. And sometimes they, they have a Bible and maybe one book or two books on their shelves and all of their preaching, everything they know comes from just that, that the, those one or two books. And there’s really a poverty of training materials in some parts of the world. And so your ministry is attempting to address that situation and, and sending containers of, of Christian literature, Christian books, Christian training material, and, and even Bibles up many of the places that we go. Sometimes the pastor doesn’t even have a Bible, or maybe they have one Bible for the entire church. So, so talk to me a little bit about the mission of your ministry and why you feel it’s so important to send books and, and training materials and Bibles around the world.
Jason Woolford (10:48):
So, yeah, so there’s a statistic that says there’s 122,000 people that are getting saved every day around the world. The alarming statistic is that a majority of those people are attending a, a church where the pastor doesn’t even own a Bible. And so when we look at the wealth and the prosperity that God has given the United States of America, like no other country on the planet we know that the average home in America has six Bibles sitting on its shelf. That’s not even the Christian home. It’s just the average home in America has six Bibles sitting on a shelf. So over the last 60 years, we’ve been encouraging people around the United States to send us those extra Bibles and Christian books that they have. And so that we can repurpose those basically, you know, let the world hear our mission cry with Bibles that were either sitting on someone’s shelf or you know Bibles or Christian books that were, you know, were just dormant where meanwhile people like you were talking about brother they’re some pastors are preaching out of a daily bread and and you know, that sounds nice.
Jason Woolford (11:54):
That’s not the way that God intended it in for us as a ministry. And those that are watching you have the ability to send an extra Bible or a Christian book that you have to this ministry. And it goes through a big sort process and then gets palletized and gets put on sea containers. And then once you get on sea containers and they get supported, then we send those overseas 100% absolutely for free. And so we’re seeing the impact of people’s lives for the 37 year old girl. And in Africa, we got a picture back where she’s literally crying, holding the Bible up because it was a Bible that a used Bible with marks in it crying her eyes out because it’s the first Bible that she ever owned. You know, I mean our, our brother in Nigeria he, he lost his wife and his two daughters burned by Boca rom the his wife nose and breast and other parts of her body chopped off his daughters burnt.
Jason Woolford (12:53):
And you know, he, he didn’t call our ministry. He didn’t write our ministry and ask for food. He didn’t ask for water. He didn’t ask for money. He said, we need the word of God. We need the word of God. For those that have, are still alive, where their family has been martyred for Christ. And they need to be able to read about the God that they were being martyred for. And so those are just some of the stories that we hear where people are in such desperate need of the word of God, and we have it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:24):
Yeah. I think books are such a powerful way to help people, you know, books help new believers grow spiritually. So one of the challenges of every evangelist is to turn converts into disciples. How can a new believer grow from saying a salvation prayer into becoming a strong follower of Jesus? And so one way of doing that is by putting literature in that new believers hand so that they can begin to grow another great thing about books is that they continue to preach the gospel long after we returned home. So we can go on a missions trip and we can share, but the book can go farther than I can go. It can stay longer than I can stay. It can impact lives that I’m never able to reach. And really by, by giving away books, you are imitating God. So our heavenly father sent his son Jesus for a season, but he left his book, the Bible for all of eternity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:19):
And so you’re giving Bibles to people and that’s a piece of, of, of God that you’re, you’re giving to them. And then another thing we find about books and I love giving away books, we’ve given away in our ministry. We’re not quite up to your level, but we’ve given away almost 600,000 books over the course of our ministry and books are often passed from hand to hand and they’re read by many different family members and neighbors. And so at one of our gospel, I remember we did a survey and we found an amazing fact. We found that every book that we gave away was read by an average of 10 people. And so those books have a, such a tremendous blessing. Now, tell me kind of how, how your ministry works. How do you collect books then? What do you do once you collect them and then how do you get them to a place where they’re needed?
Jason Woolford (15:16):
Yeah, absolutely. So from radio and television interviews that we do, and just by word of mouth people around the United States here, that they have a place that they could pick up Bibles or books from you know, used bookstores or salvation army or their houses or wherever. So we have thousands upon thousands of books that come into the ministry every week. And those come from people that are clearing their bookshelf, sharing their bookshelves, or sharing someone else’s bookshelves. And so when we get those those Bibles and Christian books upon the thousands of bonds, tens of thousands that’s how we get those and then repurpose those and then finding people in other countries that can get a container and clear it, and then use it for evangelism. That the very important thing of that is when we send the container, it has Bibles, it has seminary Christian authored books and Christian education discipleship.
Jason Woolford (16:12):
So within that container, there holds the word of God and teaching tools for those that are not saved brand new, saved those that are pastors are those that want to you know forward their, their, their, their education. And, you know, one of the things that’s real important. And, and this is why reached into that drawer was this Bible had come into the ministry. And as I told you, we get thousands upon thousands every day. And so when my staff came up, they said, Hey, we want to show you this Bible. And I’m thinking, okay, well, there’s a lot of those that come in. And they said, no, you’ve got to look at it. So I looked at it and you know, I was like, man is genuine leather smelled. It was like, yeah, it’s just genuine leather. You know, it’s got golden boss pages.
Jason Woolford (16:56):
And and then I, I began to, to open it up and inside, there was no writing on it. And it was a misprint that was printed. So it was a Bible that looked like a Bible smelled like a Bible, had the golden boss pages, but inside there was no, there was no writing. And this spoke to me in two ways. The first is this reminds me of so many of us that have six Bibles sitting on our shelves and you know, we might look right. We might smell right. But we’re not in the word of God. And therefore we don’t know what God has to say about the rest of the situation, not knowing how to properly fight the battles that we’re in, in the second way that it speaks to me is that there are brothers and sisters around the world.
Jason Woolford (17:44):
Daniel, as you have said that you know, we, we hold crusades. We, we go, we evangelize, we do what we’re supposed to do. They’ve asked Christ in their life. Their eternity might even be set with God, but yet they still have to live a life on this planet on earth until, until they go before our father. And if they don’t have the word of God, they don’t know how to properly fight. As you know, in Ephesians, God says it right to put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of rice and spells street, gospel shoes, a beast. But he says above all, taking up the shield of faith and the sword, which is the word of God. And when I read that time and time again, and Ephesians, it just really hit me and made me understand the importance of providing Bibles and Christian books to people, because God says, without faith, it’s impossible to please him. He said that faith is a substance of things, hoped for the evidence of things on scene. And that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So in other words, we have Christians that are out there saved, limit, truthful peaceful lives, but if they’re not in their word of God, they don’t have the shield of faith and the sword. And so they’re not equipped to, to, to fight against the devil and what they’re up against. And that’s the difference that we’re making with the word of God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:56):
That’s awesome. I’ve got a couple of questions for you, approximately how many shipping containers full of books have you sent overseas and what are some of the recent nations that you’ve sent books to?
Jason Woolford (19:10):
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that well, first off we’ve sent now 300 and update since information that you have $390 million worth of free Bibles and Christian books to 177 nations. Some of the most recent places we as a ministry, we never shut down during COVID. I deemed us essential because I believe the word of God is the most essential thing ever known to man. So we never shut down. And you know, everybody that says, you’ve got to put your big boy and big girl britches on because I’m telling you I was a Marine before I was a minister. And so when this COVID thing hit, you know, I was like wasn’t happy too much about China. And so I was thinking, man, I’d like to Marine Corps drop a bomb, but then I thought, you know what?
Jason Woolford (19:53):
What’s a greater bomb I could drop during this time. And I thought, you know, it’d be awesome if we could send the word of God to China. And so during COVID we sent $3 million worth of free Bibles and Christian books into Hong Kong. That’s already made its way into Shen Zen and to mainland China. And so we’ve sent just recently to Hong Kong, 130,000 people in Nigeria got a free Bible and Christian book just last year. The most recent container just landed yesterday with pictures of distribution Philippines, Burma mean the list goes on 24 different nations last year. Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:30):
That is absolutely amazing. Well, if one of my listeners wants to help you send books and Bibles to the nations, how can they find out more about your ministry? What’s your, what’s your website?
Jason Woolford (20:43):
Yeah. So it’s mission cry.com. And on there, there’s a tab that’s called books and you can give or donate books, a couple of things just in closing brother. We have our mission cry Bible, which is a new Testament NASB Bible. We created that. So when we’re running short on used Bibles we’ve been able to create this beautiful looking Bible. That’s NASB. It has the plan of salvation, a G 300 discipleship program in the back. And people can sponsor this at $2 a Bible, and that all that pays for the Bible and puts it into the hands of someone absolutely free overseas. And so you can visit our website and I want to leave you with this. This is a book that they gave us at eight years old, when our son was diagnosed with a cancerous inoperable brain tumor seven years old, end of story, make a wish recipients said he wasn’t going to live.
Jason Woolford (21:38):
And they gave us this book and this book says a resource guide for parents of children with brain or spinal cord tumors. This book is 18 years old. And I asked people, if you could tell me Daniel, could you tell me what’s on page one of this book? And the answer is no, you can’t because you’ll never read it. And I’m going to tell you that I’ve never read this book. I’ve never opened this book. Never because I was not going to be a parent of a child with a brain tumor. But instead I opened the word of God and I was able to read what God had to say about the rest of the situation. We never allowed the last thing to be spoken over our children, to be something contrary to the word of God. And so I just want to encourage those of your listeners that are listening and watching.
Jason Woolford (22:21):
It doesn’t matter what the little T truth is. The truth was that there was a tumor in the middle of my son’s brain and he was going to die, but that was the little T truth. And the greater T truth was found in the word of God. I want you to know my son that tumor vanished out of the middle of his brain. He’s 26 years old. He just graduated from moody. He starting his master’s program. And the awesome thing is, is God is not a respecter of person. So if he can do it for us, he can do it for you. This is why we believe in sending the word of God. Mission cry.com, call us, write us, partner with us and let the world hear your mission cry. And brother, I am humbled and blessed to be on your program. You are a mighty man of God.
Jason Woolford (23:01):
I’m thankful for your, your, your heart for evangelism. That was the first two things that Jesus, that God was, he was an evangelist and a missionary. And and I hope most people get, get on track with that. And lastly, one thing you talked about the 33 years of the Lord, I want to encourage those of you that are watching that God had given us a full Bible. We got to get off just those 33 years of his timeframe in the flesh on this earth and read about the God of the old Testament and the new Testament and the soon coming King and he’s coming. So you better tell people about Jesus,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:36):
Brother, Jason. I love your passion. Thank you so much for sharing that testimony of how the brain tumor in your son disappeared. That that is the miracle that I can hear how it shaped your desire to spread God’s word around the world is so tremendous. So thank you for being on the evangelism podcast. God bless you, man. Glad to be here. Thank you, buddy. Love you and the Lord, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. Could you do me a favor, go to Apple iTunes, find the evangelism podcast with Daniel King, subscribe to the podcast. And also if you could leave a positive review that will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (24:31):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.
