Ray and Marlene Share A 20th Anniversary Message

All year long, we’ve been celebrating God’s faithfulness at Keep Believing Ministries. Here’s the talk Marlene and I gave last Thursday night at the KBM 20 anniversary dinner in Lombard, IL:

RAY: Twenty years is a long time. Thank you for being here tonight to celebrate God’s faithfulness with us.

We came tonight to say thank you.

MARLENE: Thank you for loving us.
RAY: Thank you for believing in us.
MARLENE: Thank you for encouraging us.
RAY: Thank you for supporting us.
MARLENE: Thank you for praying for us.

Recently, Ray and I were reading Mark 8. The disciples were worried because they had no bread. Jesus reminded them that he had fed 5,000 people with five loaves and 4,000 with seven. Then he asked them a penetrating question: “Do you not yet understand?”

In other words, Don’t you remember what I’ve already done?

RAY: That’s what we want to do tonight. We want to remember
what God has done and be encouraged to keep believing that he will be faithful—not only to Keep Believing Ministries, but to all of us.

We came back to Chicago because this is where the dream began.

MARLENE: In 1989, Ray became senior pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park.

RAY: We served there for almost 17 years. What a ride! I smile when I think about those years, because at Calvary, you never knew who might walk through the doors.

Somewhere in my archives is a memo I wrote to the elders in 1998, sharing my vision for something called Keep Believing Ministries.

MARLENE: When KBM began in 2006, we wanted to keep providing copies of An Anchor for the Soul to prison ministries across the United States.

One thing we—or at least I—knew for certain: We were never going to do this full-time!

The ministry was ONLY going to be Anchor. No website.
No conferences. No teaching the next generation of Christian leaders around the world. No booklets. No Mandarin-language website.

Just Anchor!

RAY: We had a lot of help from our friends. Tonight we especially want to remember four people who were with us from the beginning but aren’t here because they’ve gone home to heaven.

MARLENE: Cliff and Phyllis Raad.
RAY: Skip Olson.
MARLENE: Dave Hoy.

RAY: When we left Chicago for Tupelo, Mississippi, I thought
we’d be there for six months, then return to Chicago so I could work in Christian radio.

You know the saying: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him
your plans.” I told God my plans, and he seemed to say, “Why don’t you stay in Tupelo for a while?”

So we did. We stayed seven and a half years! Along the way,
I began co-hosting Today’s Issues on American Family Radio.

MARLENE: We have so many friends in Chicago. Tonight feels like
a family reunion.

RAY: We started here. We remember your encouragement.
And we came back to say thank you.

MARLENE: In those early days, we held a lot of meetings in
people’s homes. I remember one in Josh and Leah’s apartment with some young adults from the 20/20 group.

At one point, Deneen Taylor asked, “Are we all you’ve got?”

RAY: The answer was yes! You’ve always been all we’ve got.
And it’s always been more than enough.

MARLENE: To be perfectly honest,
We didn’t have a master plan.
We didn’t have a mission statement.
We didn’t have a clue where God would lead us
over the next 20 years!

We just wanted a way to get Anchor into the hands of prison
ministries and other evangelistic ministries in the United States.

RAY: We walked through that door. And over the years, we’ve given away more than 900,000 copies of Anchor. We give the books away, and God has always provided the money to buy and ship them.

Every week, we receive letters from prisoners. Some tell us they trusted Christ after reading Anchor. Others say it has encouraged them in their walk with Christ. Still others tell us they’re sharing it with fellow inmates.

MARLENE: Because of the cost, we don’t ship Anchor outside
the United States. But somehow, a man from the Philippines who was in prison in Mexico found a copy under his bed.

He read it, trusted Christ, and is now a pastor!

We will never know how many people have been challenged
to trust Christ through that little gospel book.

And didn’t you love Dylan Fugate’s story? His Jeep was stolen
and when it was returned, there was a copy of Anchor inside!

God is faithful!

RAY: Early on, we realized we needed a website where pastors
and Christian workers around the world could find sermon
resources. Over the years, we’ve had millions of visits from
more than 200 countries.

Rohan, a bivocational pastor of a small Methodist church in London, prayed that God would lead him to a website that could help him prepare sermons and Bible studies for his congregation.

God led him to keepbelieving.com.

God is faithful!

MARLENE: Our website reaches people around the world whom we may never meet until heaven.

How cool is that?
We just kept walking through the doors God opened.

That’s what happened with KBM China.

We were visiting Josh in China when, through a strange series of events at an international church in Beijing, we met people from a publishing house whose mission was to provide Christian books for bookstores in China.

They talked with Ray about translating and publishing ABCs of Wisdom. They renamed it Wisdom from an Ancient King.

That book helped establish Ray as one of their authors.
At the same time, they printed Anchor to use as a giveaway.

Anchor was too openly religious to get through the usual approval process, but somehow they printed thousands of copies and gave them away across China.

Looking back, it seems impossible.

God is faithful!

RAY: God opened doors through Word of Life for me to teach at their Bible Institutes in New York and Florida—where we now live.

That led to opportunities to teach young adults at Bible Institutes in Korea, the Philippines, Ukraine, Uganda, and Hungary.

In April we were in Korea where I taught Galatians, and in May we traveled to Hungary where I taught Hebrews to students from 17 countries.

MARLENE: I’ll never forget visiting the Bible Institute in Ukraine.
Students came from countries across the former Communist bloc. Russian was their common language, so classes taught in English were translated into Russian.

Students from many countries, united by a common language and a common love for Christ.

The last time we were there, before the war, we met students from Kazakhstan who couldn’t wait to share Christ in their homeland.

When the war began, students returned to their home countries. Who knows what ministries may have grown out of their training?

And God allowed KBM to play a small part in that training.

He is faithful!

RAY One of the greatest blessings of these 20 years is that we’ve never had to do this alone. Our whole family has been part of the journey.

MARLENE: Josh produces all the Let’s Read the Bible! videos and helps with the website. Josh and Leah designed the backdrop for our Bible reading videos.

Ray: Mark and I have spoken together at conferences across the country, and he is the emcee tonight.

MARLENE: Vanessa is our Ministry Engagement Administrator. Nick serves on the board, and you met Sarah and Leah at the Welcome table. Knox and Eli are running the AV booth tonight.

RAY: Four years ago, God put an idea in my heart that I couldn’t shake. I began dreaming about reading the entire Bible online in one year—from Genesis to Revelation.

I wanted it to be a legacy project for our grandchildren.

At first, I didn’t tell anyone. It sounded crazy—even to me! The Bible has roughly 750,000 words. That’s a lot of reading. I wondered whether I’d make it to the end.

MARLENE: In November 2022, Ray told me he was thinking about
reading through the Bible on video the following year. He had already mapped out the daily readings.

Josh came over one morning, and while we were talking, I said,
“Josh, Dad has this idea to read through the Bible on video next year. What do you think?”

He immediately said, “Dad, you have to do this!”

On January 1, 2023, we launched Let’s Read the Bible!

RAY: We’ve been blown away by the response. We’re now in our
fourth year, and new people join us all the time. In September, we passed 100,000 hours of total viewing time for the videos.

One morning at Word of Life, I was walking the track when I heard, “Pastor Ray! Pastor Ray!”

I looked over and saw a mother with a three-year-old girl in a stroller. The little girl had been watching the videos. When she spotted me, she told her mother, “There’s the Bible reading man!”

That same week, someone posted a picture on Facebook with this caption: “This is priceless. I caught my dog watching you read the Bible on video.”

Then a man in his 80s wrote to tell me about his morning routine. He gets up, makes coffee, pours a glass of ice water, puts on his Keep Believing wristband, opens The Good Words for Today, and reads the Bible with me.

He said, “I’m reading the Bible each year with you as long as I’m alive and functioning. And if it’s allowed, I’ll even do it in heaven.”

When you’ve got the young, the old, and the dogs on your side, I figure you must be doing something right!

MARLENE: The doors are still wide open around the world. We want to keep walking through every door the Lord opens.

Just last week, we heard from a woman we’ve never met.

After reading An Anchor for the Soul, she recommitted her life
to Christ on October 5.

She wanted to read through the Bible, but when a friend gave
her a Bible-in-a-year book, its size intimidated her. She said:

“I am not a big reader, and the size of the book scared the heck out of me.”

Then she visited our website and discovered Let’s Read the Bible!
She wrote, “What an awesome God to lead me to this.”

RAY: One week ago, we received a request from a chaplain with the Florida Department of Corrections.

He explained that many inmates are arriving in prison confused and searching for something greater than themselves. During orientation, they can’t access digital media, so printed books are especially important.

This was his request: “I’m reaching out humbly inquiring whether your ministry would consider donating copies of Anchor for the Soul to be given to inmates as they begin to seek Jesus.”

Well, we just received 51,000 new copies of Anchor at our book depot in Moline. And we’re going to send that chaplain as many as he needs!

MARLENE: Twenty years ago, we started here in Chicago because you stood with us.

And you’ve kept standing with us.

Because of you, people around the world are finding hope, growing in their faith, and learning to trust God—no matter what they face.

It all started with a little book called Anchor for the Soul and
a handful of friends who believed in the dream.

Thank you for being part of Keep Believing Ministries.
Thank you for celebrating with us tonight.

Most of all, thank you for believing with us all these years.

We came back to Chicago so we could look you in the eye and say Thank you.

RAY and MARLENE: Together we will keep believing!