October Newsletter 2026

We greet you this beautiful autumn morning in the wonderful fall month of October! The leaves have started their beautiful changing — or have finished this work of God’s art already — depending on where you are physically located today.

I love the fall season for many reasons: the cooler weather, the changing leaves, the farmers’ harvests, hunting season, and several more. BUT one major reason is one I’ve talked to you about repeatedly for 20 years: THE GREAT MISSIONS CONFERENCE AT COVENANT OF PEACE INTL. IN EATON, OHIO!

Four wonderful days and nights, always starting the last Sunday of October and ending Wednesday night — this year, October 25-28. Check out their website for information! Go to copiministries.org and register or learn about the conference.

There will be wonderful missionaries there from around the globe, and you can meet them, fellowship, and break bread with them in times of refreshing after the services. Pastor Harbaum, Mark T. Barclay, and yours truly, Terry L. Mize, will be speaking. The precious people of this great church live for this conference all year long. They believe God for money and save their money to be able to give to Missions during this Missions week!

One of my spiritual fathers, Wayne Myers, who just left us for Heaven two years ago at 102 years old, first started preaching Missions conventions at this church over 50 years ago. Through three pastors, it has continued, and now Pastor Harbaum has led it the last 20 years.

To Reneé and I, it is so very close to the Missions conferences that John Osteen held for decades at the venerable Lakewood Church in Houston. Reneé and Dean, and Jackie and I, attended and relished those days and services. Many missionaries that we tell about this event ask, “What is a Missions conference?” Not many pastors and churches hold a Missions conference these days, and those that do don’t really know how to do it.

Every year, all year long, as Reneé and I meet and talk with Christians, as we preach and serve pastors’ churches around the USA, we talk about this wonderful convention and invite people and pastors to come. Sometimes we beg them.

We tell them two great truths: You have never been to a conference like this, and it will change your life! I know people and preachers always say things will change your life, but this really will. In fact, those who have come over the years will testify to that.

Another thing I tell friends and partners is that this conference is one God cares about, Jesus cares about, and the apostles of the Lamb (the original disciples of Jesus) care about. They all died for Missions. The Apostle Paul died for Missions. Jesus died for Missions.
Missions cost God His Son and cost Jesus His blood. What has it cost us?

The book of Acts tells us about two churches: the FIRST CHURCH at Jerusalem and the little church up north of there about 100 miles in Antioch (now in the nation of Turkey). One was short-lived, and the other set the world on fire for God. The Jerusalem church stayed turned inward; the Antioch church reached beyond its borders and was a missionary church.

Reminds me of two seas in Israel: the beautiful, clear, full-of-life Galilee and the stingy, lifeless Dead Sea. Both have always been fed by the Jordan River with all its fish and life, but the Galilee gives right back and out again. The Dead Sea, however, is stingy and non-giving. It has no outflow. It holds on to every drop; therefore, it cannot sustain life. Nothing lives there. Any living organism must have an outflow to stay alive — from a body of water to your body, to your church, and so on.

So many people, even some Christians, live by the law of the rake instead of the law of the shovel. The rake is always reaching out and pulling back to yourself, but the shovel is always taking from your pile and throwing it out away from you.

We must live by the open heart and the open hand. If we live with a fist, or the hand closed, and a closed heart, then you cannot give, BUT you cannot receive either! Yet with an open heart and an open hand, you can both give and receive.

On another note, we ministered in Alabama a couple of weeks ago — a three-day, six-service “Covenant Wealth” seminar. Scott Webb, David Webb, and I were the speakers. Wow, the Lord blessed, and it was good. Several wonderful, longtime minister friends came from long distances, a family on my staff came from Texas, and my son, Lynn, came from Tulsa.

God is in the people business, the redeeming business, the outreach business, the soul-winning business, and so must we be. Again, happy autumn, and I hope to see you in a country church between a cornfield and a cemetery in Ohio the last week of this month.
November finds us in the South Pacific once again, ministering in Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Pago Pago, and New Zealand. We covet your prayers for these precious people and this tremendous mission field. Agree with us for the anointing, the favor, the ministry, the health, and the great financial cost!

For the World That Cost Jesus His Blood,
Terry L. Mize