“I tried children’s ministry, youth ministry, and evangelism, but nothing fit. I had never met a missionary, but when I read Isaiah 6:8, I knew God was calling me.”
That’s the testimony of Vance Massengill, 54, whose passion is to reach unreached people groups and mobilize them to spread the Gospel.
After completing their ministerial internship in the Philippines in the late 1990s, Vance and his wife, Kari, served as missionaries to China for five years . . . until the Lord closed the door for their ministry there.
“I was angry with God and ready to quit missions,” Vance said. But when Doug Leroy (former director of Church of God World Missions) mentioned the Middle East to him, Vance said, “I knew I had to go there. This is where 80 percent of those who have never heard the Gospel are living.”
One year after returning from China, the Massengills became the Church of God education coordinators for the Middle East, North Africa, and part of Eastern Europe. They were based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where 88 percent of the population is international, and where people may hold religious services for their own ethnic or cultural groups.
Since the UAE government does not allow naturalization, immigrants eventually return to their nation of origin. “So, a Muslim country can become a sending country!” Vance said. However, less than 2 percent of missionaries and only 1 percent of mission funding go toward the Middle East, which helps to explain the Massengill’s vision for this region.
Saved From Despair
Vance Massengill was brought up in a Pentecostal home. “I felt God reach out to me when I was 14, but I ran from it. I got into drugs and alcohol pretty heavy, even some occult stuff.” After high school, he joined the military, where his “hatred and anger multiplied.”
After leaving the military, Vance lost his job and his house. At 21, he moved back in with his parents, which he called his “biggest shame.” One night, he told his parents he was going to “leave, get drunk, and take my life.” That night, his mother prayed, “God, save my son, even if it means he has to die.” His suicide attempt failed.
Vance recalled, “Several years later, when I decided to go to China, I had not told anyone about it. I called my mom, who has always been supportive. Off the phone, she went to her room and asked God, ‘Why are You taking my son from me?’
“She feels like God spoke to her almost audibly, ‘He is not your son. Don’t you remember? You gave Me his life.’”
After another suicide attempt, Vance’s dad and pastor led him to the Lord. “My dad is the most Christlike man I have ever met,” Vance said. “People at the church told me all the things I couldn’t do as a Christian; my dad told me what I needed to do: pray, be faithful to the church, spend time with other Christians, and read the Bible.
“The next day, I was baptized in water. The next week, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. I fasted during the first month of my salvation experience. All the things I had learned growing up in Sunday school came back to me, so I was growing very quickly. I started preaching one month after I was saved!”
Becoming a Family
After he was called to missions, Vance became a student at Lee University, attracted by the school’s favorable male-to-female ratio. There, he was strongly influenced by the teaching of Hector Camacho and Ridley Underwood concerning missions. “I determined the purpose of the missionary call is to bring the Gospel to people who have never heard it. It is finding people on the broad path who don’t know there is a narrow path.”
Vance met Kari at Lee. She said, “I felt like I would marry a minister, but I didn’t come to Lee for that purpose. When I was no longer thinking about it, I met Vance.” While missions was not on her radar, she knew God had brought her and Vance together.
The Massengills were married for more than a decade before starting a family. “We were afraid to have children in a place like China,” Vance said, wondering how it might negatively affect their ministry or the children themselves.
When Vance and Kari finally agreed they should have children, they asked the Lord to give them two girls about two years apart, which happened.
“Leandra and Kendra have made ministry and fundraising easier,” Vance said. “In the UAE, family is everything!” The sisters are online college students. Leandra is studying creative writing and has already published a fantasy book, Adventures in Otherworlds. Kendra is a Bible and theology major.
Unexpected Sojourn
In April 2021, the Massengills relocated from the UAE’s largest city, Dubai, to pastor the Church of God in Kincaid, Illinois. “Our apartment building in the UAE had a larger population than Kincaid!” Vance said. Despite holding three degrees in intercultural studies, Vance moved his family to “the whitest part of America.”
He confessed, “All my life I have known the church is important, but I did not love the church. As missionaries, we can make the mistake of seeing the church as a means to an end. This congregation taught us to love the church, for they could see us struggling, but they loved us anyway.
“After two years, God said to me, What is your identity—a missionary? No, that is what you do for Me. You are My child.
“This broke me; I wept for hours.”
A year and a half later, at the 2024 Church of God General Assembly, the Massengills sensed God was leading them to return to the Middle East. In January 2025, those plans became official.
Meanwhile, Vance said the spiritual darkness in the US has “felt darker than in the UAE, maybe because of less prayer support. The poverty, drugs, transgender stuff, the oppression—I was shocked. I was also surprised at the lack of Bible knowledge.
“As I’ve traveled from church to church [to raise support], I’ve found opportunities to speak into pastors’ lives. They are bruised and hurting. Sometimes, they will open up, knowing we will be living 8,000 miles away.”
Back to the Middle East
Kari holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and is currently pursuing her master’s degree in counseling. She said, “We did a lot of marital and premarital counseling when we lived there before. Now, so many of these newly married couples have toddlers and need help. Everywhere in the world we’ve been, there’s a lack of Christian counselors.”
Kari also hopes to introduce a counseling course at Gilgal Seminary in the UAE.
Leandra said although it was sad leaving the church in Illinois, she looks forward to returning to the UAE because “it feels like home.” Kendra said, “Before, we were kids. Now we can be more involved in the ministry.”
“If we show Christ to Muslims, we can reach them,” Vance said. “It’s what I’ve seen modeled by my dad. I’ve never seen him angry or criticize anyone. He reflects Jesus.”
Vance added, “We have a heart for God to open Yemen, where we have contacts, and which hasn’t had a significant missionary presence for a very long time. A Muslim from Yemen told us, ‘I’ve never felt love like this.’ It’s just Christ in us, not an effort to manipulate.”
Prayer Above All
“Prayer support is what we need the most,” Vance said. “Financial support is going to come as missionaries share their heart; prayer is what keeps us alive and makes us fruitful. People giving without praying will not help us very much.
“We can feel people’s prayers—almost like an umbrella over us.”
Regarding praying for unreached people, “Our family refers to it as ‘abiding’—spending an extravagant amount of time with Christ—think of John 15,” Vance said. “We must pray for them to be able to hear the Gospel, whatever that means. I know people who have accepted Christ through watching TV or the internet, but nothing replaces the personal touch.
“Once people hear, we work together with other organizations in the Islamic world. Then, we must mobilize them as missionaries. The end goal of a missionary is to work yourself out of a job. I don’t want to spend 30 years with one group. My purpose is to go to people who have never heard the Gospel.”
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