Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship in America™ is a nonprofit organization of Christian laymen from nearly every denominational background who are dedicated to reaching men with the good news of Jesus Christ.
Our mission is based on a vision that God gave to Demos Shakarian, founder of the International Fellowship, in 1952. In that vision, God took Demos around the world and showed him “millions and millions of men standing shoulder to shoulder.” Demos continued: “What I saw terrified me. The faces were set, lifeless, miserable. . . They stared straight ahead, unblinking, unseeing. With a shudder of horror I realized that they were dead. . . Then the vision changed. . . Everywhere it was the same. Brown faces, black faces, white faces – every one rigid, wretched, every one locked in his own private death.” The men whom Demos saw in the vision were spiritually dead, they were without Jesus, they were lost. . . Then God spoke (through Rose Shakarian) “My son what you see next is going to happen soon.” Then Demos was moving around the earth a second time. “Below me again were millions upon millions of men. But what a difference! This time heads were raised. Eyes shone with joy. Hands were lifted towards heaven. These men who had been so isolated, each in his prison of self, were linked in a community of love and adoration. Asia. Africa. America – everywhere death had turned to life. And then the vision was over.”¹ God gave the Fellowship – through Demos Shakarian – the mission to call men back to God!!
THE NEED FOR THE MISSION IS CLEAR
More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and five out of six call themselves Christian. But only two out of six attend Church on a given Sunday. The average American man accepts the reality of Jesus Christ, but fails to see any value in going to church.²
As many as 90 percent of the boys who are being raised in church will abandon it by their 20th birthday. Many of these boys will never return.
The majority of those men who actually attend church do nothing during the week to grow their faith.
OUR MISSION IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH CHAPTERS
The work of the Fellowship is accomplished by local chapters which meet in the communities where the members live and work. The members of our chapters are men, not exceptional men, and just average business people, who know the Lord and love Him. They tell other men what they have actually experienced of God, men like themselves, men who might not believe what a preacher said – but who will listen to a plumber, an engineer or a salesman because they are plumbers, engineers and salesmen themselves. The members of our Chapters have the unique opportunity to reach the men in the Marketplace; men that are not being touched by current methods of evangelism; particularly by the formal Church.
The FGBMFAmerica™ by its very nature is a recruiter for the Church. It is our mission to ‘reach men’—and the mission of the church is to ‘feed, nurture, and mature them’. Thus, the church and the FGBMFAmerica™ work hand in hand. It is a matter of record, that participation in a FGBMFAmerica™ Chapter often stirs men to a greater service and dedication in their own local assembly.
It is the Chapters that are the backbone and the spearhead of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship in America in carrying out God’s great world-shaking end time revival.