History of Bearing Precious Seed of Lansing, Michigan
by Bro. Dennis Denau
I was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, graduated from High School, and went into the Air Force during the Vietnam war, staying in for 7 ½ years. Not once during that time did anyone ever witness to me or give me a gospel tract. My wife was saved two years before I was, but on July 16, 1978, I heard a gospel message for the first time, and felt like the preacher was preaching just to me; accepted Christ that night, and praise the Lord, my life has not been the same since then!
Shortly after being saved, we joined an Independent Baptist Church, became very involved, and within a few short years, the Lord began to show me His plan for my life, working with the Bearing Precious Seed ministry. He gave me a burden to get the Word of God around the world and to preach to His people and get churches involved in helping us reach the lost with the Word of God. His plan has slowly unfolded over the years, and our ministry has evolved from producing and distributing small amounts of Scripture portions to now including millions of Scripture portions each year, and also our Local Church Bible Publishers ministry and its good quality King James Bibles with leather covers, and now Calvary Publishers and reprinting old Baptist-heritage books.
I studied under Dr. Don Fraser, founder of Bearing Precious Seed, through the School of Scriptures and have taken other classes through Local Church Bible Institutes. I have received honorary doctorates in literature from Shoals Bible Baptist Seminary of Muscle Shoals, AL, and also Doctor of Theology from Salt Lake Baptist College in Salt Lake City, UT. God has been merciful to me all these years to be constantly teaching me from His precious Word.
In these last 24 years, I have preached in well over 1,500 churches and God has used many of them to help us in one way or another—some support us so we can work full time in this ministry, some support the ministry, some send money each month for paper, some send money once a year, and some churches pray faithfully for us. I am encouraged that most of those churches still remember our ministry in one way or another and thank God for using them to be a blessing to us. We raised our two boys “on the road” and both are serving with their families in their local churches now.
The leather bindery that does all of our top quality leather work was closing its doors in October, 2006, and God worked in a marvelous way, allowing our oldest son to build a building and re-establish it as a family business for he and his wife and their five children. What a blessing to have it all only an hour away and to be able to keep our Bibles made in the United States of America!
My wife, Lee, and I were married 40 years on October 1st, 2006, and praise the Lord for His faithfulness to us. Lee was a nurse, but the Lord has taught her to be a secretary and now she works in all areas of office work, learning new things nearly every day. It is our goal to see these ministries continue to grow for the Lord’s Glory and to be a blessing to others. We want to be able to provide the world with the King James Bible and to revive our Baptist Heritage as well as encourage young Christians to read good, sound Godly books, so they can grow in Christ and follow the path that He would have them take. Eph. 4: 12 says, “…for the WORK [emphasis mine] of the ministry…” and truly it has proven to be WORK over these many years. God has given us more work than we ever imagined, but He continues to send us helpers to DO that work for Him.