In 1996, we joined the ministry, Crossover Communications International, now Crossover USA, with the expressed understanding that we would assist a mission pastor already at work in the Republic of Moldova. Neither Sylvia, nor myself, had seminary education, and I had no prior experience in leading a church. But we had been involved with and leading discipleship groups for ten years. So we were ready to assist a pastor and his family in adult ministry; we were not thinking of leading a church, nor a team of ministers.

One month before departing the U.S. for Moldova, the mission pastor withdrew from CCI, leaving us to redefine the nature of our relationship with CCI and what we were to do. With no experience in formal church ministry, we agreed that God was leading us on to Moldova, to start new ministry, including planting a church and forming a mission center for ministry training. We did so with the understanding that our CCI ministry leaders, particularly our executive director, Bill Jones, would help us define the ministry, keep up with our progress through a missions overseer, Claudia Gandy, and visit us twice a year. During our eight years in Moldova, our ministry team within CCI visited us, encouraged us, counseled us, admonished us at times,and kept casting the vision that we kept pursuing.

Within one year of landing in Moldova, the Lord started our first church there, the Church of the Great Commission, as well as the beginnings of the CCI-Moldova mission center. Within three years, the Lord had started three other churches, and through the mission center, 50 church planters began training on church start-up. After five years, we handed the mission center ministry to our Moldovan counterparts to handle the church-planting training, and to this day, over 200 churches have been started in Moldova, the Ukraine, and Central Asia.

What we see happening in churches in Bulgaria at this time reminds us of those days when we sought to continue following the call of God, despite a lack of ministry experience, not to assist someone else in their ministry, but to step forward and take the reins of ministry ourselves.

Bulgaria is a country of 7.5 million people; Moldova barely has 3.5 million. However, Moldova’s evangelical community is made up of 132,000 people, a 1:25 ratio; that is one evangelical believer for every 25 people in Moldova. Bulgaria on the other hand has a total evangelical population of 145,000, a 1:50 ratio; one evangelical believer for every 50 people in Bulgaria. To put that into perspective, in the U.S. there is one evangelical believer for every 4 people.

Those are a lot of numbers, but what it means is that the evangelical presence in Bulgaria is very small, the number of churches spread thin across the country, and that means pastors and their families are, for the most part, working in isolation, often undereducated, and when tough times come, they can become discouraged, even if they do continue to pursue God’s call to serve the church. They often look like we did in Moldova, wide-eyed and wondering, wanting to fulfill God’s call on their lives. But they often do not have the support of encouragers and visionaries that we had. The focus of our ministry is just such pastors and other Christian leaders, and for ourselves to be their encouragers, admonishers, and vision casters.

Practical Pastoring is a vital workshop for the pastor or other Christian leader who often must work alone. It is based on the apostle Paul’s method of returning to places where he and his apostolic teams had previously ministered, and as he himself put it, “to see how they are” (Acts 16:36), “to strengthen the souls of the disciples,” “to encourage them to continue in the faith,”“to appoint elders for them,” “to commend them to the Lord in whom they had believed” (Acts 14:22-23), encouraging the leaders to “be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock… to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). He commended them to the Lord, specifically exhorting them to follow his own example, “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive. When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all” (Acts 20:35-36).

We desire to first befriend the pastor, his wife, and family. Once we have established a simple friendship, we will offer to visit them on a regular basis, and keep in touch by phone calls or Skype. We will also offer to provide them with the assortment of spiritual services you see listed below. A prime tool we have to use is the workbook, Practical Pastoring. It is a fill-in-the-blank workbook that walks the minister through important aspects of church ministry such as: confirming one’s call, care for the minister’s family, establishing daily disciplines, working with a ministry team, relating well with others, making disciples, church finances and member stewardship, pastoral care for members, creating sermons and preaching God’s Word, conducting worship services, baptisms, communion, weddings, and funerals, and congregational discipline. The pastor can use the workbook on his own, but our part would be to call attention to each aspect and help him move through those parts that inevitably trip all of us up. Having lived the life of such a pastor and pastor’s wife, we are able to share from our own experiences. Having succeeded (and, at times, failed), we can walk through their ministry life alongside them, and at times, stand with them when the work of ministry gets tough.

One aspect of ministry is inherently impossible to do on one’s own; it is the establishment of and the maintaining of one’s ministry vision. One’s ministry vision lies outside of oneself; it is the ultimate call of God to serve others, and though we can receive the call of God, we always see it through our own eyes, and as such, we cannot see all its aspects at once; we need others to help us see it from a fuller perspective. This will be our greatest help to the minister and his family, but we cannot do it if the minister does not open himself up, agree to be helped, and to make the necessary commitment to pursue God’s great call on his (and their) life.

Our Method

● Providing Personal Encouragement through Common Friendship

● Providing Counsel for the Roles of Minister and Minister’s Spouse

● Providing Training through the Workshop, Practical Pastoring

● Providing Minimal and Available Assets

– Lending Library

– Supplies / Equipment on Loan

– Individual Personnel for Assistance

– Teams for Assistance

● Providing Evaluation of Local Church Ministry

● Providing Exhortation to Ministry Vision

● Providing a Network for Association with Other Ministers, Churches, and Ministries

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