Preaching from the Gospel of Mark in Yambol
The pastor of the Pentecostal church in Yambol has invited us present a Bible study course on the Gospel of Mark. We have designed the course as a verse by verse exploration of the text, which takes under consideration various theological perspectives and practical applications.
Naturally, when dealing with the Synoptic Gospels, we touch on text criticism issues like the process of writing the Gospel, priority of Mark, authorship and purpose, Greek vocabulary and grammar and many more. It is a challenge to relate many of these issues to a congregation where most of the people have read only one Bible translation their whole lives.
Nevertheless, as we have trusted the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of the Gospel text, we have seen again how the Word of God is confirmed with miracles and wonders. These signs have surpassed simple healings, supplying of financial needs or family restoration and has proceeded into life transforming experiences expressed in salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism and extraordinary illumination opening the spiritual eyes of many to receive the text in a practical experiential matter of which many have not been yet aware. We have literally seen how the Word, and not people, touches hurt hearts, heals sorrowed souls and transformers lives forever. And this is the miracle of preaching the Good News of God to the world. For if we want revival to go on, the Gospel must be preached …
Leadership Course Begins a New Level of Ministry in Sofia
By Kathryn Donev
After a very successful service at the Upper Room in Sofia on June 29th, we returned there for three new services this past Sunday. Our Sunday morning began at 7:30 a.m. when we were picked up by a member of the Salvation Church of God in Sofia for the prayer service which began at 8:00 a.m. and continued until 10:00 a.m. The church is located in the poorest of all parts of the two and a half million metropolis of Sofia, the gipsy ghetto of Phillipovtsy. As the church is built on the highest part of the subdivision where the services are held on the second floor, people naturally call it the Upper Room.
It was there during the prayer meeting, around 9:30 a.m., that a man accompanied by several people from a nearby Church of God came and requested prayer for being diagnosed with having a large tumor in his head. As we anointed the man and prayed for him, we learned that two people had already received a healing from tumor and cancer in the past two weeks.
At Gabrovo Church of God Again
This weekend we returned to the Bulgarian mountain city of Gabrovo to prepare for the 2008 X Event which Cup & Cross Ministries will hold on August 8-10, 2008 in the geographical center of Bulgaria in the Uzana Mountain. Our return was a long awaited one, as we have been working together with the regional overseer, Vassil Patrov and the national leadership of the Bulgarian Church of God in the past year toward the successful realization of this project. For the brief time that we spent in Gabrovo, we were able to minister to the congregation, speak with representatives of the mayor’s office, inform the local authorities of the upcoming gathering and arrange all necessary accommodation for the X Event. We are praying, preparing and hoping that X 2008 in the Heart of Bulgaria will be a true blessing to all who attend.
Ministerial Meeting in Sliven
We just return from a very fruitful meeting in Sliven on which important leadership decision were brought to the attention of the ministers in the region where we have been ministering as a team for the past 20 years. We were able to reacquaint with old friends, schedule a series of revival meetings in the area for the month of August and September and participate in the decision making process to secure a new focus of ministry in the Southeastern region of the Bulgarian Church of God, which includes the major cities of Yambol, Sliven, Stara Zagora and Bourgas. While in Sliven, we were also able to visit with the Church of God Men and Women of Action team led by our good friend Rich Tonti, working on a church in the area. As part of our ministry in the region, we have scheduled leadership courses for pastors of Sliven in August and of Bourgas in September. We are hoping that through these ministry endeavors, both ministers and churches will turn their focus from the ongoing crises toward the real goal of ministry – the salvation of human souls.
Ministering in Sofia: Three Services in a Day
At 10:00 a.m. our first service was at the Grace Church of God in Sofia where we delivered the message of Isaiah 3:10 “Tell ye to the Righteous that it shall be well with them.” The brief sermon was followed by an hour long alter service in which we prayed for people and anointed them for their needs. Through the prayer a number of people reported various healings. A father and son we prayed for were respectively baptized in the Holy Spirit and delivered from drugs.
At 5:00 p.m. we preached in the service of the Catholic Ecumenical Apostolic Church of Bulgaria where we encouraged the people and delivered to them the new translation of the Gospel of John printed by our ministry.
At 7:30 p.m. we arrived at the Gipsy ghetto of Phillipovtzyi, on the Westside of the capital Sofia, and had one of the greatest worship services we have ever experienced in the Upper Room church there. The service continued till late in the night as people kept on praying at the altars and receiving from God. Among many healings that happened, one miracle in particular stands out. A father of a little girl came into the service requesting to be anointed with oil and prayer from for his two month old daughter whom he left in hospital with double pneumonia. He returned the next day to report that he girl was healed after the prayer.
From the Heart of God to the Heart of Sofia
Cup & Cross Ministries was instrumental in the envisioning, planning and promoting of a national ministry crusade which was brought to a close with a series of evangelization meetings at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia June 11-12, 2008. A number of Bulgarian and international five-fold ministries gathered together in the heart of Bulgaria, the Uzana area near Gabrovo, to pray and prepare for a new level of ministry. A great contribution to the organization of the seminar modules was given by Church of God Pastor Vassil Petrov of Gabrovo. The organization of the meetings in the capital was entrusted in the hands of pastor Stanislav Todorov. Special guest speakers were Apostle Scott Hunter from South Carolina and Nigerian prophet Emmanuel Babalola. The praise and worship was led by worship pastor maestro Ilia Panov, whose ministry is located in the poorest of all ghettos of Sofia, Philipovtsy. Evangelist Encho Enchev, who ministers among the Turkish minorities of Southern Bulgaria, was invited to share his heart and experiences with the people. The meetings were attended by Eastern Orthodox Bishop Hristo Pisarov and Father Michael Novak of the Catholic Apostolic Christian Church of Bulgaria, who shared their vision for a Bulgarian national unified ministry network. Read more
Camp Meeting 2008
This year, the Lord blessed us with the opportunity to participate in two camp meetings in Tennessee and South Carolina. On Thursday night, Rev. Floyd Lawhon delivered a very important and timely message on the priesthood in the church. This message related to the situation in Bulgaria so prophetically, that one can chart a map of the future developments within the Church of God based just on the words delivered in brother Lawhon’s sermon.
We were also able to travel to South Carolina and minister in the Newberry Church of God along with our good friends Pastor and Sister Michael Causey. Newberry is the first church which former Church of God overseer Paul Walker, took as his first pastorate. After the message was delivered, a gentleman approached us and told us of how he had not been in church for 7 years and came looking for a sign if he should return which he shared he found in the words of the message.
On Monday, Dr. Doug Small delivered a message on “Standing in the Middle” which prophetically related to the latest developments in Bulgaria and our ministry role, which we received through a revelation several years ago in our work with the Church of God in Bulgaria. During the altar call, he commanded in the Spirit to “go talk to the mayor.” Little he knew that our first stop in Bulgaria would be the mayor’s office of the city of Gabrovo to obtain a permit for the national Church of God assembly in the Heart of Bulgaria. We were also able to briefly present our ministry at the missions’ banquet.
New Research Trip to Nashville and Urbana
We were able to travel to two locations to obtain valuable materials concerning the Bulgarian Protestant history. The first location was the Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives in Nashville, TN where a good number of Bulgarian Baptist periodical publications from the past 20 years are being preserved. Along with them, we were able to obtain several publications of the Ukrainian Baptist minister Ivan Ephraimovich Voronaeff (Voronaev), who after immigrating to the United States pastored a Baptist congregation in New York until receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit. After his Pentecostal experience, Voronaeff founded a Russian Assembly in New York which he later left to travel to Turkey, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia to establish Pentecostal churches as an Assemblies of God missionary. Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives in Nashville has preserved a number of issues from the Pentecostal publication “Evangelist,” which Voronaeff began publishing in the Ukraine in the late 1920s.
Also in Nashville, we were privileged to meet with Dr. Albert Wardin, a renowned Baptist historian who has written several pieces on Bulgarian Baptists after his first visit to Communist Bulgaria in the 1960s. We are expecting Dr. Wardin to visit us again in Bulgaria very soon in attempt to begin a round table discussion dealing with the history of Baptist presence and missionary endeavors on the Balkan Peninsula.
We departed from Nashville on our way to Urbana, IL to obtain a long-awaited copy of the Albert H. Lybyer Papers. Dr. Lybyer taught at Robert’s College in Constantinople in the beginning of the 20th century before serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the American College in Simeonovo (a suburb of the capital Sofia). His personal papers at archives of the University of Illinois in Urbana have preserved his correspondence with board members, college officials and representatives of the American Board, which are an invaluable reference to Bulgarian Protestant history. His correspondence as a board member contains unprecedented information of the history of the American College in Simeonovo, and more specifically its merge with the Samokov Missionary School. Dr. Lybyer’s papers contain his personal journals recorded during his early trips across the Balkan Peninsula, which presents the missionary context in early 20th century Bulgaria.
The Case of a NATO Chaplaincy Model within the Bulgarian Army
In April 2004, Bulgaria was officially accepted into the global structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The event followed a long series of historic developments that were accomplished despite the existence of highly antagonistic forces that opposed the very idea of Bulgaria’s membership in any Western alliance. Among these were internal and external political, economical and social factors that historically have forced the country to remain under the influence of the forces opposing the West.
Territorially, this tendency could be traced to the dramatic split of the Roman Empire even before the establishment of the first Bulgarian Kingdom on the Balkan Peninsula in 681AD. The consecutive military, cultural and economical influence of Byzantium over the Bulgarian nation claimed the newly established country to the side of the East from its birth. This propensity was sustained through the two Bulgarian Kingdoms (established respectfully in 681AD and 1188AD). It was renewed with even greater strength when the Ottoman Empire overtook the weakened country of Bulgaria in 1139AD and for the next five centuries, the Orient claimed control of European Bulgaria.
In 1878, Bulgaria was liberated from the Ottoman Yoke by Russia, but only to remain under its political and economical umbrella for the next 111 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This event reaffirmed Bulgaria’s belongingness to the East as the country joined the Central Powers throughout World War I and deliberately remained with the Axis Powers in World War II. Read more
10 Years of Military Ministry in Bulgaria
Military Ministry in Bulgaria is celebrating 10 years. The special events will be held in the Black Sea town of Varna, Bulgaria. Chaplains from around the country, as well as international colleagues and friends, are invited for a time of reunion and inspiration. Special speakers of the event are Paul Pettyjohn and Chaplain Bernie Windmiller from the International Association of Evangelical Chaplains.
After serving the military in Bulgaria for a decade, the ministry is strategizing the legalization of chaplaincy and pastoral care in the Bulgarian professional army and police. Today, this difficult task seems closer than ever before, as ministers, pastors and caregivers are excited about the opening of such doors and the new opportunities which it will present for Bulgaria.
