Bulgarian Churches in North America

During Memorial Day weekend Cup & Cross Ministries will participated in the 7th Annual Conference of Bulgarian Churches in North America. The conference will take place on May 24-26, 2008 in Minneapolis and will be hosted by the local Bulgarian Evangelical Church. Over 200 delegates from Bulgarian communities of Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal and Atlanta are expected to attend the event. Cup & Cross has worked with Bulgarian immigrants for the past 15 years, and our team has actively and purposefully observed the Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in North America for almost seven years as a part of our ongoing research.

The result of this research was a doctoral dissertation on the subject of “Analytical Overview and Church Planting Proposal for Bulgarian American Congregations Considering Cultural, Economic and Leadership Dimensions”. The concluding chapter of this work “How to Start a Bulgarian Church in America” has already been used in a number of cross-cultural projects in the United States, Canada, Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The Bulgarian churches in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Montreal, not only used the program for their own congregations but were also able to send ministry teams to Bulgaria which is the ultimate mission of this study.

Several churches in Bulgaria, under the care of our ministry team, were able to use the tools which were developed as a direct result of the analyses. Of great impotence were the Sunday school curriculum, split prevention program and training program for lay ministers.