365 Daily

February 5, 2025 by  
Filed under Books, Events, Featured, Missions, News, What we do

In 1999, Dony and Kathryn established Cup & Cross Ministries International with a vision for restoration of New Testament theology and praxis. Today they have over 50 years of combined commitment to Kingdom work. This book invites you to spend a few moments each day on the field sharing their experiences of serving as pastors, evangelists, chaplains, consultants, church trainers, researchers, missionaries and educators of His Harvest around the globe.

Day 175 of the Revival

February 1, 2025 by  
Filed under Books, Events, Featured, Missions, News, What we do

On day 175 of our Revival, I drove by a building close to our ministry’s home location and it caught my eye. Newly built, large enough, specious parking, perfect location easily reachable from at least three large city regions. An ideal place to hold our large revival meetings in my human perception. Quite naturally, I stopped the car in front of the beautiful gate and began telling the Lord how great would it be to continue the revival here. My reasons were many. No need to travel hundreds of miles to just preach one time, spend the night in strange places, walk in the ankle-deep mud-covered streets of slums and ghettos just to reach a soul. They could all come here, park, gather, worship, hear the Gospel, be saved, healed and delivered. The same way we had seen already in the revival for almost 200 days in a row. My heart’s thoughts were shut down by one brief word from the Lord: I did not choose to have it THIS way…

Reflections on a 200-day Revival

  1. Creative developing of fasting, prayer and giving of alms, all commanded by Jesus Himself as a regular expression of our faith (Gr. оταν = when you pray, fast, give), is the prerequisite for every Spirit-led revival. On the third day of our 10-day fasting, God used a child to revive our dead Volvo, which no mechanic in a radius of 200 miles could crank for over 6 months.
  1. The church that forced-left the building during the pandemic, has now returned to multimillion-dollar buildings where God did not choose to start a 200-day Revival. And even when He did, the move was shut down for lack of parking space or nightly supervision. In all actuality, a church building is a result of a revival, its finish and its end. An association with a place, address or location is a sign of its centralized settlement. It was the forced getting-out of a church building (as in Acts 7) that caused the Great Azusa Revival to emerge as a grass-root movement engraved in the streets of LA.
  1. Revival must emerge from the Desire and Will of God in order to be supernaturally visited by the Power of His Glory! It cannot be approached as a man-made multiplication initiative, be it local, national or globally dimensioned. It is not a project to involve people, but a spiritual tsunami of power, authority and anointing that invites a prophetic projection of what God desires for eternity and not merely what man needs in the now.
  1. When the now and then align, revival sparks. When the now has lost its sight on eternity, revival is long done and gone. The remain is but a motion imitating the wave of the Spirit Who has already moved to other more receptive spiritual trenches and valleys of humbleness. It is these societal peripheries and spiritual layers that God visits first with Revival before proceeding to the center of religious life. Meaning, the Heart of God for Revival is not in a religious center. As a matter of fact, any association with external centralized governing denies God’s centrality in what the Spirit wills from His Church. A man cannot vanquish the ocean and cosmos of space!
  1. We can win no soul Christ has not already won at the Cross! We should not try to empty hell to fill Heaven, lest we end up in hell ourselves.

A final word to fundraisers who turn revival into a business-like know-how: Can’t buy God’s love!

A Call to Righteousness over the Road Ahead

January 30, 2025 by  
Filed under Books, Events, Featured, Missions, News, What we do

A Call to Righteousness over Italy

January 15, 2025 by  
Filed under Books, Events, Featured, Media, Missions, News, What we do

2 Chronicles 20:25

January 1, 2025 by  
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Appreciating the Simple Things in Life

December 25, 2024 by  
Filed under 365, Events, Featured, News

wiseRoasting chestnuts over an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose is a comforting carol which brings many pleasant feelings around the holidays. These are two features, which are not only common to the States, but to Bulgaria as well. This is the season of chestnuts being roasted, however it is not like we picture being over a cozy fire place in a warm home. In Bulgaria it would be on the street side to sell in order to bring in some income for your family. And the Jack Frost is not just a nip for some, but it is a bone chilling cold due to not being able to afford the electric bill.

For some, there will be no gift under the tree and for others there will not even be a tree. This is not said to bring you sorrow, but for you to appreciate the simple things in life. Enjoy family, friendships, a warm home, a hot meal, your health. Enjoy the time the Lord has given you and use it for his Glory and not for bickering or complaining over the small angst.

Don’t loose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas is not about the material, but it is about the spiritual. It is about the birth of our Lord and Savior even though our politically correct society wants to get ride of the “Christ” in “Christmas.” If it were not for His birth, He would not have been able to die for our sins. This remission of sin is the ultimate gift this Christmas season for it is through this act that we are able to have eternal life if we only ask.

So when you wake up on the 25th begin your day not consumed with what you didn’t get or what didn’t happen to your liking, but in silence remembering the silent and holy night over 2000 years ago. Remember those less fortunate in order not to take for granted with what you have been blessed. And most of all thank Him for His gift to you. Let these thoughts bring you comfort this holiday season.

Merry CHRISTmas 2009
From all of us in Bulgaria!

3 Decades Later: Evangelical Education in Bulgaria at Halt

December 10, 2024 by  
Filed under Events, Featured, Missions, News

With the new Bill on Religion in Bulgaria, the Muslim community has been given amnesty on some $4,500,000 of public debt, while granted another $3 million in annual government subsidies. As a result, the monthly salary of Muslim clergy (imams) has already increased with 20% and a new Islamic school is being opened in one of the historically oldest Christian places in Bulgaria, the city of Sliven. All while, the evangelical protestant communities are not receiving financial support under the new law and their schools remain without proper government legalization via the Bulgarian Ministry of Education. 

Though this legal precedent follows the Russian Law on Religion that has already effectively closed the evangelical seminaries in Moscow, it is manifesting a political agenda undergoing in Bulgaria for over a decade. What remains unsaid with the recent changes in the Law of Religion in Bulgaria is the ultimate halt of evangelical education in the country. The Bulgarian Evangelical Theological Institute has been functioning at its operational minimum for years now. Students are trained mainly online or via small local groups spread in various cities. They are called to the school departments only for graduation or occasionally lectures by visiting scholars. Even after years of waiting, the Institute was never granted official accreditation through Bulgaria’s Ministry of Education and most of the students preferred getting their degrees from other accredited and licensed institutions. Less than 1% of the students who were not in ministry at the time of their enrollment entered the ministry post graduation. And even fewer of them remain in ministry today; which ultimately ensures the lack of adequately trained ministers for placement in the evangelical churches of Bulgaria.

The last Bulgarian to graduate from the Church of God Theological Seminary did so over a decade ago, and 2009 was the last class of the Bulgarian Theological College (seminary). One of the greatest mistakes made was closing the college in 2009, thus leaving the movement with virtually no higher ministry training for the last decade.

We were present at the national meeting of elders on September 10, 2009 in Sofia when the final decision to close the Church of God Theological College was voted. Only a few others along with us disagreed with the vote and pleaded with the assembly to make everything possible and keep the school open. At the final vote, it came down to a few thousand dollars due in annual membership fees and the school was closed.

Five years prior to these events in 2004, we published an article on evangelical education in Bulgaria with some warnings. The article proposed a change of the evangelical educational paradigm in anticipation of new legal changes and the prolonged waiting for a governmental accreditation. In fact, the same issues addressed in our proposal repeated themselves in 2016 upon Russia changing its own legislation on religion and religious education thus effectively illegalizing evangelical seminaries and overall missionary work. Today, similar legal measures are put in place by the Bulgarian government as well.

The final of our 10-point proposed plan in 2004 included the following observation:

  1. Naturally, the well-educated graduates have chosen not to occupy themselves with denominational politics both to avoid confrontation and to express their disagreement. This dynamic has been partially ignored by leadership remaining from the period of the underground church when religious education was virtually nonexistent and lacking a complete realization of the power of education. This unnoticed trend, however, endangers Bulgarian Evangelism creating a lack of continuity within the leadership and preparing the context for the emerging leadership crises.                                                                                                                              

With the new Bill on Religion in Bulgaria closely following the effective closure of evangelical seminaries in Moscow, the opportunity for a government recognized ministerial training in Bulgaria may be legally impossible to regain. In the light of those resent changes, our 2004 proposal for a legal ministry training alternative was successfully implemented and used for our Master of Chaplaincy Ministry graduates since 2009 providing a single valid alternative for evangelical education in Bulgaria.

Reflections on a 200-day Revival

December 1, 2024 by  
Filed under Events, Featured, Missions, News, Publication, Research

  1. Creative developing of fasting, prayer and giving of alms, all commanded by Jesus Himself as a regular expression of our faith (Gr. оταν = when you pray, fast, give), is the prerequisite for every Spirit-led revival. On the third day of our 10-day fasting, God used a child to revive our dead Volvo, which no mechanic in a radius of 200 miles could crank for over 6 months.
  1. The church that forced-left the building during the pandemic, has now returned to multimillion-dollar buildings where God did not choose to start a 200-day Revival. And even when He did, the move was shut down for lack of parking space or nightly supervision. In all actuality, a church building is a result of a revival, its finish and its end. An association with a place, address or location is a sign of its centralized settlement. It was the forced getting-out of a church building (as in Acts 7) that caused the Great Azusa Revival to emerge as a grass-root movement engraved in the streets of LA.
  1. Revival must emerge from the Desire and Will of God in order to be supernaturally visited by the Power of His Glory! It cannot be approached as a man-made multiplication initiative, be it local, national or globally dimensioned. It is not a project to involve people, but a spiritual tsunami of power, authority and anointing that invites a prophetic projection of what God desires for eternity and not merely what man needs in the now.
  1. When the now and then align, revival sparks. When the now has lost its sight on eternity, revival is long done and gone. The remain is but a motion imitating the wave of the Spirit Who has already moved to other more receptive spiritual trenches and valleys of humbleness. It is these societal peripheries and spiritual layers that God visits first with Revival before proceeding to the center of religious life. Meaning, the Heart of God for Revival is not in a religious center. As a matter of fact, any association with external centralized governing denies God’s centrality in what the Spirit wills from His Church. A man cannot vanquish the ocean and cosmos of space!
  1. We can win no soul Christ has not already won at the Cross! We should not try to empty hell to fill Heaven, lest we end up in hell ourselves.

A final word to fundraisers who turn revival into a business-like know-how: Can’t buy God’s love!

On day 175 of our Revival, I drove by a building close to our ministry’s home location and it caught my eye. Newly built, large enough, specious parking, perfect location easily reachable from at least three large city regions. An ideal place to hold our large revival meetings in my human perception. Quite naturally, I stopped the car in front of the beautiful gate and began telling the Lord how great would it be to continue the revival here. My reasons were many. No need to travel hundreds of miles to just preach one time, spend the night in strange places, walk in the ankle-deep mud-covered streets of slums and ghettos just to reach a soul. They could all come here, park, gather, worship, hear the Gospel, be saved, healed and delivered. The same way we had seen already in the revival for almost 200 days in a row. My heart’s thoughts were shut down by one brief word from the Lord: I did not choose to have it THIS way…

200 DAYS of REVIVAL

November 5, 2024 by  
Filed under Events, Featured, News

Celebrating 16 Years of Chaplaincy on the High Seas

November 1, 2024 by  
Filed under Events, Featured, Missions, News

We began our literal journey of ministry on the high seas in 2009. After exploring the opportunity for several years’ prior and submitting applications to various chaplaincy organizations which dealt with such ministry, the doors finally opened for Cup and Cross.

This search for a ministerial identity and its proper application in the real world coincided with the start of the Master’s in Chaplaincy Ministry Program which we designed for the Bulgarian Evangelical Theological Institute in Sofia around 2008-2009. The long standing relationships with professors, active military chaplains from various fields and countries, and the wisdom of several Generals in the field helped us calibrate our ministry focus with what is needed by real people in the real world.

The new fad “to be real” is not enough in a realistic ministry setting. When 25ft. high storm waves beat the aft and the ship is thrown towards the dark wall of ocean waters ahead, one cannot help but “to be real” and depend on a very real and skilled crew. A captain alone cannot run the boat through a storm even if all systems are reported working. It is the crew deep down in the engine room and making its way on the slippery deck that makes it all happen.

The Crew. Some of them have not seen their families for months or even a year at times. They struggle with the same fears and anxieties as the rest of us. Except, while the rest of us can hold on to something for dear life, the crew is obligated by duty to continue to serve and move the boat ahead. The little chapel on the top deck becomes a passage to a lagoon past the riffs of stormy life where stories are shared, prayers are lifted up together and human lives are reclaimed anew for Heaven.

We have found these nontraditional paths of travel and ministry yielding the most unique encounters and connections for Kingdom growth.  Our family is thankful for these 10 years and looking forward to even more means of ministry outside of the four church walls.  If you would like for us to come to your church as share our journey feel free to reach out to us.

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