25 Years ago, I left D.C. and Never Looked Back…

April 15, 2023 by  
Filed under 365, Events, Featured, Missions, News

ALIVE

April 10, 2023 by  
Filed under News

baba-dida-v-dialog-s-baba-djenka1Rev. Dony K. Donev, D. Min.

“When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”

2 Timothy 1:5

My Grandma, Todorka Mindova, was one of the first Sunday school teachers in the Bulgarian Pentecostal Union. After successfully graduating from a training course in the city of Sliven led by Donka Kinareva and personally organized by Dr. Nicolas Nikolov, she was allowed to minister in the denomination. But for grandma, the faith was more than teaching or a sermon. It was life. Many Bulgarian Pentecostal ministers can testify to the effectiveness of her ministry. And for her constant fasting and thousands of answered prayers I could write a book.

But far more interesting for me as a child was the fact that being a Sunday school teacher, Grandma never tried to preach to me. In the hardest moments of life she would only confess these words, which I have remembered from my childhood: “We serve a living God.” More was not needed. For Grandma preached with her life. Read more

Pentecostal Seminary Address

April 5, 2023 by  
Filed under 365, Featured, News, Video

5th postpandemic elections in Bulgaria for an expert-government

April 1, 2023 by  
Filed under Events, Featured, News

  • exPM Borissov wins (26.51%) once again with a mere 1.5% lead
  • CHANGE political formation follows closely with 24.54%
  • None have enough to form a majority government and will be forced to seek political coalition
  • Merely 1/3 of Bulgaria’s population voted, tired of now 5 consecutive elections since 2021 without a wining ruling party or actual government formed as following:
    • 2021 April National Parliament election
    • 2021 Second National Parliament election
    • 2021 Third National Parliament and Presidential elections
    • 2022 October elections for 48th National Assembly after the fall of a four-party coalition in June 2022.
    • 2023 Fifth National Parliament elections

CEC data as of 5:55 p.m. with 100% of sectional protocols processed in the Regional Election Commissions show that six political formations will enter the 49th National Assembly: GERB – SDS, WCC-DB, “Vazrazhdane”, DPS, BSP and ” There Is Such a People”.

GERB – SDS have 26.51%, or with a 1.93% lead over WCC-DP, which received 24.54% of the votes. The difference between the two leading coalitions is 49,769 votes.

The GERB-SDS coalition improved its result and received 34,734 votes more than in October last year. Now there are 669,361 people who voted for them.

Nearly 2 percent lag behind the first and second according to the results are “We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria” (WCC-DB). They gathered the support of 619,592 voters, but compared to October last year, a drop of nearly 74,000 votes was reported, as the two formations then gathered the total support of 692,000 voters. If we add the percentages of the two formations from October, they are 27.6 percent, but already as a coalition they achieve a 3 percent lower result.

The third political force in yesterday’s elections is the “Vazrazhdane” (Revival) party with 14.15%, followed by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) with 13.72% and the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) – with 8.94%.

“There Is Such a People” (TISP) also entered the new parliament, with the party receiving 4.11% of the vote. The trend of the “Vazrazhdane” party, which from the fourth to the third political force, is upward. Now, compared to October, it adds another 102,000 votes to its result, with 357,167 people voting for the formation yesterday.

The results for DPS, compared now and from last year, mark a drop of almost 2 thousand, and the party from third is now fourth. In October, more than 344,000 people voted for DPS, and 346,437 did so a day ago.

For BSP – fifth in terms of results, the support is also falling – from 233 thousand in October to 225 thousand now, which is minus 7 thousand votes.

103,641 voters voted for the sixth formation, which with a high degree of probability falls into the 49th National Assembly – “There Is Such a People”, and in the previous elections, when Trifonov’s party failed to cross the 4 percent barrier, the support was 96 thousand.

The “Bulgarian Rise” party – had 3.08% and the coalition “Levitsata!” (The Left) remain below the 4 percent barrier. – with 2.24%.

Central Election Commission data with processed 100% protocols in the Regional Election Committees of the country

34 Years after Communism…

34 years in 60 seconds at the red-light…

I’m driving slowly in the dark and raining streets of my home town passing through clouds of car smoke. The gypsy ghetto in the outskirts of town is covered with the fog of fires made out of old tires burning in the yards. And the loud music adds that grotesque and gothic nuance to the whole picture with poorly clothed children dancing around the burnings.

The first red light stops me at the entrance to the “more civilized” part of the city. The bright counter right next to it slowly moves through the long 60 seconds while tiredly walking people pass through the intersection to go home and escape the cold rain. The street ahead of me is already covered with dirt and thickening layer of sleet.

This is how I remember Bulgaria of my youth and it seems like nothing has changed in the past 25 years.

The newly elected government just announced its coalition cabinet – next to a dozen like it that had failed in the past two decades. The gas price is holding firmly at $6/gal. and the price of electricity just increased by 10%, while the harsh winter is already knocking at the doors of poor Bulgarian households. A major bank is in collapse threatening to take down the national banking system and create a new crisis much like in Greece. These are the same factors that caused Bulgaria’s major inflation in 1993 and then hyperinflation in 1996-97.

What’s next? Another winter and again a hard one!

Ex-secret police agents are in all three of the coalition parties forming the current government. The ultra nationalistic party called “ATTACK” and the Muslim ethnic minorities party DPS are out for now, but awaiting their move as opposition in the future parliament. At the same time, the new-old prime minister (now in his second term) is already calling for yet another early parliamentarian election in the summer. This is only months after the previous elections in October, 2014 and two years after the ones before them on May 2013.

Every Bulgarian government in the past 25 years has focused on two rather mechanical goals: cardinal socio-economical reforms and battle against communism. The latter is simply unachievable without deep reformative change within the Bulgarian post-communist mentality. The purpose of any reform should be to do exactly that. Instead, what is always changing is the outwardness of the country. The change is only mechanical, but never organic within the country’s heart.

Bulgaria’s mechanical reforms in the past quarter of a century have proven to be only conditional, but never improving the conditions of living. The wellbeing of the individual and the pursuit of happiness, thou much spoken about, are never reached for they never start with the desire to change within the person. For this reason, millions of Bulgarians and their children today work abroad, pursuing another life for another generation.

The stop light in front of me turns green bidding the question where to go next. Every Bulgarian today must make a choice! Or we’ll be still here at the red light in another 25 years from now…

Toward a Pentecostal Strategy for the City

March 30, 2023 by  
Filed under 365, Events, Featured, Missions, News, Publication, Research

Toward a Pentecostal Strategy for the City

One of the questions that seems to come up in this course discussion is how to change the world around us with a more positive and effective approach toward using the Gospel of Salvation. In this particular module, the difficulty addressed is ethnocentricity. The particularity of our search then arrives at the more detailed question, how can we change the culture (respectively subcultures) of our church congregations? This is a drastic move from a closed circle toward an outreach community that many congregations are unable to accomplish. How do we then empower such congregations to be transformed into cultural reach-outs to a single ethnos or multiple ethnic groups? 

Problem

The problem in the first quarter of the 21st century has been incongruity of our church strategy with the times we live in and the mindset they occupy. We’ve been preparing the church for the multicultural battle, all and while we should have been equipping the saints how to rebuild the walls since the battle has been lost.

We’ve been equipping leaders for the ministry while the church ship has been sinking only to end up with well trained captains of a sunken fleet. And in a doomed attempt to reconcile the reality of the ministry with their training, they have turned to wave walkers who briefly surface for breaths of fresh air during Sunday worship only to return to the deep blue walk of their daily ministry never finding their lost piece of eight.

For the battle was lost long ago before the present generation of ministers ever came to existence. They know not the battle. They’ve only seen the ruins that were left within the broken walls of the church. And they have been struggling to reconcile the incomputable of what church eldership has been teaching them to battle against with the Nehemiah calling for restoration, which God has placed upon them. For the answer has never been in building a New Jerusalem for a fresh start, but restoring the old Jerusalem and its former glory to a new state that reclaims our history and heritage.

bulgarian-church

Context 

Recent analysis of migrant churches in the United States reveals that the predominant majority of them are located in cities which have a high influxation and concentration of immigrants. Such localities are called “gateway cities”. Immigrants typically enter the United States through one of these cities and settle there. These areas contain over half of the foreign-born population in the United States as follows:

  1. New York, NY – Foreign born population 18.7%
  2. Los Angeles, CA – Foreign born population 27.1%
  3. Houston, TX – Foreign born population 12.3%
  4. Washington, DC – Foreign born population 8.6%
  5. Miami, FL – Foreign born population 33.6%
  6. Chicago, IL – Foreign born population 11.1%
  7. San Francisco, CA – Foreign born population 20.0%

Strategy

Asking the right questions is important, but the answers cannot be generic for all ethnic groups or cultural settings. There is a strong need to be flexible and observe changes in culture, but not to change the message of the Gospel or compromise our witness. Several common things are noted in any cultural setting where our ministry is involved:

First and foremost, people of all cultures prefer to be personal with a purpose, rather than being project driven. No one longs to be part of someone else’s project. Yet, our very existence demands personal purpose, which could serve as a great cultural catalyst in a church ministry.

Secondly, cross cultural ministry is not done merely on relationships, but on being real in the relationships. The greatest halt of ministry work is when people realize the relationship with the church has not been a real one, but merely a part of a program or a paradigm.

Finally, our cross cultural model for ministry should not be just salvation oriented, but soul oriented. There is a great difference between writing down the number of saved every Sunday and actually caring for the eternal well-being of the saved souls. In fact, this is so fundamentally determinative that it should be the goal in mind of every new church plant.

Greek-Bulgarian Interlinear of the New Testament in Wal-Mart

March 25, 2023 by  
Filed under Books, Featured, Missions, News

Greek-Bulgarian Interlinear of the New Testament (Critical Edition with Apparatus) (Paperback)

Greek-Bulgarian Interlinear of the New Testament (Critical Edition with Apparatus) (Paperback)

 

This new translation took several years to refine through multiple revisions, re-readings, and new re-translate where needed in order to produce an interlinear with priority advantages and distinctive features as follows:

  1. The text is arranged in three lines – Greek original, literal translation and for the first time in a Bulgarian publication, an analytical apparatus with detailed morphology of the words.
  2. A brand-new word for word translation, not phrase for phrase or simple imposed text on an already existing translation, challenges the reader into a deeper understanding of the Word.
  3. Unnecessary text markers and explanations have been avoided because the parallel stylistics between Greek and Bulgarian are much more similar than other languages even when accompanied with Strong’s numbering.
  4. The literal meaning of the text is shown without the dynamic equivalent characteristic of other interlinear editions.
  5. All participles/predicates are literally translated avoiding the superimposition of like, as, which, etc., when they are not in the original text.
  6. All definite articles are given as in the Greek before the word (not at the end part of the word as it is done in Bulgarian) even in the tradition of Nomina Sacra.
  7. Enforced literalism on understandable New Testament terminology such as Lord/Master, church/ecclesia/congregation/gathering/assembly, baptism, etc. is avoided.
  8. The literal word for word translation preserves case and gender as possible in over 90% of the New Testament text.
  9. The applied critical apparatus in addition to the analytical morphology, includes designation of all verses and passages of critical difference with the Nestle-Aland GNT.
  10. Hitherto missing morphology now provided, not only shows why a given word is translated in the chosen way, but enables the reader to navigate through more complex grammatical structures of the Greek language and understand them.

REMEMBERING: Bishop John F. Corcoran

March 20, 2023 by  
Filed under Featured, News

John Corcoran Obituary

John Francis Corcoran: Bishop, Pastor, LCDC III Counselor (June 26, 1947 – March 17, 2023)

John Francis Corcoran was called home to Jesus on March 17, 2023, after a lengthy and well fought battle with cancer.

John was born in Waterbury Connecticut on June 26, 1947, to John and Eugenia Corcoran, the eldest of their six children.

After high school, John joined the Air Force serving two tours in Viet Nam at Ben Hoa, as well as Greece and Germany. He retired as Master Sargent after 23 years, his last post was Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. During his career in the Air Force John had assignments as a recruitment officer and a Supply Officer, which took him overseas. John had a strong faith and was called to the ministry serving as Church of God Ministry to the Military from 1978 to 1985 leading a church in Greece. John earned many medals and awards during his service. John became a Church of God ordained Bishop in 1988, and served in many pastoral assignments, his last at Rejoicing Life Church of God in Miamisburg, Ohio where he served a diverse congregation for over 30 years before retiring. John had a love of learning earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biblical Studies and Pastoral Ministries in 1986 from Lee University. He went on to continue his education obtaining a Master’s Degree in 2002 in Counseling from the Church of God Theological Seminary, and was in process of concluding his dissertation for the doctorate degree when he fell ill. John had a very active and full life.

He had a love of God and people and poured himself into serving others within the community. He served at Kettering Behavioral Center working as a Psycho-educational Group Leader and Adult Behavioral Care, Chaplain and Firefighter for Xenia Township’s Fire Department, served also with Scioto County Sheriff and Miamisburg Police Departments as Chaplain, and a Crisis Team Management Leader. His biggest love, outside of pastoring, was teaching Chaplain classes to the many churches in the Midwest area.

He is survived by his devoted and beloved wife Lois, sons James (Lisa) and Doug, daughter Joan (Ryan)Bloomingdale, grandchildren Jonathon Hudson, Julia Schmidt (Brian), Kaitlyn Martinez (Victor), Alexandria Corcoran, Elizabeth Robertson, Justin Corcoran, Kieron, Jaxson and Weston Corcoran, great grandchildren Lilliana and Lucca Martinez and Hazel Schmidt, sisters and brothers Cathy, Jamie, Patricia, Maureen, and Bobby of Connecticut. Maureen’s husband, Art, and John were very close friends.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Julie Ann, his daughter Elizabeth, sister Mary Jean, and parents John and Eugenia Corcoran.

John was a great man, a faithful servant of God and a man of many talents. He has left a huge hole in our hearts and lives, but we rejoice in his graduation and in the echo of his favorite verse from Philippians 4:8: “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of a good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Military Honors will be held by the Combined Honor Guard along with a Celebration of Life beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 6, 2023, at the Grace Baptist Church, 851 S. Elm St., West Carrollton with Pastor Randy Ballard and Pastor Doug Criswell officiating. The family will receive friends from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (1 hour prior to service) on Saturday at the church.

Inurnment will take place at the Sarasota National Cemetery in Sarasota, FL.

Please share your condolences at www.swartfuneralhome.com. Sympathy, Love, and Thinking of You cards may be sent to The Family of Pastor John F. Corcoran, C/O Swart Funeral Home, 207 E. Central Ave., West Carrollton, Ohio 45449

The 2023 CHURCH

March 15, 2023 by  
Filed under Featured, News, Research

  1. Christian America died. And the leaders who kept looking back never moved forward.

The pastors who kept looking back imagined a culture governed by Christian values and refused to see the world for what it was increasingly becoming.

Over the last decade, Christian America died.

As much as some Supreme Court decisions in the early 2020s made religious conservatives think they were winning the culture wars, any sense of victory was short-lived.

The overwhelming identification of Generation Z and Generation Alpha as having no religious affiliation transformed America into a thoroughly post-Christian culture.

All of this put Christian church leaders into one of two camps: Leaders who wanted to move forward and leaders who wanted to look back.

The pastors who kept looking back imagined a culture governed by Christian values and refused to see the world for what it was increasingly becoming. Churches led by those leaders saw a decline.

And the culture wars of the early to mid-2020s that conservative Christians believed they were winning by ensuring their candidates ran for Congress and Governor positions proved only to momentarily shore up a dying worldview. Power and coercion couldn’t reverse the tide.

In the process, that faction in the church alienated the next generation of unreached people from Christianity even more deeply.

The leaders who looked forward acknowledged they were in a post-Christian culture and decided to advance a decidedly alt-Kingdom centered around the Gospel. They saw renewal and growth.

Bottom line? The leaders who kept looking back never moved forward.

2. Growing churches are now digital organizations with physical locations

In the last decade, dying churches saw digital church as an obstacle. Growing churches realized it was an opportunity.

As little as 15 years ago, most growing churches were primarily physical organizations with a nominal or underdeveloped digital strategy.

Throughout the 2020s and early 2030s, the dual trend of declining church attendance and decentralized attendance changed everything for growing churches.

Growing churches stopped treating church online as an afterthought, realizing that since everyone they’re trying to reach is online, becoming a digital-first church made them more effective.

The paradox, of course, is that the more leaders built community online as a church, the more it resulted in growth in their physical locations.

Ironically, churches that focus primarily on physical attendance only saw declining attendance. Churches that focused on digital connection saw the opposite.

Over the last decade, dying churches saw digital church as an obstacle. Growing churches realized it was an opportunity.

  1. The majority of church attendees are no longer in the room.

Dying churches confined ministry to their buildings. Growing churches didn’t.

As the digital revolution exploded over the last ten years, almost everything shifted out of central locations.

Everything from work, to shopping, to food, fitness, and entertainment shifted to digital and distributed access (i.e., accessed by people when they wanted and where they wanted.)

Dying churches confined ministry to their buildings. Growing churches didn’t.

Pastors of expanding ministries long ago made peace with the idea that the number of people not in the building on Sunday now greatly outnumbers the number of people who are inside the building.

They got over their insecurity about smaller in-person crowds and saw the expansive potential of reaching people wherever they were and connecting them with each other.

Pastors of growing churches long ago realized that full rooms never guaranteed a fulfilled mission.

Another shift happened regarding how church leaders think about church buildings:

Pastors of dying churches kept using church online to get people into the building.

Pastors of growing churches used their buildings to reach people online.

  1. On-demand access now greatly surpasses live events.

On-demand sermon access reaches people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.

Live events still have a great role in the life of a vibrant church, but they’ve long since been eclipsed by people who access content and schedule gatherings on demand.

Leaders who released control of a centralized calendar to allow people to figure out for themselves when they wanted to meet saw a far greater impact than leaders who didn’t.

And when centralized gatherings happen, leaders of growing churches quickly got over the fact that, despite a full room, far more people accessed their ministry at other times. And as a result, their mission kept growing.

Pastors of growing ministries quickly understood two underlying realities behind on-demand access.

First, they knew that on-demand access reaches people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.

Second, when it comes to accessing messages and ministry content, they realized people don’t care if a message is new nearly as much as they care if a message is great. Hence, access to their message archive continued to grow, and they positioned it for that.

  1. Growing churches shifted their focus from gathering to connecting.

In the 2020s, churches that gathered people kept falling behind, while churches that connected people continued to grow.

In the 2020s, churches that gathered people kept falling behind, while churches that connected people continued to grow.

The shift wasn’t that hard once the pastors of effective churches realized that for years, the culture had increasingly relied on services that leveraged existing infrastructure.

For example, what small groups accomplished for churches in the 1990s and 2000s changed how churches approached gathering people mid-week. Essentially, a decade before Airbnb and ride-share services like Uber and Lyft emerged on the scene, innovative church leaders stopped building massive Christian education buildings and started ‘Airbnbing’ people’s homes for community.

The home-based small group model morphed into micro-gatherings and home-based gatherings for worship and other church events.

Leaders of growing churches never felt threatened by the fact that they couldn’t ‘see’ the people they were ministering to. They built the structures and systems that led to the church being ‘one’ wherever it met, much like multi-site churches have done for decades.

Connecting people eclipsed gathering people for the same reasons that on-demand content eclipsed live content. You gather people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.

Insecure leaders, operating out of power and control and needing to ‘see’ the results of their ministry, could never make this transition. Healthy leaders did.

  1. Community and connection matter more than content.

Growing churches made community and connection the goal of their ministry, not content consumption.

Growing churches made community and connection the goal of their ministry, not content consumption.

In a world that started drowning in content in the 2010s, adept church leaders realized that great content was no longer the compelling advantage it used to be. Sure, bad preaching could kill a church. But great preaching alone no longer guaranteed its growth.

Here’s what astute leaders realized in the 2020s. Scarcity drives value. The more scarce something is, the more value it has.

When something is scarce, it has enough value to make people change their patterns (physical, financial, or time patterns, to name a few). Conversely, mass availability drives down prices and perceived value.

For centuries, attending a local church was the only place most people could access a sermon. The 21st century changed that forever.

What became increasingly scarce were community and connection. So among growing churches, all of their content drove people to community and toward connection.

Growing churches made community and connection the goal, not content consumption. Declining churches continued to make in-person and online content consumption their main goal (Watch this!!! Don’t miss this!!!) and paid the accompanying price.

  1. Growing churches staffed for digital

Make the goal of all staffing (digital or in-person) community and connection.

Because, after all, that’s far more at the heart of what the Christian church is all about than content consumption ever was.

A final but important point.

Dying churches kept staffing for a world that no longer existed. Obsessed with getting people into a building, they continued to make digital ministry an afterthought.

Growing churches didn’t abandon physical gatherings. They continued to make their in-person services deeply personal and meaningful and staffed accordingly.

But they also doubled down on digital, realizing that everyone they wanted to reach was online and that many they would reach wouldn’t live near a campus or, if they did, would be willing to drive to one.

So pastors of growing churches followed Craig Groeschel’s advice back in 2020: They went 100% in on digital ministry and 100% in on physical ministry.

Then they went a step further: They made the goal of all staffing (digital or in-person) community and connection.

Because, after all, that’s far more at the heart of what the Christian church is all about than content consumption ever was.

Change, Critics, and Coaches

The leaders we criticize today will be the leaders who coach us tomorrow.

Snap back to today. Will all of this happen? Who knows. But if even parts of this are remotely true, it’s clear that the next decade will involve massive change.

Change also comes with a lot of criticism. But as the wiser leaders realized, the leaders we criticize today will be the leaders who coach us tomorrow.

The sooner you start to change, the brighter the future becomes, and the more effective your ministry will be. Change is hard, but irrelevance is even harder.

CAREY NIEUWHOF 

5 Pentecostal Discussions on the Full Five Fold Everlasting Gospel

March 10, 2023 by  
Filed under Featured, News, Research

What is a “full gospel” ? John Kissinger [03/31/2015 3:47 PM] W. Faupel defined Full Gospel within the doctrinal themes of: 1) justification by…

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The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought by D.W. Faupel follows the following outline: 1. The Pentecostal Message:…

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Bulgaria in Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter

March 5, 2023 by  
Filed under Books, Events, Featured, Media, Missions, News

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