Cup & Cross Hosts Global Online Conference

Cup & Cross Ministries International operates through various ministry teams working in over a dozen of countries located in three different continents. Since there is a significant difference in location, time zones and purpose of operation, it is quite rare that we are able to gather the whole team for a time of prayer and strategic planning. The preparation for the upcoming “X Event,” however, drew the participation of a great number of our team members and demanded such a gathering.

Last year, Cup & Cross Ministries began the “X Event” in Bulgaria. “X” is a Christian gathering for youth which includes worship, focus on the Bible, along with time of fun and fellowship. The purpose and structure of the event is much similar to Winterfest held in the United States. The “X Event,” however operates among a number of evangelical denominations and continues with a strong post-event Christian leadership formation among Christian youth.

Having realized the effectiveness of this ministry, we have given “X” a substantial amount of strategic preparation placing it among our top priority ministry endeavors. Being unable to call all team members for a planning meeting at one identifiable location, we had to approach this particular problem through the means of communication which we have built and use for the purposes of our ministry in the past decade. Using advanced conference software, we were able to set up a communication server in our South Eastern office in Florida with live mirror uploads to Germany and Bulgaria.

A live uplink server created the possibility to include various team members in the strategic planning of the upcoming “X Event.” During the global online conference, the central ministry team took the initiative to announce the dates of the happening and to work with local church leadership in Bourgas, Varna, and Ahtopol along with other Black Sea towns for cooperating in the “X Event.” The arrangements in the schedule were then calibrated with the on ground sub-teams in various locations in Bulgaria which will provide sound equipment, point-to-point transportation, band management and multimedia effects.

The Germany connection was also important as it connected us with team members responsible for prayer, public relations and political awareness teams. The prayer team has already initiated their strategy through a prayer request website which was published January 1, 2007 in beta-testing and released in its official version April 1, 2007. The website, which is located in Busingen, Germany, already has a good number of daily visits, growing size of regular members, a prayer needs submission engine and an around the clock payer teams. Naturally, these efforts have resulted in many praise reports for answered prayer needs and we are hoping that the participants will be our faithful prayer and fasting partners during the upcoming term of ministry.

The PR team members located in Steinfurt, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria are currently working together to pull all available media resources and create an effective media coverage through some of our long-term partners as Bulgarian Evangelical Newspaper, Faith TV Channel and other leading Christian media providers.

Substantial preparation results were further reporting by our partnering Shalom TV production company who will provide both live coverage and postproduction of the events. Two live IP TV (internet television) are already operational in Alsbach-Hähnlein, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria and will be used during the “X Event.”

Some parallel planning has been done along with our web media team which is working on the developing of Religia.TV – a website which emphasizes all current Christian media production in Bulgarian in a single multimedia type website. Additionally, our Constantinople Team has decided to use the “X Event” to promote the digital edition of the 1871 Constantinople Bile in connection with the “2007: Year of the Bible Series” promoted by the Bible League in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Bible Society.

We have also brought in a number of independent consultants for the various stages of the event. With ministry partners from the Atlanta area we have been able to further develop a leadership formation strategy for post-event ministry. This has been a long-term dream of ours as we would like to be able to extend the results after the actual event. With all this preparations on the way and scheduled dates closing quickly, we are expecting another great summer of ministry in Bulgaria.