Bulgarian Churches in America: Personal Xlibris

Excerpt from the chapter “How to Start a Bulgarian Church in America from A-to-Z”

X. Xlibris
Every community leaves a lasting xlibris on its accomplishments, victories and success through a time of celebration. After each major accomplishment, plan deliberately and allow time for celebration. Celebration will renew the motivation of your congregation. Thank God for what He has done, what He is doing and even for the future expectation of what He is about to do. Leave your signature, your identity, and your xlibris where God has placed you to exist. You can even chose a day in which you can celebrate the birth of the new church.

Y. Yielding
As the time of accomplishment and conclusion draws near, prepare yourself for yielding. Yield to God’s leadership for the future, to the needs of the congregation, to new ministers which the congregation has set forth, and to the needs of your family and yourself. This process will provide you with your next step.

Z. Zooming-out
If you have reached the final step in this program you have proven to others and yourself that you are a great leader and church planner. However, if you are a good church planner, you are probably not a good maintainer. It is too hard for an initiator to stop making things happen. It takes a different person to plan, water and grow. This is indeed a Biblical principle and it alludes to the law of the big picture.

If you are not ready to change significantly from planter to a maintainer, you will only hurt what you have planted. Therefore, prepare for change. You will either adapt to being a maintainer or you will have to leave. It is time to zoom-out and see the big picture. When it is the leader’s time to walk away, he/she has to be willing to leave. If this is the case, go back to point A. A new project from God is waiting for you.

Repost: The Exodus of the Youth from Church: In Search of Answers to a Dark Dilemma

by Kathryn N. Donev

I recently sat in a lecture “Why Are Youth Leaving the Church?” I listened to the most recent statistics, compared one opinion to the next, looked at the latest church involvement research and even explored some emerging themes of why people in general leave the faith. All the information was very interesting and contained an impressive collaboration of ideas. The research does not lie and opinions are to be valued. However, honestly what good does this enlightenment do us when we sit back and do nothing to correct the problem? We are so used to youth leaving our church that we have become complacent with pews filled with “ancient dinosaurs” in the words of a young lady just last week. We have become so overwhelmed with data that we forget to look at the real picture of why our next generation of leaders are leaving. Or perhaps we do nothing because we simply don’t understand young people’s true motivation for leaving the church. The answers may be uncomfortable for some but they deserve deeper exploration.

Youth are leaving the church but this does not necessarily mean they all are leaving the faith. Many young people of today have much more faith than some of the pew fillers whom have their assigned seats with their pillows and blankets left to save their spots. So if this is the case that they still have a genuine relationship with Christ but simply don’t want to be within the four walls of religion, so to speak, should we not explore the million dollar question differently? We should not excuse away their leaving to agnosticism, postmodernism or neopaganism regardless of how cleverly it takes the focus off of the real concerns and sins of the “church.” It is not a very popular idea to confess the sins of the church which is ironic when we proclaim to be a house of confession. Perhaps confession is only good for the soul as long as the sins are not our own. Behind the irony rests a darker problem, one that is responsible for many young people leaving the church.

For years the church has been a place of hypocrisy and today’s young generation is one that is fed up with the dishonesty and is willing to take a stand. They are so disgusted they can no longer keep silent. They are not willing to “tweak the numbers” of the church financial records or work their way up the hierarchical ladder. They see through the masks and are not willing to compromise. Young people are tired of religious politics, bickering, back stabbing and lying. If we, the church, do not open our eyes to this now, if not yesterday, it will be too late.

This young generation is wandering looking for a place of refuge and they no longer find a safe place in the church house. The church regrettably is no longer safe. You cannot genuinely express your feelings, concerns or doubts without them being the topic of the message on the following Sunday morning. There is no longer trust within the church. The place of worship has turned into a place of gossip. A spiritual encounter has been replaced with a social gathering. The leadership of the Holy Spirit is no longer considered because we are too busy worrying about the opinions of others. So if by now you are still puzzled as to why the today’s youth are leaving the church then my heart is deeply saddened.

Nevertheless, we need to make a self-less effort and remember that the church does not exist for our personal entertainment. Realize it is not a prize to possess but is a treasure to be given away to the next generation. We must do whatever it takes to restore the tabernacle to its original purpose; to call its people back to holiness. We must be willing to give up our seat to the next generation before it is too late and there is no body left willing to fill the void.

Postscript: This article was written based on the following word the Lord gave me June, 2011: “The Church is not a prize to possess, but is a treasure to give away”.

Movement with a Message

It is an indisputable fact that the Pentecostal movement has experienced tremendous growth in the twentieth century. Very similar to the ministry of John the Baptist, the message of Pentecost has drawn crowds to the small mountain churches where in contrast to the rather primitive theo-praxis the power of God has been evident.

Similar to the ministry of John, the powerful results of Pentecostalism are produced by preaching that may seem unreasonable. For Pentecostals, however, it is words of life. It is obedience to the Great Commission of Christ to preach the gospel to all due to determination deriving from realized eschatology of the already-not-yet Kingdom of Heaven. The reality of the message then becomes a reality of the Pentecostal community in which the believer lives and witnesses even to the point of martyrdom. What seems to be an unreasonable message to the world becomes the identity of the Pentecostal community.

A loss of the message then means a loss of identity. In order to protect its identity Pentecostalism strives to deliver the message and experience to the generations to come, forming a genuine Pentecostal catechesis. This is much similar to the educational strategy of John the Baptist and his discipleship formation. The restoration and reclamation of the past heritage moves toward preservation of the experience and message. The context of technological and scientific progress, affects the development of the Pentecostal movement transforming its original primitive purpose, theology and practices. The only way to preserve the power of Pentecostalism then is through preservation of its primitivism.

Missions for the Third Millennium (2009-2010)

This is a re-post of popular articles on Missiology from 2009-2010:

M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)

8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)

Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)

What made us Pentecostal?

Pentecostalism is a message for standing fast till the end. As Pentecostals, we preached this message before we had a sermon outline.

We went without knowing. We prayed without ceasing. We prophesied without seeing in the physical or even purposefully refusing to reckon with it.

We preached without a season, for preaching was the vibe of our ministry and the heartbeat of our churches. We preached because we had a testimony. We did not know how to say it, but we had something to say.

We did not know how to write a sermon, or a theological exposition, or an exegetical definition, or a leadership proposition, but we preached because we had an experience that NO sermon could recreate and no message could deliver.

We had met God upon the mountain and that personal meeting, that date with destiny, that divine appointment had become our source of life everlasting. And this is what made us Pentecostal.

Daniel and Revlation

The Great Tribulation

Rapture of the Church

Spiritual Problems and Solutions from the 7 Churches of Revelation

Network of the Seven Churches of Revelation

Although the Book of Revelation has been vastly studied and interpreted throughout church history, usually the focus is on one major issue within the text, namely, the role and future of the church. The main reason for this has been the in-depth prophetic and pastoral messages to the Seven Churches. The value of the messages to the Seven Churches of Revelation is constituted by the fact that they are the last recorded Biblical messages to the Christian Church. For this reason, the letters to the Seven Churches obviously do not contain all of the usual elements used in the New Testament epistolary form.

Read the full text of the presentation (PDF)

20 SIGNS of the LAST DAYS

1. Spirit to be poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28)

2. Israel to be restored (Deuteronomy 28:64, 30:3 Jeremiah 29:14, 30:3 Isaiah)

3. Universal apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)

4. Good will be called evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20)

5. The watering down of the gospel (2 Tim 3:5, Matt 15:9)

6. False prophets and false Christs (Mat 24:24)

7. Worldly knowledge to increase (Dan 12:4)

8. Earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues and diseases (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)

9. Peace taken from the earth (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)

10. Increase in the wickedness, murder and crime among men (Mat 24/Luke 21)

11. People will not believe the signs (2 Peter 3:3-4, Matthew 16:1-4)

12. Increase in persecution of Christians (Matthew 24:9, Mark 13:9)

13. The Spread of nuclear weapons as predicted in the Bible

14. Middle East tension

15. NEW tower of BABEL

16. GOG AND MAGOG

17. Revived Roman Empire

18. The Antichrist

19. The Mark of the Beast

20. FINAL SIGN: Gospel to be preached to all of the world (Mat 24:14/Rev 14:6-7)

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