X Event: Ten Analyses and Perspectives

by Dony & Kathryn Donev

X at the Black Sea 2007 was a spiritual breakthrough for Cup & Cross Ministries. At the same time the event served as a reality check for our abilities, strategies and expectations. As we approached the event as a spiritual encounter and experienced fully its developmental process and aftereffects, our ministry team was able to assess the advantages and downfalls of our active ministry strategy. Several observations were made.

1. The Gospel is stronger when preached to sinners who have not been saved.

2. Spiritual hunger in Bulgaria, which is expressed predominantly in the need for street evangelism and spiritual revival, has not changed or weekend in the years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall. It has only shifted perspectives from a strictly postcommunist to a rather westernized postmodern context. It has become the spiritual duty of the church to discover where and how this shift has occurred and to provide pastoral care for the unchurched in the new context through all applicable means.

3. Only unconventional ways of presenting the Gospel will draw people who have not yet been drawn by conventional methods.

4. It may not be easy for conventional pastors and churches to accept new methods of preaching the Gospel. Therefore, adequate contemporary training in ministry and leadership must be proposed beforehand in order to train local churches and leaders how to recognize, embrace and utilize new waves of spiritual revival. This is indeed an obstacle which has often remained forgotten while receiving training and leadership on a weekly basis within the comfort zone of the local church.

5. Since all transitions described above are deeply rooted in one’s personal spirituality and the spirituality of the church itself, a leap of faith is needed on every level of church leadership and ministry in order for the church to be transformed back to its original image of a movement testifying of the story of Christ and witnessing how others are being transformed by the power of the story.

6. Team work based on Biblical covenant relationships is the natural continuation of the revival initiated by the Holy Spirit and a key factor in the formation of the discipleship process among the newly converted.

7. Structural flexibility of the church, designed with the purpose of transforming it from a community organization to a community movement, complete obedience to the move of the Holy Spirit, as well as training in doctrinal reformation of methods and praxis are necessary to accomplish the said transition.

8. Following of the leadership of the Holy Spirit will not only help the church to return to being a movement again, but in fact will spark, motivate and inspire movements of fragmented religious groups, churches and denominations to return to the basic mission of the church namely: salvation of eternal human souls

9. Resistance to such movements, within and without, must be accepted as a normal reaction and must be embraced as the solemn way through which new spiritual movements and fresh waves of revival come to existence.

10. Finally, personal lives, carrier goals, and ministry objectives may need to be compromised before one fully surrenders to the move of the Spirit; beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, Gods response to one’s full surrender is undoubtedly supernatural confirmation of the Word through signs, miracles and wonders while fulfilling the Missio Dei: salvation of human souls for eternity.