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HBC supports missions work outside of our community to fulfill our mission to know Christ and to make him known. As a small church it will be our goal to keep our congregation primarily focused on one area of the world, in addition to our own community, as opposed to scattering our missionary support in so many different places. Here we introduce you to our missionaries and show you some of the places God is at work in our world.
Update: Romania
Update: Roger and Donna Vann
Update: Bruce Riley
Update: Radio New Hope Ministries
Update: Alina Voda
Romania
Harvest Bible Church is taking a new direction in our foreign missions efforts. After a few years of supporting a handful of missionaries we have decided to re-direct our focus and send the majority of our funds and our people seeking to be involved in missions to Romania.
Our focus there will be to help churches that are in need of funds to support their pastors and the training they need to teach the truth effectively. We will be working with a pastor who presides over 35 other pastors that he has helped to lead to Christ over the past ten years. He is with Heartcry International in Illinois, yet he is a local Romanian from Bucharest. Our church is going to focus on that part of the world and push our people to make frequent trips there to do evangelism and help teach and train these pastors who know very little about God's Word. Most of them were converted to Christ and in less than a year found themselves shepherding small congregations of people also seeking the Lord. They are in dire need of help.
Our task will be to help one church at a time in the early going. A simple $1,000 from our church (or anyone else) goes, literally, 10 times farther than $1,000 to an American missionary drumming up support to go abroad. A simple $250 per month will support a pastor and his entire family in Romania. We feel that this will be the best use of our missions budget, and frankly, our church is as excited as they've ever been about missions with this new focus.
Click here to see HeartCry International's website for more information regarding Romania.
Click here for our blog for recent trips to Romania.
Roger and Donna Vann Recent Update from the Vanns
Roger and his wife Donna have spent their last 23 years living in Europe - 10 years in (then) West Germany and the remainder in England. They are full-time staff workers with Campus Crusade for Christ, Roger having been with the organization for almost 35 years.
The Vanns' burden for this spiritually dark part of the world is deep and long-term, with no plans for moving back to their home state of Texas. At the present time, their desire to share God's love on this post-Christian continent is being expressed in the following ways:
- Roger and Donna developed an eight-week course for skeptics and seekers called Open to Question back in 1994. It has proved to be an exceptional evangelism tool for several churches, including their own where almost 100 adults have come to faith in the last five years (40% of all not-yet-Christians who go on the course become Christians!).
- Roger received the 1998 evangelism award from the Church of England (called the Cuthbert Bardsley Prize) for his work on the Open to Question course.
- He and Donna teamed up with another Christian Millennium initiative (Y2000) to significantly upgrade this evangelistic series to a video-based course (fall 1999) being marketed throughout the UK by Word Publishing. The new skeptics' course is called The Y Course. So far over 3000 churches have used this evangelistic resource.
- Roger is the European Field Consultant for the Jesus Video Project. He works on a team that has developed several evangelism resources connected to the "Jesus" film. He travels throughout the UK and five other countries in Western Europe helping churches get organized to take Jesus to their community.
- Donna writes children's books for two British Christian publishers. So far, she has had four titles published - two of the books appeared in 12 languages, with a fifth book due to be published in Spring 2003.
- The Vanns lead occasional marriage enrichment events for local churches. Their weekend seminar called Growing Together grew out of the book they wrote several years ago - Secrets of a Growing Marriage - published in the U.S., the UK and Germany. Roger also does evenings for husbands ("How to Spice Up Your Marriage", for wives (Help... I married an alien!), and for couples ("What makes your partner tick?!").
- Roger and Donna teach an annual marriage preparation course for couples planning to marry in the Anglican church they attend. It is based upon a video course - Marriage in Mind - that Roger helped create for a Christian publisher and is now being used by hundreds of churches throughout the country.
- Donna is co-author of a book for Word Publishing (UK) entitled Beyond Belief?. It was released May '99 and is targeted at open-minded skeptics and seekers. The book has become a Christian best-seller.
Roger and Donna originally met each other in kindergarten and now - a few years later! - have three children - one married, living in Texas and two teenagers (plus their beloved Border Terrier). Roger has traveled to over 41 countries and been privileged to follow God around over the years seeing many Europeans absolutely transformed by His Spirit as a result of coming to understand the Gospel.
Bruce Riley
Bruce Riley is currently a "missionary in training" in Dallas, TX. Harvest Bible Church supports Bruce in our Adopt a Pastor program. Bruce attended our church during his last year of college at Prairie View A&M University.
Bruce is working toward his master of theology degree at Dallas Theological Seminary. Following graduation from DTS, Bruce hopes to become a pastor of a church. Bruce hopes to teach in all areas of systematic theology.
New Hope Radio Ministries, Inc. Current Newsletter
Check out their website for more information.
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