Seima and Naoka are involved in a church planting ministry in downtown Tokyo, Japan, that is affiliated with Mission to the World (MTW), Presbyterian Mission International (PMI), Acts 29, and City to City. This is not just a single church plant—their desire is to see a city-center church-planting movement take root throughout Tokyo. Through this they hope to see Tokyo, the biggest city and the most lost city in the world with only 0.23% of the population professing Christ, transformed by the gospel. Grace Harbor Church in Toyosu (a city-center area of Tokyo with 200,000 people without any church) was planted in 2015. They intentionally target non-Christians, building relationships and sharing the gospel with people who have never heard the gospel before. They have about eighty adults and thirty children gathering each Sunday.

Kathleen works as campus staff with RUF, in a long-term role to reach and equip Stanford students with the truth and hope of the gospel. She is one of about fifty women working in the position of campus staff with RUF across the nation, and she enjoys reaching and pouring into high-achieving college women.

Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is located in the Bay Area of California—the most unchurched and de-churched populated area in the country. Stanford’s demographic is a unique mixture of incredibly intelligent, high-achieving, self-reliant students who often end up at high-powered and incredibly influential companies such as Google, Facebook, Bain, Apple, and SpaceX. Kathleen has the privilege of meeting one-on-one with Stanford undergraduate and graduate students to read the Bible together and to walk with students as they grow in grace and consider how to live out of the truth of the gospel. She also leads community groups, trains student leaders, and coordinates events and retreats for RUF Stanford and also for the RUF regional conference, WestCo.

Due to issues acquiring visas, in 2023 Jimmy and Erin moved from their previous location in South Asia to a new location in Southeast Asia. However, their mission remains the same—to help initiate and nurture church-planting movements among the unreached people groups in South Asia. From their base outside the country, they continue to partner with local believers to help create and distribute indigenous print, audio, and video content for evangelism, discipleship, and leader training, in order to equip them to reach their own people with the good news of Christ. This partnership is facilitated through Jimmy working remotely and also via trips back to South Asia. Jimmy also helps coach and encourage local believers as they distribute newly translated scripture resources and follow up with seekers. In 2024 Jimmy and Erin will also step into the role of leading and shepherding their organization’s field personnel in the South Asia area (a handful of missionaries in two countries).

Jim and Carole Fitzgerald serve in the Middle East and North Africa with Equipping Pastors International. Their vision is to equip pastors in North Africa and the Middle East where Islam is firmly entrenched. This region was once the intellectual and theological capital of the Christian world, and Jim and Carole desire to see its true Christian heritage recovered.

Since 2009, Jim and his domestic and international partners have trained hundreds of pastors and Christian leaders in the region, started two theological seminaries, and built nearly one hundred churches (many of which are new church plants). They have also translated multiple biblical and theological books and materials from English into Arabic.

Miles is an assistant pastor at St. Paul’s with a special emphasis in prison ministry. He is entirely self-supporting and receives no staff compensation from St. Paul’s.

Ministering inside the large state prison east of Orlando, Miles provides worship services with verse-by-verse expository preaching. As an extension of St. Paul’s, these services reflect aspects of corporate worship at St. Paul’s.

At times, Miles provides counseling in various forms, ranging from biblical application of scripture, to marriage and family concerns, to general life-skills counseling.

Jonathan and Maggie serve with the PCA’s missions organization, Mission to the World, in Asia. They moved to South Asia in 2010 with two children to help plant a church in a global city and serve an indigenous denomination. Having pastored that church for a number of years, Jonathan is now the international director for MTW in Asia-Pacific, overseeing MTW’s work and establishing new ministries in the region.

MTW desires to plant Reformed and Presbyterian churches around Asia-Pacific among the unreached and least-reached peoples. Maggie helps to lead Parakaleo, a ministry that equips ministry wives to face the complex world of church planting and pastoral ministry. It provides a grid for viewing and living life through the gospel in the midst of life and ministry challenges with practical, tangible tools.

As of 2023, Maggie and Jonathan have six daughters ranging in age from three to fifteen, and a very sweet golden retriever. They live in Chiba, Japan.

Dan and Tawnny were members of St. Paul’s for many years. They serve with The Jesus Film Project (a ministry of Cru) and moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2017. The JESUS film is used by more than 1,500 missions organizations and denominations around the world to communicate the gospel to people in their own language, disciple new believers, help plant churches, and train and equip pastors. It is a film about the life of Jesus taken from the Gospel of Luke and has been translated and dubbed into more than 2,100 languages so far.

Dan provides technical support for the regional Jesus Film office located in Thailand and travels to surrounding countries to train other missionaries and local believers to record the JESUS film in the many local languages that do not yet have gospel materials available. Dan also helps develop equipment and strategies for indigenous church planters to use JESUS film tools in their local ministry.

The Love family lives in southern Ethiopia where they serve at Soddo Christian Hospital. Tim is a general surgeon and directs the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons general surgery training program in Soddo. This program trains Ethiopian doctors to become surgeons, while also discipling them in their faith and engaging in hospital-based evangelism and ministry to patients. Most people in Ethiopia cannot access basic surgical services due to a lack of surgeons and surgical capacity, which leaves many suffering and dying with conditions that could be easily treated with surgery. This opens the door to share the hope of the gospel and to provide life-saving surgery to some of the neediest people in the world.

Tim grew up at St. Paul’s, and much of his exposure to missions was through St. Paul’s missions conferences and mission trips with the youth group. He served on an MTW internship in Ethiopia during college and there felt a clear call to long-term missions in Ethiopia. That summer in Ethiopia is also where he met his wife, Laura! Laura is a social worker who now spends her time homeschooling their children, leading Bible study for female residents and wives in the PAACS program, and engaging in relational ministry and discipleship.

Dan serves as a chaplain with Good News Jail & Prison Ministry in a close and medium custody prison in Limon, Colorado. He has what he calls a ministry of presence and is known to the inmate population and many of the staff as a man of God whom they can be comfortable speaking with. His love for his men and his love for the Lord Jesus and his word are used to minister truth to those who so desperately need to hear it. He ministers in the cell houses, on the prison yard, in the prison visiting room, and in his chaplain's office. Dan teaches weekly Bible classes, leads church services, gives one-on-one counseling sessions with both inmates and staff, and also handles emergency notifications, informing inmates of the severe sickness or death of a family member.

Shirley ministers with him on Sundays during their prison worship services where she uses her wonderful gift of singing: sharing the gospel through special music, for which the men are so appreciative. She also handles much of the administrative tasks associated with their ministry.

Curtis serves as the executive director of Valeo. He is involved in vision, strategy, administration, implementation, management, counseling, debriefing, consulting, and developing partnerships.

Valeo is a group of faith-based mental health professionals serving those sent cross-culturally by providing preventative and restorative care to strengthen their well-being in life and work. Services include counseling, psychiatry, debriefing, spiritual direction, and consulting. Services are primarily delivered online to those located outside of the US, as well as in person to those who come to Columbia, SC, for care.

The Newkirks serve with Christ Bible Seminary in Nagoya, Japan, where Matt is president and professor of Old Testament. The Japanese are the second-largest unreached people group in the world and are therefore in desperate need of well-trained gospel ministers, so CBS's mission is simple: to equip Christians in Japan for the work of gospel ministry.

CBS operates within a larger organization called Christ Bible Institute, which also includes a church-planting center (Joy of Japan Center), a publishing arm (CBI Press), and a counseling ministry (CBI Counseling). In addition to teaching courses in Old Testament and missions, Matt leads the faculty and staff in executing the seminary’s mission and caring for the students and their families.

The entire Newkirk family enjoys participating in the life of their Japanese church and building relationships with people in their community.

Eric and Sara-Beth have served with MTW since 2014 in South Asia in various areas and amongst numerous people groups, including the largest unreached people group in the world.

Their most recent term was supposed to be a long-term placement. Beginning in 2021, Eric and Sara-Beth led a team to begin a medical ministry at a rural hospital amongst the poor. Unfortunately, the situation was not sustainable and they had to leave in the spring of 2023.

The family is currently on furlough in Virginia, and they are asking God to clearly lead them to a new ministry location. They desire to return to the field, and they remain committed to evangelism, discipleship, and church planting amongst the largest unreached people group in the world.

Jessica works with Wycliffe Bible Translators, serving with a worldwide network called Global Partnerships. Global Partnerships is a multi-organizational collaboration consisting of some Wycliffe staff and many others from Bible translation organizations and churches all over the world. Global Partnerships exists to serve the local church in their Bible translation needs by supporting their translation projects. This partnership has resulted in a significant increase in new languages engaged in translation efforts. Today, local believers and churches are not only asking for the scriptures, but they are taking ownership of the translation work too. As the global Church has increased its vision and ownership of the work of Bible translation, there has been an unprecedented level of growth and consequent impact. In response to this, Jessica serves Global Partnerships as a project manager, oftentimes planning overseas training events for local partners.

Ryan and Katie are vocational workers supporting local churches in a major city in Central Asia. They serve in a Muslim-majority country where religious work is illegal. As such, their professions serve as platforms for being in the country, as well as a means to be involved in the community. Katie is a physician and works at a private clinic, with the hope of being able to expand access to care to the poor living in rural regions outside the city and increase access to medical education. Ryan is a project manager and works for a believer-owned handicraft store that provides a safe and fair marketplace for local and rural artisans to sell their handmade artwork and products. Ryan is also involved in developing strategies and resources for theological education in their city and in the broader Central Asia region.

Together, Ryan and Katie work with a small local church. Their primary focus revolves around helping their team organize local and regional theological education to identify and train new church leaders. They minister alongside a small local reformed Presbyterian church that is pastored by national partners. The church is small but growing steadily and hopefully will be ready to consider planting another church in the city soon. While training up new local leaders, they assist the existing local church to develop the resources and passion for planting more reformed Presbyterian churches throughout the region. They have two children, Claire and Sarah.

Hardy serves as the campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) to the University of Central Florida (UCF). RUF is the campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America and, to date, is on over 175 campuses across the globe. RUF seeks to reach students with the hope of the gospel and equip them to serve Christ's kingdom during a season in their lives when they are asking deep questions and experiencing significant personal growth. The success of this mission is not so much measured in the present but by seeing students become lifelong lovers of the triune God who are committed members in his church and equipped for a lifetime of kingdom service.

Hardy and his wife, Bri, have one daughter, Elena, and they began their service to the students of UCF in June 2020. If you would like to read more about their ministry, visit the RUF at UCF website at ruf.org/ucf.

Matthew, Timothée, Etienne, Vallouise, Augustine, Violet

Alex and Suzanne have been involved in full-time ministry in Lyon since 2001, the year they were married. With less than one percent of the population being Bible-believing Christians, the needs are great. According to recent surveys, France has the largest proportion of atheists in Western Europe and one of the largest proportion of Muslims.

Alex leads a French-speaking Presbyterian church plant near the center of the city, and together as a family they seek to glorify God through communicating the gospel message to as many people as possible. They pray that many would come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, and as a result, the church would grow, and in time other churches would be established. They long to see the gospel have a positive, visible impact on this urban area that is the second largest in France.

Robert and Lisa Stewart are Mission to the World missionaries serving in Nagoya, Japan. The MTW Nagoya church-planting team is focused on starting and establishing churches in one of Japan’s most unreached metro areas, Aichi Prefecture, in which Nagoya is the largest city, and has just one church for every 28,000 people. The team is currently in the process of establishing a new, grace-filled Christian school to help meet the educational, spiritual, and social needs of both missionary children and Japanese Christian families in Nagoya. 



To that end, in the fall of 2023 after returning to Japan after a year in the US, Robert and Lisa will be working to establish the Nagoya Christian School, where Robert will be serving as headmaster. They will also work with fellow Nagoya team members as they work to establish a new church in the Nagoya area.
After working in the Tokyo area for more than two decades, the work in Nagoya is a new ministry for the Stewarts. They feel that their years of experience in Christian education and work as assistant church planters have uniquely qualified them for this new call to Nagoya.

St. Paul’s is Stephanie’s home church, where she served on staff before answering God’s call to France. For over a decade, she helped French nationals in church planting through youth and children’s ministry, English outreaches, music, and drama. For over a decade, Joel prayed for Europe and served his local church through music and missions before leaving a civil engineering job to utilize his gifts in apologetics by serving on a church-planting team in Ukraine for two years.

Married in 2014, Joel and Stephanie served for four years in Toulouse. In 2020, after an extended home mission assignment due to Covid, they moved to Paris to work with a small evangelical church that has supported thirteen church plants in its first fourteen years. They are using their gifts in discipleship, apologetics, music, and children’s and youth ministry to strengthen this church as it continues to help launch others.

They long for Parisian believers and non-believers alike to see how the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms all of life and work. Their vision is to see a growing prayer movement that transforms their city, which has seen much bloodshed in the name of religion.

Although based in Atlanta, GA, the focus of Sasan’s ministry is teaching and resourcing Iranian Christian communities both inside Iran and all around the world. He uses three platforms to deliver his teaching: satellite TV, seminars, and Bible college courses.

Sasan produces dozens of programs every year on various Iranian Christian satellite TV networks that are then broadcast into Iran. The purpose of these programs is to encourage believers in Iran and help grow the house church movements in that country. He also teaches at conferences and seminars for Iranian Christians living in Europe, North America, and Australia. He also co-founded an Iranian Bible college, Pars Theological Center (with offices based in London), which aims to train house church leaders in Iran and pastors in the diaspora.

Nate and Erin serve with MTW in partnership with the Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church has a vision of planting thirty churches and adding sixty ministry workers by 2030.

Scotland is a nation that prides itself on being one of the most secular in Europe. Once at the heart of the Reformation, many of its churches are closing or close to empty. Estimates are that less than 1.5% of Glaswegians attend church on a Sunday, and more than half of that 1.5% are over the age of 65.

After serving for two years in discipleship and outreach at a Free Church, the Taylors are working with a core group of people from their church to start a new congregation in Glasgow—the largest city in Scotland.

Theo and Becky serve among an urban community in South Asia, working with Mission to the World (MTW) to plant gospel-centered churches and raise up indigenous church leaders. Theo is from the country in which they serve, which gives them extraordinary opportunity and access to live and minister among one-third of the world’s unreached people groups. They hope to spread a passion for the growth of God’s kingdom in South Asia as the gospel moves outward in their city, which is home to thirteen million people—only five percent of whom are Christians. Theo is a minister of discipleship and leads training efforts in their church. He will be ordained as a teaching elder in April 2024. Becky, a communications specialist, disciples women and supports local nonprofits while seeking to establish effective pathways for mercy ministry among their church plants. They have a toddler daughter, Aurora.

Andy and Kelly have served with the high school ministry of Cru since 1984. Cru is all about connecting teenagers to Jesus Christ. Teenagers are the future leaders and parents of our nation and world, and they are a major influence in today’s society, both for good and bad. Teens are also the most responsive age group to the gospel, as over 80% of those who receive Christ do so by age 18.

Imagine a spiritual movement of teenagers living out a contagious faith in Christ at every school. Since 1967, Cru has specialized in impacting the youth culture and taking the gospel to their world.

Teenagers are leading movements of evangelism and discipleship that touch schools and communities for Christ. Andy and Kelly train and coach new missionaries and help send them out to take the gospel to teenagers.

Donnie and Kara work with the Presbyterian Church of Senegal, l’Église Presbytérienne du Sénégal (EPS), helping to prepare men and women for leadership in existing and new churches. The denomination is pioneered by mostly first-generation converts from Islam. They are part of the less than 1% who are protestant evangelicals in a country of 17 million people, where 95% of the population is Muslim.

They currently assist a Senegalese pastor and his wife in planting a church in a major coastal city. It is in the vicinity of the future location of the denomination’s safe girls home. Together they plan to implement a two-year intensive church planter training program called the DEFAAR-Timothy House, equipping pastors and elders theologically, personally, and practically. Donnie travels one week each month to work with ordained rural pastors in their ongoing formation and in preparing their apprentices for ordination.

Donnie and Kara have three young adult children—Gabe (married to Devon), Alec (married to Faith), and Kathryn (Appalachian State University)—all living in North Carolina.

Asia Minor Partners (AMP) is a network of churches and individuals dedicated to helping reformed Christianity prosper and grow throughout Asia Minor. Its vision is to see the gospel of Jesus Christ flourish through a locally led movement of believers, pastors, and teachers who demonstrate the love of Christ based on a deep understanding of Middle Eastern culture.

AMP currently supports two national pastors: Pastor Turgay Uçal in Istanbul, Türkiye's largest city, and Pastor Yavuz in Ankara, the country’s capital. Pastor Turgay is a prominent figure in Middle Eastern evangelical Christianity, with an established church community on the eastern side of the Bosphorus River (near ancient Chalcedon), which also serves as base for his discipleship ministry known as Leadership Development Istanbul (LDI). Pastor Yavuz has a vision for planting churches in the Ankara region and has pioneered a model and approach for building churches within a complex legal system and secular Muslim culture. He currently serves as pastor of Amazing Grace Church in Ankara.

Africa Reformation Theological Seminary, located in Kampala, Uganda, seeks to glorify God by educating and equipping pastors and leaders to serve Christ’s church and advance his kingdom in Africa. Their mission is to train and equip pastors, preachers, church planters, biblical counselors, and church leaders who have a passion for the gospel of grace and a zeal for building and multiplying healthy, strong, biblical, God-centered, and Christ-exalting churches in Uganda, Africa, and to the ends of the earth.

Where the church is growing the fastest (Africa, Asia, South America), there are the least resources for church leaders to learn the Bible and sound theology. Thirdmill believes every Christian has the right to a well-trained pastor. By creating a graphic-driven video seminary curriculum (currently in twenty-six languages), Thirdmill equips church leaders in their own land, in their own language, and at no cost to them. They deliver curriculum to learners at every level of technology: print, web, mobile apps, USBs, microSD cards, and satellite. With learners (to date: 1.88 million) in many countries (176 of the 193 recognized by the UN) of the world, Thirdmill is advancing God's kingdom by changing the lives of pastors, lay leaders, and their congregations everywhere.