Ministries

Global Missions


St. Paul’s Global Missions Ministry exists so that the nations might be glad and sing for joy. As the psalmist cries out,

Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! (Psalm 67:3)

There are almost 8 billion people alive on planet earth today, each of whom has been created in the image and likeness of God, but most of whom do not know him. We long to see more worshipers! And so, we are committed to the Great Commission of making disciples and filling all things with God’s kingdom glory (Genesis 1:28; Matthew 28:18-20). Come, be a part of what God is doing, not just here in Orlando, but all around the world.

Core Values

Support for global missions at St. Paul’s is characterized by the following priorities:

  • Church-centered partnerships
  • The training of indigenous leaders and pastors
  • A special concern for unreached peoples
  • Significant investment in a limited number of partnerships

Get to Know St. Paul's Missionaries

A note on missionary security: You will notice that limited information is provided for some of our missionaries who serve in places where Christians are persecuted. Because of security risks, we are careful about the information we share online. This ought to remind us of how important it is to pray for our missionaries and their safety.

Tokyo, Japan

Seima and Naoko Aoyagi

Senri, Towa, Satoki, Akari

Seima and Naoko 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. The church has elected two ruling elders from the congregation, and it has joined the Presbyterian Church in Japan as a particular church. Grace Harbor Church has also planted two daughter churches—Toyosu Community Church in 2017 and Odaiba/Ariake project in 2025.

Stanford, California

Kathleen Chitty

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.

South Asia

Jimmy and Erin

Sienna, Seth, Nathan, Benjamin

In 2023, Jimmy and Erin moved from their previous location in South Asia to a new location in Southeast Asia after their applications for long-term visas were repeatedly denied. However, their mission remains the same—to help initiate and nurture church-planting movements among the unreached people groups in their former home country in South Asia. From their new 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. Since 2024, Jimmy and Erin also lead their organization’s field personnel in the South Asia area (missionaries in two countries including the country they used to serve in).

Middle East & North Africa

Jim and Carole Fitzgerald

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.

CRFC State Prison, Orlando

Miles Hayes

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.

Asia

Jonathan & Maggie

Anne, Lily, Ada, Amelia, Eleanor, and Beatrice

Jonathan and Maggie serve with the PCA’s missions organization, Mission to the World (MTW), 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 teaches English at Covenant Community School International, a school that serves the local Christian community as well as missionary kids.

Maggie and Jonathan have six daughters ranging in age from five to seventeen, and a very sweet golden retriever. They live in Chiba, Japan.

Southeast Asia

Dan and Tawnny

Lola Grace, Elliott, Jedediah, Tobias, Clementine

Dan and Tawnny were members of St. Paul’s for many years. They serve with Cru and have lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, since 2017. Dan serves with The JESUS Film Project. 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 equipment and training to church-planters and local believers in surrounding Asian countries. He assists with recording 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.

In addition to caring for their five school-aged kids, Tawnny disciples and mentors female Cru staff who are teachers at a local international school.

Ethiopia, Africa

Tim & Laura Love

Sam, Pip, Ruthie

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.

Canon City, Colorado

Dan & Shirley Matsche

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.

Nagoya, Japan

Matt & Caroline Newkirk

Lydia, Silas, Ethan, Chloe, Moses

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.

South Asia

Eric & Sara-Beth

Noa, Martha, Gloria, Asher, Carol-Joy, Elizabeth, Grace

Eric and Sara-Beth have served with MTW since 2007, serving in Japan for two and a half years helping teach at an MK-Japanese Christian school, then in recruiting with MTW while at RTS Orlando, and since 2014 serving in South Asia 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 leading a team to begin a medical ministry at a rural hospital, serving a largely unreached and underserved area. Unfortunately, the situation was not sustainable, and they had to leave in the spring of 2023. Since January 2024, they have been working on a new visa to return, but in August 2024, after exploring multiple avenues for ministry there, God made it clear he had closed the door.

They have continued to serve South Asians and the South Asia partnership remotely, and in various roles in MTW, while also exploring possible new fields of ministry. After much prayer and discernment, in December 2024, Eric accepted a call to serve as the assistant pastor of missions and outreach for Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, PA, starting in June. They will continue to serve with MTW and South Asia from Virginia until they transition.

Wycliffe Bible Translators, Orlando, FL

Jessica Pruette

Jessica works with Wycliffe Bible Translators, serving with a worldwide network called Global Partnerships. Global Partnerships is a multi-organizational collaboration consisting of Wycliffe staff and many others from Bible translation organizations and churches all over the world. Global Partnerships exists to serve the local church by supporting their Bible translation projects. This collaboration has resulted in a significant increase in new Bible translation projects. 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, with duties including international event planning, administration work, and serving with the training team.

Central Asia

Ryan & Katie

Claire, Sarah

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 and teaches first aid and other medical education courses. Ryan is a project manager involved in various local businesses started by believers as a financial advisor. He is also owner of the Life Center, a co-working/meeting space for various church-adjacent ministries that also serves as a location for trainings of various kinds. Ryan is also involved in developing strategies and resources for theological education in their city and in the broader Central Asia region and takes regular trips to neighboring Central Asian countries to teach courses in two small Reformed seminaries. Additionally, Ryan is slowly taking on team leadership duties, and is taking steps with their current team leader to determine what his final role will look like. He also is leading internships, both for summer and 11-month terms.

Together, Ryan and Katie work with a small, local Reformed Presbyterian church that is pastored by national partners. Although it is small, it is growing steadily. Katie leads a women’s Bible study, participates in a young mothers group, and plays backup piano for worship. Ryan manages the church finances. Their primary focus revolves around helping their team organize local and regional theological education to identify and train new church leaders.

Ryan is also taking a personal role in coming alongside two young men who have been identified as potential future pastors. 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 (7) and Sarah (4).

RUF @ University of Central Florida

Hardy and Bri Reynolds

Lennie, Wells

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 a daughter, Elena, and a son, Wells. 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.

Lyon, France

Alex & Suzanne Sarran

Matthieu, Timothée, Etienne, Vallouise, Augustine, Violette

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.

Alex also serves as the vice president of Faculté Jean-Calvin, a private institute of Protestant and evangelical theology in Aix-en-Provence, 190 miles south of Lyon. They long to see the gospel have a positive, visible impact in Lyon, the second largest city in France, and also in the rest of France.

Shin-Urayasu, Japan

Robert & Lisa Stewart

William, Isabel

Robert and Lisa Stewart are missionaries with Mission to the World, currently serving in Nagoya, Japan.

The MTW Nagoya church-planting team aims to start and develop churches in Aichi Prefecture, one of Japan’s least reached metropolitan areas, with Nagoya being the largest city.

Robert has taken on the exciting role of assistant team leader for the church-planting team in Nagoya! He and his teammates are thrilled as they focus on plans to launch a new church within the next two years. With their diverse experiences and dedication to reaching Nagoya, they are eager to tackle the challenges of this new work.

To further support this initiative, Robert and Lisa are currently focusing their ministry on Nagoya Christian School, a grace-centered school designed to meet the educational, spiritual, and social needs of both missionary children and Japanese Christian families in Nagoya. Robert serves as the headmaster, while Lisa teaches the elementary class.

After over twenty years in the Tokyo area, this ministry in Nagoya signifies a new chapter for the Stewarts. They believe that their extensive experience in Christian education and as assistant church planters has uniquely prepared them for this mission in Nagoya. Thank you for your prayers.

Paris, France

Joel & Stephanie Swanson

Pascal

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.

After they 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 used their gifts in discipleship, apologetics, music, and children and youth ministry to strengthen this church. The Swansons also enjoyed friendships and bore witness to the gospel among non-believing Parisian families they knew through homeschooling their son, Pascal. Today, their Paris church has given people to three new church-planting projects in Paris.

During their last term in France, the Swansons felt the Lord redirecting them toward a new calling, and they chose to return to the U.S. They are leaning on the Lord to direct their path. They miss their dear Paris church and pray regularly for its growth. As in France, they long to help people see how Jesus’s gospel transforms all spheres of life.

Iran via Atlanta, Georgia

Sasan & Kenna Tavassoli

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.

Glasgow, Scotland

Nate and Erin Taylor

Ruby, Lucy, & Ollie

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.

South Asia

Theo and Becky

Aurora, Micah

Theo and Becky serve in an urban community in South Asia, partnering 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. Their vision is to stir a passion for the growth of God’s kingdom in their city, which is home to nearly fourteen million people—only five percent of whom are Christians. Theo, an ordained minister, serves as the planting pastor of Redeemer Church, a new plant they launched in November 2024. Becky, a communications specialist, leads the women’s ministry and is developing effective pathways for mercy ministry. They have a daughter, Aurora (11/02/20), and a son, Micah (01/25/25).

Orlando, Florida

Andy & Kelly West

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.

West Africa

Donnie & Kara

Donnie and Kara have served with Mission to the World (MTW) in West Africa since 2014. They work alongside the Presbyterian Church of Senegal (l’Église Presbytérienne du Sénégal or EPS) in a majority-Muslim (95%) context. Their recent and primary focus has been assisting two pastors and their wives in the planting of a church in a predominantly unreached vicinity about an hour and a half down the coast from the capital city of Dakar. Donnie also serves as MTW team leader and travels inland to assist potential and more established rural pastors and elders through the Timothy House pastoral training program. Kara teaches EFL classes both through the church plant and to a group at a nearby engineering ministry.

Before moving to West Africa, Donnie was an associate pastor at Trinity PCA in Asheville, NC, which is their home base. Prior to that, they started Reformed University Fellowship at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Donnie and Kara met at St. Paul’s and were married there in 1995. They have three young adult children who reside in the vicinity of Western North Carolina: Gabe (married to Devon), Alec (married to Faith), and Kathryn.

Middle East

Asia Minor Partners (AMP)

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 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 majority-Muslim culture. He currently serves as pastor of Amazing Grace Church in Ankara.

Uganda, Africa

Africa Reformation Theological Seminary

Africa Reformation Theological Seminary, located in Kampala, Uganda, seeks to glorify God by educating and equipping pastors and church leaders to serve Christ’s church and advance his kingdom in East Africa and beyond. Its 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 advancing biblical reformation and building and multiplying healthy, strong, God-centered, and Christ-exalting churches in Uganda, Africa, and to the ends of the earth. The seminary’s motto is “Training for biblical reformation through gospel-driven churches.”

Serving globally from Central Florida

Third Millennium Ministries

The areas of the world where the church is growing the fastest (Africa, Asia, South America) are the same areas where 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 28 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: 2 million+) in many countries (178 of the 196 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.

Our Strategic Support Priorities

Global missions at St. Paul’s is characterized by:

  1. Church-Planting — By “Church-Planting” we mean that this missionary or organization is directly involved in planting new gospel-centered churches.
  2. Indigenous — By “Indigenous” we mean that this missionary or organization is native to the foreign country where they serve or is directly involved in training/multiplying indigenous church leaders.
  3. Unreached — By “Unreached” we mean that this missionary or organization serves an ethnic or people group that is without an indigenous, self-supporting Christian church movement.
  4. Reformed — By “Reformed” we mean that this missionary or organization embraces traditional Reformed confessions and catechisms (e.g., Westminster Standards and Heidelberg Catechism) as faithful summaries of the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.
  5. Trained — By “Trained” we mean that this missionary or organization has either been educated in an accredited Reformed seminary or been specifically trained for the particular missionary service they provide.
  6. St. Paul’s Connection — By “St. Paul’s Connection” we mean that this missionary is a current member of St. Paul’s or is a past member that has maintained close ties with the St. Paul’s community.
  7. Major City — By “Major City” we mean that this missionary or organization serves a large urban population with millions of residents and significant influence in their respective region of the world.

Global Missions Committee

  • Gordon Cloke (chair)
  • Sarah Cloke
  • Natalie Fields
  • Megan Krahn
  • Robert Krahn
  • Nathan Leopard
  • Dan Marengo
  • Ben Tobias
  • Courtney Tobias

Contact Gordon Cloke

If you have questions about our Global Missions Ministry, please reach out to Gordon Cloke, chairman of the Global Missions Committee.

Get in touch

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