BCM International

By: Corrie Evans I am not a missionary, but I grew up in a missions-minded family. Whenever a missionary would visit our church, they would be our guests for Sunday dinner. We listened to their exciting stories and tried to imagine what it was like to be a missionary, especially if they were from Africa. In Sunday School, my teacher would have us take an offering each week for missionary projects like church roofs and bore wells in Africa. We would march up front, singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world”, while we put our […]

By: John Peter with Jeanette Windle BCM Africa director John Peter needs only to remember his own childhood to recognize the urgency of missions. Sometime back while speaking at a conference in Canada, he had the privilege of meeting the missionary lady who led him to Christ at a Bible camp when he was nine-years-old. “I thanked that Canadian congregation for investing in sending missionaries into countries like South Africa,” he reminisces now. “Sometimes we don’t realize the impact sending missionaries can have.” For John Peter, that impact would be a lifetime passion for global missions, especially across the continent […]

By: Joyce Murray with Jeanette Windle What is the impact of touching the life of one child with the gospel of Jesus Christ? BCM missionary Joyce Murray was enjoying the 80th Anniversary celebration banquet for Bible Centered Ministries, International when BCM president emeritus Bob Evans and his wife Corrie stopped by to tell her of a friend who’d attended the banquet with them. Did Joyce remember Trista (Pike) Steinhauer? Of course! Even after more than three decades, how could Joyce forget the name of a child she’d been privileged to lead to Jesus. In 1956, Joyce Murray and her ministry […]

By: Lisa Biegert with Stephen and Jane King “How can I not go?  Just like Queen Esther, if I live, I live, but if I perish, I perish. I must do God’s work.” So writes “Aunty Aida”, a Nigerian Christian who teaches BCM’s children’s ministry training course In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT) in regions dominated by Islam. Her courageous attitude could be echoed by BCM Asia/Africa regional director, Stephen King, and his wife, Jane, recently returned from their own latest ministry trip to Nigeria. BCM missionaries since 2008, the Kings came to missions from a professional background, Stephen […]

By: Lisa Biegert Over recent weeks, the weather phenomenon El Niño has unleashed across Peru the worst downpours and floods in two decades, leaving more than ten thousand homes destroyed and over half-a-million people displaced. On March 15, 2017, a river edging BCM Peru’s main ministry campus an hour southeast of the capital city, Lima, breached its banks, inundating the entire property. By late night, rising floodwaters necessitated evacuating all mission personnel, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Located in the beautiful coastal Lurín river valley, BCM Peru’s main campus has transformed over the past twenty years […]

By: Paul Padmakar, Executive Director BCM India, with Jeanette Windle Mrs. Joyce Solomon, area director of BCM Tamil Nadu, was walking down the street after having finished a school-time Bible class, when sudden a female police constable approached and grabbed her by the hand. Mrs. Solomon was taken aback, since she’d done nothing wrong that could have drawn police attention. But the police constable was smiling as she asked, “Don’t you recognize me? My family was not Christian, but I attended a girl’s school where you taught a Bible class.” The police constable went on to share that through the […]

“When I came to this country, I brought all my saints [statuettes of various saints believed to answer prayer] with me in my suitcase,” shares one attendee of a Spanish-language Bible study taught by Carlos and Marion Odicio of BCM USA’s new Hispanic Ministry outreach. “Now that I’ve found Jesus, I don’t need them anymore.” Carlos and Marion Odicio founded…

The second Asia Pacific Youth Congress (APYC2), held in Bali, Indonesia, from October 17-20, 2016, brought together youth leaders, mentors, and children’s ministry directors from twenty different nations across Asia and the Pacific. Among its seven hundred-plus participants was a team from BCM Philippines. The event’s objective was to raise up Christ-like nurturers who will disciple the next generation. Why? Because discipleship is the only plan. There is no plan B! I myself grew up…

A BCM World article last summer shared the exciting summer Bible club outreach in some of Philadelphia’s more difficult neighborhoods (see Neither Rain nor Heat nor Flying Bullets, BCM World, Fall, 2015). A recent update from BCM missionary Lorraine Stirneman, who directs this ministry, offers a reminder to continue praying for the safety and impact of the young volunteer teams who have again dedicated their summer to reaching inner-city Philly children. 17-year-old Mark grew up in one of the Philly building projects where BCM has held annual summer clubs and was among many Bible club children who also attended BCM’s […]

By: Joe Dukes, BCM VP of Personnel Amidst continued trauma of a border war that is now dragging into its third year, BCM Ukraine held its 2016 missionary candidate orientation in the capital city of Kiev with 12 new missionary candidates in attendance. The orientation took place from August 17-24 in Kiev’s Central Baptist Church, where BCM Ukraine director Dr. Igor Kotenko serves as one of five pastors. Among international BCM leadership participating were Dr. Marty Windle, President; Richard Thompson, European Director; Sam Hanchett, former Ukraine missionary and regional director; Dr. Bob Evans, International Representative; and Joe Dukes, VP of […]

By Jeanette Windle with Ratovohery Jean Aimé BCM’s newest ministry field, Madagascar (see Sharing “FIHAVANANA” With Madagascar’s Most Vulnerable, BCM World, Summer, 2016) has used school-end vacation to expand their children’s outreach, holding five-day Bible clubs in some of the poorest neighborhoods. Over 70 children attended one such Bible club on the bank of a municipal dump where many families subsist by sorting through garbage for recyclables. Few of these children have opportunity for schooling or even daily food. Even at their young age, the life stories of many Bible Club attendees are heart-wrenching. Six-year old Volanirina’s father died some […]

By: Jeanette Windle Several hundred former and present campers, counselors, and staff filled Camp Sankanac grounds on Saturday, September 3, 2016, to celebrate 75 years of God’s working in the lives of children and adults through this ministry. Established in 1941, Sankanac was the Bible Club Movement’s (now BCM International) first permanent camp facility (see Setting Captives Free at BCM’s Camp Sankanac, BCM World, Summer, 2015). Today BCM hosts camping programs in more than 25 countries, including 9 camp facilities across North America. The day’s celebration kicked off with a sit-down lunch in Sanakac’s dining hall, where a historical overview […]

By: Jeanette Windle with Daniel Rusu “Me! Me! I’ll do it!” Volunteering for new adventures was nothing new for BCM Romania missionary Daniel Rusu, whether skydiving in his teens or a university major with few job opportunities—aircraft engineering. But when caught in Romania’s bloody revolt against communist rule in December, 1989, Daniel could have never envisioned that within eighteen months he’d be volunteering to run a Christian children’s home. Much less to find himself openly teaching theology in a country where religious expression had been suppressed for seven decades. Daniel Rusu’s own father Dumitru had actually been a communist freedom […]

Director of BCM Ukraine Dr. Igor Kotenko came to know Christ as Savior in the early 1990s after spending half a week’s salary on a Bible. Read more of Igor and Oxana’s testimony here (Changing Ukraine, One Heart at a Time). Igor’s love for God and concern for his fellow Ukrainians initiated the various ministries of BCM Ukraine in 1993. Outreaches through Bible clubs, camps, and universities have now multiplied and spread across borders into Russia. Igor is also one of five pastors who oversee the church the Kotenkos attend in Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev, which has an attendance […]

Mukachevo, a city located on the far western side of Ukraine near the borders of Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, is the location of a new BCM church plant pastored by BCM missionary Rev. Timothy Dymchenko. The church property was purchased in 2008. Rev. Dymchenko remembers standing with Bob Evans, president-emeritus of BCM, near a tree on the empty lot and asking Bob to pray that God would provide means to build a church there. God answered prayer, and that tree has now been dubbed the “Bob Evans tree”. Unable to hire outside help for the build, the Ukrainian church members […]