BCM International

Reaching Children and Strengthening Churches Worldwide

Responding to a New Macedonian Call

By: Lisa Biegert with Chuck and Cathy Powers Tucked away in the north of France is a small town known for its beautiful pottery and quintessentially French countryside. But beneath its picturesque exterior, Desvres hides a spiritual darkness. The area is steeped in...

Growing Fruit on Other’s Trees in Romania

By: Lisa Biegert with Sandy Barber “It’s amazing how fruitful our lives can be if we allow God to grow the fruit on other people’s trees!” exclaims BCM missionary Sandy Barber. Nearly twenty-five years ago, Bob and Sandy Barber were introduced to a Romanian ministry,...

BCM Celebrates New USA Ministries Director

By: Elizabeth Byler New USA Ministries director Marc Hoyle was born into a missionary family in France, instilling in him a heart for missions and the French people. But by age seventeen, he wanted to be an architect more than a missionary. Meeting a missionary who...

Snowfall Places No Damper on Fun at BCM Camps

[divider] SNOW BOWL COMES TO MANDAVILLE [hr] Winter programming for BCM’s Mandaville Camp & Retreat Center in upstate New York near the Canadian border wrapped up with a free family snow day Saturday, January 13th, and three separate overnight Snow Bowls, each...

Big Fruit From Small Seeds in Suriname

By: Jeanette Windle with Imro and Linda Smit “So many big, important things—in fact, most of them—start very small,” expresses BCM missionary Linda Smit. “We’ve seen this over the years on the BCM Suriname field and are seeing it once again.” Unique in South America,...

Impacting Regions Beyond with ISMT

By: Sandy Barber, Marion Odicio, Pat Govender, Luba Valkov, and other ISMT contributors BCM’s teacher training curriculum In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT) is designed not just to equip children’s ministry leaders, but to multiply quality teachers around the...

Rewriting Hope into Brazil’s Written-Off Favela Children

By: Lisa Biegert Adults might expect a conversation with a five-year-old to be funny and even silly. You don’t anticipate an emotionless small boy to state nonchalantly, “The police killed my brother for trying to steal from people on the bus.” But such a conversation...

Created to Teach

By: Shekinah Danielle R. Dimanlig BCM Philippines ISMT Trainer “In Step with the Master Teacher is boring!” That was my first impression of ISMT. I was fifteen years old when I was invited to attend only because my mom was one of the trainers. I went because I had to,...

Stepping Out to Raise Up Leaders in Haiti

By: Lisa Biegert BCM USA missionaries Christine Wigden and Lorraine Stirneman are no strangers to adventure, and in their ministry to Philadelphia’s inner-city children, they regularly push young volunteers to step out of their comfort zones in sharing Jesus (see...

NEXT-GEN BCM Crosses Borders to Serve

By: Jeanette Windle and Contributors BCM missionary kid Bart Bolhuis, oldest of five sons, was still in high school when his parents, Erik and Annelien Bolhuis, took over leadership of BCM Netherlands’ camp/retreat center De Herikon (see New Leadership for BCM...

“Are You Mrs. Religious?”

By: Lisa Biegert Walking through a local supermarket in her hometown of Warren, Pennsylvania, BCM missionary Ruth Gray felt someone’s eyes on her. She turned to see a little boy watching her closely. When she smiled at him, he mustered the courage to ask, “Are you,...

One Year Later in Madagascar

By: Lisa Biegert BCM Madagascar’s first year has been a busy one for director Ratovohery Jean Aime and his sister, BCM missionary Sahondra. Though their team consists of only four people total, their ministry reaches thousands of lives. Their largest ministry remains...

Seventy Years in Big Sky Country

By: Lisa Biegert On July 22, 2017, BCM’s Big Sky Bible Camp in Big Fork, Montana, celebrated its seventieth anniversary. The celebration included an Open House with two-hundred-fifty attendees from as far away as California and Arizona. To showcase popular camp...

One Small School Dreams Big

By Jeanette Windle with Dr. Jacob Mung The BCM Myanmar ministry team believes in dreaming big. A small nation in southeast Asia, Myanmar has a population of fifty million, largely Buddhist, that has been plagued by ongoing civil war for decades. BCM Myanmar’s vision...

Running for a Reason

By: Lisa Biegert Big Sky Bible Camp held its first annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 20, 2017. The Fun Run course took runners all the way around Peterson Lake, on which the camp is located, and across 220 acres of Big Sky’s property. The purpose behind the Fun Run was...

A Recipe for God’s Word

By Jenna Dancey Add a cup of Bible teaching, a pinch of games, a dash of baking. and what do you get? BCM Ireland’s Easter Cookery Camp. BCM ministry personnel in Ireland have long felt a burden for the local community living around their camp and conference centre,...

Picking up After El Niño

By: Shantal Artieda It´s been four months since the flooding of BCM Peru’s main campus (see El Niño Devastates BCM Peru, BCM World, Spring 2017) near the capital city of Lima. Since then BCM Peru missionary families have worked diligently to restore the property,...

Keeping a Promise

By: Jeanette Windle with Mrs. Pat Govender. When BCM missionaries Pat Govender and Dr. Djawotho Kisa arrived in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014 to hold training seminars for children’s ministry leaders, one constant plea they received was to please come...

A Farmer’s Daughter in Thailand

By Jeanette Windle with Barbara Van Valkenburg How did a farmer’s daughter from New York state end up in Thailand? By a long and circuitous route of faithful service in God’s kingdom. Barbara Van Valkenburg’s spiritual journey traces back to two women who invested...

Sri Lanka Flood Disaster

   The small island country of Sri Lanka, off the coast of India in the Indian Ocean, has been decimated by the worst flooding in 14 years caused by monsoon rains. The hardest hit district of Kalumatra is just south of the capital city, Colombo. BCM International has...

On the Road with God in Africa

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,...

Putting Hand to the Plow Without Looking Back

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...

A Welcome Blast from the Past

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...

“If I Perish, I Perish”

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...

El Niño Devastates BCM Peru

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...