FCA’s North Global division values a Kingdom-minded culture driven by people with a “what’s best for the Kingdom?” mentality. Over the past year, North Global has focused on three main areas: team development, events and resources.
Comprised of the Eurasia and Europe regions, North Global has honed team development to establish core people who want to come alongside FCA as staff family, and those who want to join in partnership.
“I’m encouraged how God brought our team together,” said Divisional Vice President, North Global Andriy Kravtsov. “With our division, we have 63 countries. Our ten-year target is that in 63 countries, we have strong leadership teams and boards.”
Kravtsov believes at the core of cultivating the Eurasia and Europe family in North Global is prayer and perception. “We identify true FCA people. It all starts with prayer--this is our daily strategy. The field is plentiful; we are asking for workers.”
The team looks for HOT and FAST leaders: Honest, Open and Transparent, and Faithful, Available, Spiritual, Teachable. Then the team prays, brainstorms who may be good to connect with, and reaches out to share ministry vision and piece together places where God is leading them to serve. “We pray and seek, and it’s God’s timing,” Kravtsov said.
Despite the pandemic, Eurasia’s event numbers grew as more coaches are being reached. In a span of three years, the number of coaches connected has gone from 139 to 1,027.
The Eurasia team also hosted a few events that ministered and impacted the region. One was a 3D Coaching webinar with over 200 coaches on the call that resulted in more connections between coaches and staff. “We’re doing it not for ourselves, but for Christ Jesus,” said Kravtsov. “This is changing one coach’s life at a time.”
Another great growth event was the Eurasia Capacity Conference, a three-day online event broadcast throughout the region, with small groups of attendees together at local host sites. They watched training and worship online, then turned to their local groups for more training, activities and discussion. Kravtsov mentioned they prayed for 80 people to attend, and by the last day, had 100!
Life change continues to happen through relationships, like ones a staff member formed with coaches that turned into meetings at McDonald’s. He’s continued to pursue coaches, even when they get kicked out of the restaurant, not for reading the Bible, but because they were too close together at the tables. Or the staff in a restricted country who was invited into the home of an athlete for sports training and tea with his family. The athlete’s mother accepted the Gospel and encouraged the staff to continue to share with the family, which led to the entire household following Jesus.
God’s Word keeps flourishing, thanks in part to the development and translation of numerous FCA resources to the Ukrainian and Russian languages--more than 20 being YouVersion plans with 78,000 participant plan completions. One staff member even joined FCA through one of the reading plans, wanting to learn more about the ministry behind the plan.
“It feels like in six months, we put in two years of work,” said Kravtsov of the intentionality in defining their culture and shaping ministry that values people over results. Yet, in taking care of coaches and athletes at a personal level, results can’t help but flourish as God multiplies the mark of discipleship.
Pray for God to raise up more leaders in Eurasia and Europe and for FCA staff to grow. Pray for key relationships to continue to build, for wisdom and discernment.
Get involved with North Global here and visit fcaworld.org to learn more about what God’s doing around the globe through FCA.
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