God Reaches Across the Globe through Local Crown Ignite Attendee - Crown Financial Ministries Stories Blog

Switching gears today, here's a great story on how God used an ordinary church member to do extraordinary things thousands of miles from home. (From the January 2008 Crown Money Matters newsletter.)

When Sharla Bickley woke up on the morning of June 15, 2007, she was looking forward to attending the Crown ignite! training that day but had no idea where it would end up taking her.

Sharla attends Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, and she decided to take a friend from church with her to the training. She knew the transforming effect of God’s financial principles and how He could use them to fulfill His purpose in a person’s life. And she knew that God could use the outcome of this process to impact the church’s work in other nations.

Although Sharla might not have awakened that morning thinking her attendance at Crown ignite! would send ripples throughout the world, that is exactly what happened.

“It just seemed to make sense to equip all of our international mission teams at the church to take Crown with them when they would go,” she says. “I was going on a team to Kenya, and we decided to take Crown’s teaching there, too. Combining our efforts with a faithful Kenyan pastor, over 300 attended training for pastors and business owners.

“Another friend of mine was going to Moldova. We thought, ‘Man, they could use God’s financial principles there, too.’ So in Moldova we partnered with Crown Europe and New Hope International to pull off a large event with more than 140 pastors in attendance."

Each of those pastors signed a covenant to teach at least 100 others. That means 14,000 people will be taught God’s financial principles in that small, but important, country in Europe!

“Getting caught up in the momentum, I realized that we have church missionaries in Turkey that needed this too. So right now we are in the process of training our leaders in Turkey to take the important message of stewardship and sustainability to their people.”

Sharla doesn’t claim to have any special gifting or ability in this area. She’s just an everyday, ordinary follower of Christ who has been used in extraordinary ways.

Like her, you can be involved in helping to bring the life-changing message of stewardship and sustainability to the people your church reaches out to in the world. Even if you don’t personally go yourself, you may be able to influence a mission team to take this life-changing teaching with them.

We invite you to attend the next Crown ignite! training on April 3-5, 2008 at Crown Financial Ministries’ Home Office, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Join us in our effort to spread sustainability all across the globe!