After 50-plus years of (mostly) successful service as evangelists, Bible teachers and missionaries, what do people do if they don’t completely retire? If they are like we are, then they train and equip new generations of workers for the Lord’s harvest field. We are grateful to Him that we can continue to do that through East-West.
In 2021, Chuck passed the baton for leadership of the East-West team in Russia to a younger brother and then was appointed Director of Pre-field Equipping. His work resulted in a program used by East-West to prepare new workers in regions of the world where East-West assists local, national partners to catalyze movements of evangelism and Christian discipleship training enabling multiplying churches.
The East-West Pre-field Equipping team has three other co-workers. As of October 1, 2025 one of those teammates, Laura Jones, succeeded Chuck as the team director. However, he will continue serving with the team, focusing his attention on evaluation of resources for training and equipping new workers, first to survive, and then thrive in cross-cultural ministry. Also, Chuck serves as the team’s liaison with other agencies that serve as our partners in training cross-cultural workers.
Chuck and Christine continue to serve as mentors to co-workers in the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Kazakhstan. Russian is still the main language used in these countries. The team in Moldova is made up entirely of nationals. The Lord has blessed a movement that has multiplied to more than 100 house churches.
In Uzbekistan, a team of young recent university graduates are studying Russian at a university and teaching English to local high school students. They have numerous opportunities to share the good news and follow-up with those who are interested. At the end of August, 3 brothers completed 3 months of intensive preparation and are now living in-country. It’s a lot of fun to train people to whom we are old enough to be grand-parents!