What is DOVE Christian Fellowship International?
DOVE Christian Fellowship International (DCFI) started with a group of young Christian believers who had a burden to reach out in love to the un-churched youth in the local community in northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
It was the early 1970s and the time of a nationwide awakening among young people in the United States. The nation had been through tumultuous times in the 1960s with rapid changes tearing at the fabric of our society, including the sexual revolution, Vietnam war, women’s liberation and abortion rights.
The church was challenged to be a force in those uncertain times. After a decade of young people dabbling in the occult and drug culture seeking answers for life but being disillusioned, they were now turning to God in great numbers.
Christian song writers and screenwriters producing songs like, "I Wish We’d All Been Ready," and a movie entitled, "A Thief In The Night," describing possible end-time scenarios, jolted Christian young people from their complacency. Many of these young people developed a genuine burden for their world, because the end seemed near.
It was in these times that a group of us, who were Christian young people living in south-central Pennsylvania, started an organization called "The Lost But Found." Through friendship evangelism, we saw many young people come to know Jesus as their Lord. A Bible study under the direction of Larry Kreider called "Rhema Youth Ministries" nurtured many of these young Christians.
Although we had tried to get the new believers to whom we were relating involved, they simply didn’t fit into the established churches in our community. It seemed clear there was a need for new church structures flexible enough to relate to new converts from a variety of backgrounds. That’s why Jesus
said we need to put new wine into new wineskins: "Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved" (Matthew 9:16-17).
Increasingly, there became a need for a flexible New Testament-style church (new wineskin) that could relate to and assist these new believers (new wine) in their spiritual growth. In 1978, God spoke to Larry about being "willing to be involved with the underground church."
Our adventure into cell groups
So began our church’s adventure into cell groups. A cell group was started in Larry and LaVerne Kreider’s home and when their living room was filled to capacity, they turned over the responsibility to leaders they had trained and started a second cell in another home. The roots began to grow for this "underground 
church" where believers were nourished in these "underground" cell groups as they gathered together to pray, evangelize and build relationships with each other. We believed when the underground roots (individuals in relationship in cell groups) are healthy, the whole church is strong.
By the time our church, DOVE Christian Fellowship, officially began in October, 1980, there were approximately 25 of us meeting in a large living room on Sunday mornings and in three cell groups during the week. We discovered cell groups to be places where people have the opportunity to experience and demonstrate a Christianity 
built on relationships, not simply on meetings. In the cell groups, people could readily share their lives with each other and reach out with the healing love of Jesus to a broken world. We desired to follow the pattern in the New Testament church as modeled in the book of Acts, as the believers met from house to house.
Twelve years later, as these cell groups continued to grow and to multiply, more than two thousand, three hundred believers were meeting in over 125 cell groups all over south-central Pennsylvania. Churches were planted in Scotland, Brazil, Kenya, and New Zealand. Believers met in cell groups in homes during the week and in clusters of cells in geographical areas for celebration meetings each Sunday morning. Here believers received teaching, worshipped together and celebrated what the Lord was doing during the week through the cell groups. Every few months the entire church would meet together to worship on a Sunday morning in a large gymnasium or in a local park.
Several times we closed down our Sunday celebration meetings for a four week period and met in home cell groups on Sunday mornings to strengthen the vision for building the church underground. During one of those times, we came back together after a month of meeting solely in cell groups and realized the Lord had added a hundred people to the church.
We made our share of mistakes
Although the church had grown rapidly in a relatively short span, we made our share of mistakes. The Lord began to deal with pride and unhealthy control in our lives. We found the Lord’s purpose for cell groups was to release and empower His people, not to control them. We repented before the Lord and before His church.
Our cell-based church had reached a crossroads. We were experiencing the pain of gridlock among some of our leadership.
There was an exodus of some good leaders from our ranks. It was painful, and Larry Kreider, who was serving as the senior pastor, almost quit.
In retrospect, we feel the mistakes we made were partly due to our immaturity as leaders and partly due to our not having an outside accountability team to help us when we ran into conflicts in decision-making. And perhaps the Lord in His providence was repositioning some of His players elsewhere in the body of Christ.
But the Lord kept taking us back to the original vision He had given, calling us to be involved with the "underground church." Today we walk with a spiritual limp, but we are so grateful to the Lord for what He taught us during those days.
It became clear that in order for DOVE (an acronym for "Declaring Our Victory Emmanuel") to accomplish what we were originally called to accomplish, we needed to adjust our church government and "give the church away." The vision the Lord had given us, "to build a relationship with Jesus, with one another, and reach the world from house to house, city to city and nation to nation," could not be 
fulfilled under our current church structure. We recognized the Lord had called us to be an apostolic movement, but we did not know how it should be structured.
It took more than two years to prepare for this transition. On January 1, 1996, our church became eight individual churches, each with their own eldership team. We formed an Apostolic Council to give spiritual oversight to DCFI, and Larry Kreider was asked to serve as its international director. The Apostolic Council gave each church eldership team the option of becoming a part of the DOVE Christian Fellowship International (DCFI) family of churches and ministries or connecting to another part of the body of Christ. Each of these eight churches expressed a desire to work together to plant churches throughout the world and became a part of the DCFI family. The majority of the overseas church plants also desired to become a part of the DCFI family of churches and ministries.
We have found apostolic ministry provides a safe environment for each congregation and ministry partnering with DCFI to grow and reproduce themselves. This new model emphasizes leading by relationship and influence rather than hands-on-management. A senior elder and team (we prefer to call the leader of a congregation a senior elder, rather than senior pastor, simply because he may or may not have the actual anointing of a pastor) has a leadership gift to equip believers to do the work of ministry in cell groups within a congregation. The Apostolic Council members are responsible to spend time in prayer and the ministry of the Word and give training, oversight and mentoring to local church leadership. They also are called to give clear vision and direction to the entire movement.
Becoming an apostolic movement
Unlike an "association of churches," which gives ordination and general accountability to church leaders, we see an "apostolic movement" as a family of churches with a common focus—a mandate from God to labor together to plant and establish churches throughout the world. Although some may call us a new denomination, we prefer the terminology "apostolic movement." We do not mind being called a new denomination, but denominationalism—an elitist attitude toward others in the body of Christ—separates us rather than focuses on our need for the Lord and for each other. We believe each denomination and movement has a redemptive purpose from God, and we need to honor, serve and learn from each other. We build on the shoulders of those who have gone on before us.
As a cell-based church planting movement, we are intent on training a new generation of church planters and leaders just waiting for a chance to spread their wings and fly! We are called to mobilize and empower God’s people (individuals, families, cells and congregations) at the grass roots level to fulfill His purposes. Every cell group should have a vision to plant new cells. Every church should have a God-given vision to plant new churches.
Partnering together
For many years, we knew we were called to plant new churches, but a few years ago, the Lord spoke to Larry, "I have many orphans in my body, and I am calling you to adopt some of my orphans." We knew He was calling us to also open our hearts to cell-based churches who had no spiritual oversight and apostolic protection. Now, in addition to church planting and multiplication, the Lord has given us a process of adopting churches who are called to partner with us. After going through a one-year engagement process of discernment, churches with similar values and vision are becoming partner churches with the DCFI family. Ron Myer works with a team of leaders who give oversight to this engagement process.
Our transition from one church to eight allowed the old structure to die so we could experience the new—a network of cell-based and house (micro) churches partnering together. At the time of this writing, there are 148 cell-based congregations either in the engagement period or partnering with the DCFI family from many nations of the world: the United States, Barbados, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Curacao, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, New Zealand, Peru, Rwanda, Scotland, Suriname and Uganda. The Lord has taken us on an amazing ride during the past few years.
In March 2006, at an International Leadership Conference, a new International Apostolic Council was commissioned to oversee the DCFI family of churches that included apostolic leaders from the DCFI global family born in three different continents. Seven apostolic teams from seven different regions of the world were also commissioned to give apostolic leadership to DCFI church leaders and church planting in their regions of the world.
Our desire is to see congregations of cell groups and micro churches clustered together in the same area so leaders can easily meet as regional presbyteries for prayer and mutual encouragement, and to find ways to be more effective in building His kingdom together. For example, senior elders of DOVE churches in Pennsylvania have the blessing of meeting together each month for prayer and mutual encouragement. An Apostolic Council member from the USA Apostolic Council also meets each month individually with each senior elder.
Each DCFI partner church is governed by a team of elders and consists of believers committed to one another in small groups. Each cell and each local church has its own identity while being interdependent with the rest of the DCFI family.
Networking with the body of Christ
We believe another important aspect to kingdom building is networking with other churches and ministries outside of the DCFI family. In this way, we can resource one other. There is no single church or family of churches who has it all! We welcome the exchange of Christian leaders between the DCFI apostolic movement and others in the body of Christ as we learn from the rest of God’s family and share what the Lord has given to us. DCFI partner church leaders are encouraged to pray regularly with other pastors in their region. These DOVE leaders throughout the world participate in pastors’ gatherings in their region.
God has given us a wonderful support team at DCFI consisting of the International Apostolic Council, seven regional apostolic councils overseeing church leaders throughout the world, a team of fivefold trans-local ministers, a Stewardship Team which handles the administration of financial details and legalities, and various other ministries that resource the leadership and believers in DCFI partner churches and serve the greater body of Christ.
These various ministries offer leadership training and ministry development on many levels. An essential twenty-four-hour Prayer Ministry includes a team of "prayer generals" who recruit, train and encourage a team of "prayer warriors" responsible to cover segments of time each week while praying for the entire DCFI family twenty-four hours a day. Nelson Martin oversees this vital prayer ministry.
The Apostolic Council and leadership from DCFI partner churches throughout the world meet together each March for our annual DCFI International Leadership Conference at a conference center on the east coast for the purpose of mutual encouragement, leadership training, relationship building, and to receive a common vision from the Lord. We believe the Lord has called us to work as a team together—with a shared vision, shared values, a shared procedure, and to build together by relationship.
In order for the DCFI family of churches and ministries to be effective in laboring together, we wrote our procedure down in a DCFI Leadership Handbook. This handbook is available by contacting the DCFI Office.
An important philosophy of ministry at DCFI is to release each believer and local leadership in order to provide a delegation of authority and responsibility to all believers. Unless the church leaders (elders) can release responsibility and authority to the cell leaders at a cell group level, this principle will not work. In this way, the Lord releases every believer to be a minister.
Every elder is encouraged to maintain his security in the Lord and take the risk of empowering and releasing cell leaders to minister to others by performing water baptisms, serving communion, praying for the sick, giving premarital counseling, and discipling new believers. A major aspect of cell ministry is preparing and training future spiritual fathers and mothers. And many of these cell leaders will be future elders and church planters. They are experiencing "on the job training."
Brian Sauder gives oversight to the House to House Church Planting and Leadership School. This leadership training school is now being used to train cell leaders, pastors and elders in cell based churches throughout the body of Christ. It is both a live school and a video correspondence school used as a satellite school in churches throughout the world.
The philosophy here is to train them to give them away! We expect the believers in our cell groups and churches to soon have their own families—new cell groups and new churches that they plant.
Fivefold trans-local ministry
According to Ephesians 4:11-12, the five ministry gifts of the
apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are called by the Lord to equip the saints to minister and encourage the body of Christ. Within the DCFI family, fivefold ministers who have proven ministries and are recommended by their elders as having a larger sphere of ministry than their own cell and congregation, are recognized and affirmed by the Apostolic Council to serve trans-locally. These trans-local ministers are often invited by other cell groups and congregations for ministry.
DCFI missions outreaches
During the past two decades, DOVE has sent hundreds of short and long term missionaries to the nations. Each long term missionary is "embraced" by a cell group, a congregation, or by individuals from DCFI partner churches. A team of people join a missionary’s support team by giving financially and praying for the missionary. Cells who 
"embrace" a missionary or missionary family pray for them, write to them, and serve the missionary practically while on furlough or during times of crisis.
Presently, there are two DOVE Mission International sending centers, one located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and another located in Nairobi, Kenya. Peter Bunton oversees DMI USA and Ibrahim Omondi oversees DMI Africa. Our vision is to have mission sending centers located everywhere in the world where regional apostolic leadership teams are established.
DOVE Mission International (DMI) endeavors to serve all DOVE missionaries who are sent out from DCFI partner churches regardless of which "field" they serve on. Some missionaries are directly involved in the DCFI church planting "field," while others may serve instead with the YWAM "field" or with some other missions agency. We are called to build the kingdom, not just our own network of churches. Yet, as a network of churches, we are called by the Lord as a family to plant new cell-based churches together in the un-reached areas of the world.
Ministerial licensing and ordination
We see ministerial licensing and ordination as an affirmation of a leader’s call to a lifetime of ministry which gives him the right to perform the duties of his office and any other ministerial functions within the scope and practices of DCFI. The Regional Apostolic Councils hold the authority to license and ordain and are spiritually responsible for all licensed and ordained persons and their spiritual training within their region of the world. In most cases, we prefer a person to be involved in active ministry for at least two years before ordination. We also encourage them to have completed our six-month Leadership School, either on location or by video correspondence. We license and ordain both men and women.
Like our early beginnings, we are again sensing that the harvest is upon us. The Lord, like a great magnet, is drawing people into His kingdom. Since new wineskins eventually get old, many who have been believers for years are becoming dissatisfied with life as it is in their present church structures. God’s people are again thirsting for new wine and wineskins. The Lord is renewing and refreshing and reviving thousands of His people all over the world. And He is requiring us to provide new wineskins for the new wine, as He brings in His harvest.
We believe as we continue to commune with the Lord and obey His voice, build together as a family of churches, and reach the lost in our generation, there is going to be a need for thousands of new houses (new churches) and new rooms (new cell groups). Every generation is different and has different needs and preferences. We are committed to empowering, releasing, and supporting the next generation among us as they fulfill their call in God. As Elisha received a double portion of Elijah’s anointing, we want to see our spiritual children far exceeding us in their depth of spiritual experience and church leadership. Believers will be called to various areas of leadership: some to cell group leadership, others to local church leadership, others to fivefold ministry, and others will serve in apostolic leadership.
Our long term goal is to continue to establish many apostolic councils in various regions of the world. There are apostolic leadership teams who are responsible for oversight of DCFI churches in seven regions of the world. The leadership for the DCFI movement, the DCFI International Apostolic Council, which includes members who are apostolic leaders from various nations of the world, will continue to grow as apostolic leaders from other nations are added to the Council in the future. This International Apostolic Council will continue to be responsible for the training, releasing and spiritual oversight and mentoring of apostolic leaders and apostolic councils located around the world.
The vision continues
The Bible tells us without a vision the people perish. The DCFI family is called to keep actively involved in what the Lord is doing in the world and participate in the present expressions of His anointing. We desire to empower, train, and release God’s people at the grass roots level to fulfill His purposes. Jesus values people. He has called us to look at people and see the Father working in those whom the Lord has placed in our lives.
Jesus only did what He saw His Father doing and He calls us to do the same. When we find that which the Father is doing, we can then respond without pressure and we can get in the river of His anointing and flow with Him. We can be 
motivated by the Kingdom, which is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
In order to contribute the most to God’s overall purpose for us, we are committed to continuing the wholehearted pursuit of the specific vision and calling that God has given us—to build the church with an "underground" focus in the nations of the world.
Simply put, these are our "roots," and our continued focus today. You could say that the very DNA of who we are as an international family of believers in Jesus Christ today includes our specific calling as an "underground church" to reach our world from house to house, city to city and nation to nation. May Jesus Christ be honored and glorified!
