CRM - Empowering Leaders

Romania is the Oregon-sized country that won its freedom in the bloody December 1989 revolution. CRM has ongoing ministry in Iasi (pronounced "Yash"), the former capital and seat of Romanian Orthodoxy for the northeastern region of Moldova. Iasi is a university city of about 400,000 inhabitants. CRM ministers to students, helps start churches, trains and equips emerging leaders, and sends out Romanian missionaries.

Two of CRM's ministry divisions are present in Romania: InnerCHANGE and Enterprise. The primary emphasis of CRM's Romanian ministry is on economic projects through our Enterprise division. For over 13 years Enterprise staff have started and developed small businesses in Romania. These include three second-hand clothing stores, a complex including a hotel, restaurant and conference center, and a small housing development company.

Ministries supported by these businesses in Romania cross the border to the Republic of Moldova where there are some one thousand villages with no Christian church. Iasi is a mere fifteen miles from the border, so it was a natural progression to reach out to this neighboring, former Soviet satellite which still clings to a form of Communism.

Unlike the ministry in Romania, the focus in Moldova is on planting churches in rural villages where no Christian church exists. CRM helps to facilitate this through the vision of a native Romanian ministry, Ecclesia. The Romanians employ, to great effect, a Celtic form of outreach to these impoverished communities. CRM supports these indigenous missionaries and their projects to bring the Gospel to a country of five million people whose economy completely imploded with the collapse of the Soviet Union.