When the war broke out in Ukraine, our team stayed in place—despite having the option to flee—and began to serve people displaced by the war. Their building became a hub for the distribution of tens of thousands of food parcels, hundreds of Discovery Bible Studies, and temporary accommodation to displaced people.

In addition to these humanitarian and spiritual projects, their leaders were trained by Novo to provide psychological support, trauma help, and emotional healing. The team in Ukraine is aware that rebuilding Ukraine when the war is over will take much more than reconstructing buildings and homes—it will mean rebuilding shattered lives. And the restoration from the emotional trauma will take much longer than the physical rebuilding. So they’ve decided to build a national trauma care center that will help people directly and train leaders in trauma care all over Ukraine. They are raising funds to purchase land and construct a building that will serve this purpose in Ukraine and anticipate at least 1 million Ukrainians being impacted through this work.

Learn more from the Ukraine team about the expansion project here.

Novo’s missionary care branch, SentWell, is located in Malaga, Spain. Two years ago the team felt led to purchase a property that would enable them to better care for missionaries in crisis who come to them for healing, and also host trainings and retreats to keep them healthy in the first place (both essential to keeping missionaries on the field long-term). They would need to raise 1,500,000€ (more than 1.6 million dollars), which felt like an impossibly large goal. But they jumped into the steep fundraising campaign, and God provided over and over, more than they could ask or imagine.

The last payment for the property was due on July 1, 2023. About a week before the deadline, they still had $150,000 to raise. They watched as one gift after another came in. But the day before the deadline they still needed $74,444. The team continued to pray. They gathered together on a Zoom call to all pray together, and the team leader Alex Galloway started off by reading an email he’d just received: Dear Alex, we hope that you and your family are well. We are happy to let you know that our board has approved a second grant for the La Morada project, in the amount of $75,000.00. We pray along with you that other donors will provide the remaining funds that you need.

The exact amount needed was provided the day before the deadline! The SentWell team was overcome with joy at what the Lord had done. He had raised all the money needed in just 18 months! This facility is already serving as a blessing to many missionaries around the world, and all the glory goes to God for his guidance and provision.

God moved Lee and Jana Price to Newcastle in Western Colorado to pursue a gospel movement. Through prayer, God highlighted the homeless community, and miraculously connected Lee with a woman who’d been praying for help to disciple the homeless people she ministered to. Over a few years, they saw the good news take off and a church emerge in the homeless community.

At the same time, Lee and Jana had a list of 40 people they were praying for daily. Within a year, 12 of those people had begun to follow Jesus through a Discovery Bible Study in their home. Two of those new believers were Kevin and Gina Long, who now serve with Novo. They continue the work of gospel movement in Western Colorado alongside the Novo team. In December, Kevin took over the leadership of a small church of 12 people, guiding them through trainings on spiritual warfare and inner healing prayer. The church has since swelled to 40 people, as God brings new people across their path weekly. This summer their small church baptized five people, from all different backgrounds, who had come to faith as a result of their ministry.

Learn more about this gospel movement here.

Lydiah was a gifted soccer player but lacked confidence because she’d never had anyone pour into her and build her up. Then she heard about a Novo InnerCHANGE program for sports coaches called Deep Coaching, which was a discipleship program. Lydiah longed to follow God but didn’t fit into the church structures in Kenya, so she felt disqualified. Through Deep Coaching she learned that she could have a real relationship with God just as she was—a soccer player.

Lydiah learned leadership and coaching skills, in addition to ministry tools like Discovery Bible Study (DBS) and activating prayer. She began praying for her neighborhood, a very marginalized community in Nairobi. God began to open ministry doors—a food and scripture distribution project, gathering up to 70 kids around a meal and DBS twice a month, and a new sports team for young women—jump rope—which was far less expensive and more accessible in this poor community than soccer. Lydiah has joined the Novo team and has become confident in her calling and skills as a missionary to her community. She’s investing in children, parents, and young women in order to make disciples, and is praying for a gospel movement.

Read more of Lydiah’s story here.

Faisal grew up as a Muslim in Uganda. But then he encountered Jesus in a vision. He began to follow Jesus, and told his family about the vision. But nothing like this had ever happened in his family before. He was rejected by his family and had to leave home. A local church took him in, but he found himself torn about his Muslim background and everything he was hearing in the church—there was such a long history of opposition against Muslims in the church.

Eventually Faisal was able to attend University. He longed for fellowship and to find answers to his questions about how to follow Jesus as a Muslim-background believer. So he invited other Muslim students to join him in studying the Bible. As they read scripture together, many of his Muslim friends committed their lives to Jesus. Their small group began to multiply because people were encountering Jesus. There weren’t other ministries in Uganda effectively reaching Muslims. The groups exploded like wildfire, and took off at other Universities and even in other countries.

Then Faisal had a divine encounter with Novo staff who were visiting Uganda. He learned about Discovery Bible Study and gospel movements, and knew this is what he’d been longing to be a part of. As they began to use gospel movement tools, their groups went from 150 to 209 in just eight months. Now there are 1052 groups in Uganda and Tanzania. Faisal realized he was in the midst of a gospel movement among Muslims in East Africa. He joined Novo and continues to find support through this partnership as he shepherds this move of God.

Read more of Faisal’s story here.

In their efforts to reach refugees coming into Europe, Tommie and Jonas (part of Novo’s partner organization in Europe and the Middle East, NEO Leaders) began to pray over their base city of Thessalonica. They prayed that God would open new connections and networks to them amongst the refugees. During that season of prayer, Jonas was given the phone number of a refugee from Iran. They met together, and the refugee confessed that he needed a change in his life. “Let’s start to read the Bible together, like once a week,” Jonas said, “and if you have any friends who are interested, you can bring them as well.” The next week the refugee brought eight friends to read the Bible. Within three months, 30 refugees from Iran were baptized.

Tommie and Jonas now have a traveling ministry that extends across Europe, to all the places where the refugees have relocated. The good news is traveling along relational lines as the refugees share about the Kingdom of God and Jesus wherever they go. Several refugees are now part of the gospel movement team with Tommie and Jonas, including some of those initial Iranians, and Kurds, Syrians, and Iraqis who came to study the Bible. There have been about 400 Iranians baptized and many others of different nationalities were also baptized. It has been a great blessing to see how these refugees are also reaching nationals of the countries they are setting in. Tommie and Jonas’s team are actively engaged in ministry in Greece, Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Iran, Syria, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans.

In the fall of 2021, a bunch of 20-somethings participated in Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohort and embraced the mission of introducing everyone they knew to the abundant prayer life promised by Jesus. The next year, 70 young adults gathered for the Cohort every month, experiencing transformative prayers that rocked their world and lit a fire in them to follow Jesus wherever he would lead. In the summer of 2023, 10 of them traveled to the UK to visit Ffald-y-Brenin, a prayer retreat center in Wales, and join almost 3,000 other young adults at a prayer and worship event called the Wildfires Festival. They returned to Dallas enthusiastic about what God could do and about reaching their city for Jesus.

Since that trip, the young adults have taken over a retired chapel in Dallas and have turned it into a space for mission strategy, prayer, worship, and training more people in prayer and mission. Some are using all their free time to minister to others. Some are spreading what they’ve learned to other people in their home churches and college campuses. Some are pursuing full-time missionary roles with Novo. Others are relocating with vision to equip more young adults to live as passionately for Jesus as they are themselves. There are 130 young adults in this year’s Spiritual Authority Cohort as this move of God continues to expand. Seasoned Novo staff who have visited with these passionate young adults note the marks of revival on their lives and can’t wait to see how God is going to use them to bless their city and the world.

Read more about what’s been happening in Dallas here.

Stuart and Sara work in the 5th most unchurched city in the US, where only 26% of people say they are religious, using their coffeehouse as a vehicle for relationship and a space to do activating prayer. They’re consistently engaging culture in that space—learning names, practicing excellent hospitality, and hearing stories from the people they’re connecting with. From there, they’re able to invite people into Discovery Bible Studies and to join their small church community.

One of the people they engaged in this way was Jeff. Jeff was an atheist who went through an especially difficult time after losing a parent and getting divorced. He would say, “I don’t like Christians, but I like you guys.” When things started going really poorly, Jeff reached out and asked to attend the house church gathering. He was still adamant about being an atheist. But after a couple of weeks he introduced himself as agnostic. “I’m not really sure, but I think I might be hearing the voice of the Lord.” A couple of weeks later he shared that he’d been experimenting with prayer and believed he was hearing from God, and was preparing to take some big life steps as a result. Will he take a step of faith and commit his life to Jesus? That’s what we’re praying for, for him and all the others this ministry is reaching.

The Twin Cities is full of great diversity, but also deeply segregated still to this day. That’s why Novo staff, Stephanie, has been so moved by what God is doing to bridge the divides and bring the whole Church together, through Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohorts.

When Stephanie heard that the Cohort was being offered virtually, she gathered three other moms together to learn the prayer tools and discover the spiritual authority they had in Christ. From there, they got the word out to others in the Twin Cities and surrounding region and saw what only God could do! Despite their limited capacity, God used them to launch a new Spiritual Authority Cohort over Zoom including 175 people from over 45 different churches in 2021. Forty different groups gathered in homes and churches to learn the prayer tools and experience the power of God in their lives and community. The following year the Cohort expanded to include over 79 churches. These believers were from a variety of church backgrounds, demographics, and denominations that have traditionally stayed very isolated from one another.

In 2022, Stephanie decided to cross even more barriers, organizing a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Cohort for Spanish speakers in the Twin Cities. It was a learning experience that led to the first Spanish-only Cohort open to the general public in 2023. There are now 25 Latino brothers and sisters regularly gathering to learn about their identity in Christ, practice the prayer tools and experience the intimacy and power of God. Several Latin American countries are represented in the Cohort along with key Latino brothers and sisters from a Twin Cities' church, Espiritu Santo. They are seeing a lot of traction and believe God is going to move exponetially through these anointed Latino brothers and sisters as they pass on what they are experienceing within their sphere of influence and the greater Latin American context.

Hear more from Stephanie about the Minneapolis Cohort here.

The Holy Spirit has been bringing an awakening to the people of South Asia—an understanding that there are no “simple believers” but everyone is called to action, called to make disciples. As a result, the gospel movement there is exploding.

There are 85,000 Discovery Bible Studies (DBSs) going on weekly and multiplying. There are 183 staff and over 10,000 volunteers who manage this work. Of all these people, there are only 20 who have any formal seminary training or ordination. The rest are normal everyday disciple-makers who are committed to hearing God’s voice and obeying what he says.

The leaders in South Asia are training their full-time workers in DBS, and those workers go on to train everyday believers and activate them into the ministry. These “ordinary” believers go and visit friends or relatives, and God shows up in miraculous ways while they’re there. After experiencing God’s power, individuals open up their homes to start a DBS and study the truth about God. People in that study share with other people, and another DBS group forms. It’s that simple. They share the truth they are learning in a personal way with friends, and the good news spreads. Despite persecution, people everywhere are hungry for what Jesus has to offer.

Suz is a physician in Kansas City. Her whole career is based on research, evidence, and science. The supernatural realm doesn’t really have a place in that paradigm—if you’re seeing things or “hearing God” you might cause some big alarm bells to go off in the medical world! After attending Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohort, Suz began prayer-walking her neighborhood in the evenings while walking her dog—and God gave her a big surprise. As she was praying, she suddenly saw seven angels walking alongside her. What? Then she noticed that some of the houses in her neighborhood were “lit up” as if by a spotlight, and others were completely dark—no light at all. She realized God was showing her places where he was at work in some way, and places where dark or evil things were going on. God had opened her eyes to see supernatural realities in her neighborhood so she could pray with more knowledge. Suz was shocked!

As time went on, Suz continued to see into the spiritual realm during her prayer-walks. She and her husband were able to pray very specifically for families and houses that God highlighted to Suz, and they saw God at work in incredible ways in those places. For example, after Suz received clear direction to pray for a family with divorced parents, she later saw angels posted around the house as a result of those prayers, and now the couple are reunited.

As Suz has shared this story, other believers have been impacted as well. Her value for science and evidence created a confidence that what Suz was experiencing was the real deal. They became convinced, along with her, that these supernatural realities really exist and that our prayers truly change things. Her experience has resulted in increased faith and encouragement in other believers, and helped others to pray with deeper insight and expectation.

Greg and Jeannie live in Nevada. They first encountered Novo at an event, and shortly thereafter traveled with Novo to the Middle East. Greg shares that Novo has changed his life as a believer. He’s been a believer for many years, but always thought of evangelism and disciple-making as the job of the pastor. While in the Middle East, he learned a lot about Discovery Bible Study (DBS) and how they’re training leaders. Immediately after returning home, Greg started two DBSs. He continued to stay connected to Novo, and participated in an online training course called The Movement Pathway. The training lit a fire under him, and his DBSs started more DBSs and now there are 13 in total! Greg has become an intentional Kingdom ambassador in his business and at his motocross group, where he regularly preaches, teaches, and leads DBSs. Greg and Jeannie have seen many people come to Jesus and be baptized, and now Greg’s exploring what it would look like to form a church.

Hear more from Greg about what God’s been doing in Nevada.

As Adam and Charlotte got their microchurch started, they asked their two kids what they wanted church to look like for them. “We’d like to eat pizza. We’d like to learn about Jesus. And we’d like to be able to invite our friends.” Pizzachurch was born.

The kids would invite their friends to come eat pizza and learn about Jesus. They began two kids’ Discovery Bible Studies in their home—one for older kids, and one for younger. It was all kid-led, though Adam and Charlotte were always there to keep kids more or less on topic and stop them swinging on the light fixtures.

As kids learned about Jesus, their lives began to change. So much so that the parents got curious and expressed a desire to learn what their kids were learning. So a “grown-up” Discovery Bible Study was the result. Many believing families have expressed interest in attending Pizzachurch, and Adam and Charlotte are now multiplying this gospel movement among kids by coaching these families to start their own Pizzachurches. They’re about to launch five new Pizzachurches across Glasgow.

Read more about the Pizzachurch ministry here.

Monica (name changed) felt called to one of the hardest places in Central Asia, and was finally able to visit in 2009. However, her passport was flagged and she couldn’t return. She began a group to pray for Afghans in her home of Mexico City. In 2021, they learned that Afghan refugees would be arriving in Mexico City. Monica formed an NGO to help them. Unlike other NGOs in their area, Monica understood the Afghan culture and was careful to always respect it. This won her favor with the refugees.

At Christmas, Monica’s team put together a special dinner to bless the refugees and 200 people came. They served Afghan food, followed Afghan customs like refilling empty plates, and even played the national anthem. Afghans were deeply touched and felt like they were home in Afghanistan again. Then two Afghan believers shared about the meaning of Christmas and Jesus with the group. They offered Bibles in the Afghan language to anyone who wanted one, and everyone picked one up. There was a follow-up time the next day for those who wanted to learn more about Jesus, and 40 people came and paid close attention to everything shared about Jesus for four hours.

Many refugees who come through Mexico City don’t stay very long, but Monica’s team continues to plant seeds of the good news and hand out Bibles to those they have opportunity to care for.

In Kansas City, KC Underground has a whopping 100 microchurches in all different pockets of the city, from high schools, to jails, to suburban neighborhoods. They also have 11 hubs—teams that are equipping and coaching everyday disciplemakers to start and sustain these microchurches. There are Discovery Bible Studies taking place all over the city, including 20-30 in local high schools, all led by high school students who have been trained as disciplemakers.

Cory, a Novo staff member who helped to form KC Underground, runs one of these microchurches in his own home. When their oldest child began kindergarten, he and his wife recognized that they were now a natural part of a network of people who weren’t following Christ. They began to intentionally prayer-walk, initiate spiritual conversations, and host community-forming events like a parents’ softball league in this network. Eventually three families began to meet together on Sundays in their home to learn about Jesus, and that has now grown to eight. Few of these families had an active relationship with Christ beforehand. Cory and his wife Suz have been faithfully ministering and loving these families through real difficulties, and seen God miraculously answering prayers and bringing real transformation to tough situations in their friends’ lives.

Hear more stories from KC Underground here.

MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods West of the Mississippi. A Novo InnerCHANGE team has been investing there for some time, prayer-walking, pouring into children, teens, and relationships with neighbors, and developing leaders in the community. During Covid they leaned into activating prayer, and as restrictions began to lift, felt an invitation to engage more with high schoolers. They began focused prayer-walks around one campus in particular, which led to a meeting with the YoungLife area director and an invitation to volunteer at the high school. They also received an invitation to volunteer with recently arrived immigrant youth who were showing great leadership potential.

One of the students at the high school who they had a long-term relationship with was Anna. Anna had chosen to be baptized despite pushback, and had some powerful encounters with God. She began having dreams and visions, and one of those visions was of her aunt, who suffered from advanced diabetes to the point of not being able to walk. She had a vision of her aunt becoming healed in the presence of Jesus, and so she went to pray for her. As she prayed, she felt heat radiating out of her hands, and told her aunt that Jesus was healing her. The aunt knew it was true. This healing has launched Anna’s aunt, uncle, and cousins into lives more filled with the freedom of Jesus. It’s just one glimpse of how God is at work among high school students and in their neighborhood as a result of their prayers.

Anna has since started college, and the high school approved a student-initiated Christian club on campus this fall. Pray for God to move among the kids and families in MacArthur Park!

With disability in Egypt seen as a shame, many times both the individual and the family are shunned by the community. Sometimes the family tries to hide the family member with disability out of fear and preservation to keep jobs, get marriage offers, and be a part of the community. This is very isolating for the individual with the disability as well as the family. Novo’s partner in the Middle East, NEO Leaders staff and volunteers, pursue families and create a space for community among other families who have individuals with disabilities.

Along with the weekly Bible study gatherings, NEO Leaders hold regular events for individuals with disabilities and their families to gather, hear the gospel, worship, and fellowship. Each gathering accommodates 2000-2500 people. Each attendee receives transport from their village, a warm meal, and clothes (or other giveaways). The NEO Leaders team sees these events as a place of community, acceptance, and learning among the disabled and their families. Many of these individuals do not leave their village, so to be taken for a gathering they are personally invited to and provided with physical and spiritual nourishment is something many look forward to.

NEO Leaders in Egypt have a team of leaders—some of whom have disabilities themselves—who are each leading several Discovery Bible Study (DBS) groups. As these leaders grow in their ministry and disciple making, they are seeing the community around them react in remarkable ways. Staff and volunteers are now serving close to 16,000 disabled people as well as their families.

Taral (name changed) grew up in a remote Nepali village. He was the son of a Hindu priest, and began studying to become a priest himself. But then he heard about Jesus, and became convinced it was the truth. He was the first follower of Jesus in his village. Taral went to medical college and Bible school, and then began trekking through the Himalayas on his motorbike, helping people and telling them about Jesus.

After meeting a Novo missionary, Taral learned about Discovery Bible Study (DBS) and gospel movements. He gathered a team of 13 people together to meet with Novo and be trained in simple gospel movement tools. They are simple villagers, but have become convinced that God can use them to reach Nepal. Now they have 15 microchurches in remote parts of Nepal, and continue to lead people to Jesus through DBS, prayer, and one-on-one sharing.

There are many beautiful “God stories” emerging as people begin to boldly follow Christ. For example, Batsa, who began following Jesus after one of Taral’s team shared the good news with him, became an evangelist himself. He went to a village he’d never visited before, and found himself in the middle of a healing ceremony for a very sick water buffalo that the whole community depended upon. He offered to pray for the animal in Jesus’s name, and within 15 minutes the buffalo was clearly doing better. Several people began to follow Jesus that day as a result.

Learn more about this gospel movement here.

Amy was a stay-at-home mom, and when she began feeling that season coming to a close, she was at a crossroads. What was next? That’s when she went on a trip with Novo to see the work in the Middle East. God gave her a love for Muslims and the courage to get out there and try and introduce them to Jesus. Novo came alongside her courageous obedience and gave her the same Bible study tools that our volunteer leaders in the Middle East use—learning how to make disciples who make more disciples and laying the groundwork for a movement of the gospel to take off.

Back home in Austin, TX, Amy connected with the administration of the local Title 1 school in her neighborhood, which just happened to have the largest number of Afghan refugee kids in the city. She began building relationships with the school leaders, meeting their needs and empowering them to continue meeting others' needs, and God opened doors for her to engage this largely Muslim community. Some things worked and others didn’t. Nevertheless, she still perseveres with God to see new disciples who then turn around and make more disciples, with the hope of the gospel bringing transformation to the whole community. Now she is giving away diapers to families who need them, many of whom are sticking around to read scripture with her and are discovering Jesus for the first time—diapers and DBS!

Amy is an everyday disciple maker, turned full time staff. But still just an ordinary person who said “yes” to God.

Tomás Moreno, who leads Novo’s CoNext partner organization in South America, left his home country of Venezuela due to the collapse of the government, moving his ministry base to Ecuador. At first, he thought it would be an easy task because he had several connections there. However, because he was an immigrant, it proved more difficult than expected. Eventually doors opened to invest in church leaders, helping them form life-giving friendships with one another. He wanted to encourage them toward gospel movements, but most of the leaders were very attached to their own work in their own churches.

Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly, with churches shut down, the church leaders were asking all sorts of questions about what to do. Tomás was able to train them in the use of virtual platforms, as well as Discovery Bible Study (DBS). His ministry reach now went far beyond just Ecuador and Venezuela, expanding throughout the rest of Latin America and part of the Hispanic world in the United States. Forty-three of the Discovery Bible Studies became new churches—in countries like Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and in the United States. In the last year alone Tomás has counted 331 active Discovery Bible Studies, with a resulting 857 new committed followers of Jesus, and has trained 524 new leaders to facilitate DBSs.

For the past 300 years, western Christians, sent from well-resourced countries, were the predominant cross-cultural missionaries. However, churches from a broader range of countries are increasingly sending global workers too. For example, last year Mongolia was the highest per capita sender of missionaries. Similarly, South Korea has been sending out nearly as many total numbers of missionaries as the US, despite only being the size of Indiana and only having 15% of the US population. Countries that were once the targets of mission work are increasingly sending more missionaries.

Novo staff, Kim, has had a front-row seat in helping to coach and support global missionaries from several different countries, through both on-line and in-person meetings. She notes that these non-western missionaries often have distinct advantages over their American counterparts in building cross-cultural relationships. Their passports, unique perspectives, adaptability, language, and cultural backgrounds enable them to navigate diverse environments, bridge gaps in understanding, and build authentic connections differently than those of us in the West. Empowering these leaders to do ministry well and sustainably is something we’re so excited to be a part of as an organization.

Novo has been able to invest in these emerging missionaries across the globe in various ways, through ongoing mentorship, coaching, and trainings, like Kim provides, and has also helped to form international sending organizations (which we call CoNext Partners) through the work of other key staff members.