Founding Story
Helping people cross from darkness to light.
Cross to Light was organized for the purpose of “sending the gospel forward”. This is accomplished primarily through biblical education, evangelism, discipleship and mission trip and outreach facilitation.
Inspiration
Before its inception there were several events that inspired the formation of this ministry. Beginning in 2000 there was a youth outreach ministry at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa called Worship Generation led by Pastor Joey Buran. The co-founding members all served together on the ministry team. Another ministry that was concurrent to Worship Generation was a small Friday night evangelism class called Soul Winners led by Pastor Joey Rosak. These same team members that served Worship Generation also participated in this class for several seasons. After being equipped with evangelism training the class would venture out to various locations to share the good news. From this street witnessing outreach many people came to the Lord.
The founders group met together weekly to go through pastor Jon Courson’s audio bible studies and launched a Wednesday picnic table prayer meeting at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. The last study completed was the book of Hebrews. The same weekend, Pastor Jon Courson himself kicked off a teaching at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa beginning with the book of Hebrews from which the group got their nickname, “the Hebrews group”.
A third ministry that was growing at this same time; from 2000 to 2005 was a new church called Living Water Christian Fellowship led by Pastor John Mendoza. Living Water had a bible study radio broadcast for Southern California. Brian McDaniel was asked one week to provide the message for the radio broadcast. He went on air – delivering his first syndicated gospel message to millions of KKLA listeners. They were invited to call in to receive Christ as their personal Savior. A group of prayer counselors were thrilled to receive a great response. The founders group prayed fervently and by God’s grace secured the support to start airing a gospel message weekly on KKLA.
Ministry Formation
Two of the founders own a business development & marketing company and wanted to apply their expertise to launch a ministry in order to create a long term vehicle for discipleship and evangelism that would be sustainable, would adhere to the primary purpose and would not be based on any one man except Jesus Christ. Everyone fervently agreed to this.
The group started praying for a name. One of the founding members was looking at a picture of a sunset over the ocean’s water as he was listening to Brian McDaniel’s first gospel message radio broadcast. When he heard the scripture from Revelation 4:1 “I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven”, amazingly he noticed a door on top of the sunset with it’s reflection on the water together formed a golden cross. That door reminded him of Jesus Christ. As you look closely at the sunset’s reflection, you can visualize a golden path or bridge which resembles a cross made of light which gave a picture of the goal; to help lead people to the light of Jesus Christ, our Door to heaven, because He will take us from darkness to light. The bible says when we get to Heaven we shall walk on streets of gold and shall be lit by the light of Christ. The name “Cross to Light” came to his mind from this vision and objective, thus providing the ministry with it’s name, mission statement, logo and moto. Shortly after this vision the 501c3 application was filed and approved.
Primary Purpose
Cross to Light’s core function is to “send the gospel forward.” This is accomplished through discipleship, training, events, distribution, media, mission trips and outreaches and church planting efforts.
Over the years Cross to Light has reached millions of listeners, distributed thousands of free gospel message CD’s and bibles, conducted many short term evangelistic mission trips all over the world and as a result and fruit of bible teaching have been privileged to help serve and provide for orphans, widows and the needy.
Cross to Light has a support Israel division by which we bring awareness and opportunity to people to help support Israel. The bible says to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall be blessed who love thee (Israel)”.
Sending the Gospel in Haiti
Most recently, Cross to Light established the Haiti Bible Training Center in Port au Prince, Haiti in March of 2011. Through the operation of the Haiti Bible Training Center our core function in Haiti is to bring in young men from different provinces of Haiti in order to disciple them through the Word of God, taking them through the bible over the course of two years in order to send them back out to plant churches to provide bible teaching discipleship to their community.
The Missionary Training Center (MTC), also located in Port au Prince, Haiti is the Cross to Light campus that safely accommodates volunteer teams, constructs support projects, conducts conference events and special training workshops. Outreach events such as VBS, orphanage visits, prison outreach, soccer events, water projects and medical day clinics are all conducted out of this campus.
We thank the Lord Jesus and praise Him for what He is doing and are excited to see what He is going to do next.
Thank you Jesus!
From the Cross to Light founders group.