Bobby & Debbie Booze

Contact Information:

Bobby Booze: bobby.booze@crmleaders.org
Church Resource Ministries: www.crmleaders.org

Ministry Description

We serve in Budapest, Hungary with Church Resource Ministries (CRM). Our vision is to facilitate movements of healthy, relevant churches throughout Hungary by encouraging and equipping national leaders in the work of the Church. In short, we work to see More and Better Leaders for More and Better Churches so that Christ may be known throughout Hungary! CRM’s name in Hungarian is the “Barnabas Group,” and like Barnabas in the early Church, the desire is to work alongside the Hungarian Pauls by providing encouragement, support, and training as needed. This comes out of the belief that Hungarians know their people best and are the ones who ultimately will reach their country with the Gospel.

We work with both the small and the large picture in Hungary. In our neighborhood, we’re involved with a developing Reformed church — the only Protestant congregation in a housing area of 20,000 people! Some of our activities include: overseeing the small group ministry, running evangelistic camps (English and basketball), discipleship, mentoring, and training leaders in the church. Bobby is also a member of the church leadership team and spends significant time encouraging and mentoring the pastor. On the larger scale, Bobby has worked to advance a national church planting movement as part of a facilitation team with several other mission agencies. According to Hungarian researchers, there are still dozens of cities and villages with no healthy evangelical church in a country the size of Indiana. Bobby has helped coordinate church planter training for over 100 Hungarians over the past 10 years. He has also mentored several church planters (and Debbie their wives), meeting with them regularly to encourage them personally and help them strategically in their church planting works. We also took the leadership of CRM-Hungary in 2005 due to our former Hungarian leader’s death from cancer.

Our primary ministry activities as a team include: leadership character and skill training, refocusing courses for leaders and churches, Natural Church Development, denominational consulting, small group leader training, church planter training, and spiritual formation. In our 15th year of ministry in Hungary, we still feel very called to be here and enjoy being part of God’s plan to reach Hungarians for Christ and strengthen His Church.

Bobby & Debbie’s Story

Bobby grew up in Roanoke, VA as the youngest of six children. He accepted Christ when he was 17 and became very involved in Young Life and InterVarsity during his high school and college years. He graduated from the College of William and Mary, majoring in Business Administration and Accounting. Debbie grew up as the second of five children in a military family – she moved 14 times before she was 18, including two years in Iran during elementary school. She accepted Christ when she was six and felt an early call to be a missionary. She graduated from Wheaton College, majoring in Political Science with a concentration in Soviet and East European studies.

After finishing college in 1987, we met on an InterVarsity/Slavic Gospel missions trip to Hungary and Poland. We were married a year and a half later, and while we both had a desire to return to Eastern Europe, we realized the importance of building a strong marriage and having a solid church home first. B obby worked in Greensboro, NC as a CPA for KPMG Peat Marwick for five years while Debbie worked with World Relief resettling refugees in the Triad area. During this time, we were active members of Grace Community Church, an inner-city church planted in 1987. In 1992, we moved to Budapest, Hungary. For the first three years, we worked as “tentmakers” with Educational Services International – we taught English and Business to Hungarian students. We then spent a year in intensive language study and joined the staff of CRM in 1996.

Special Needs

In the past year, CRM corporate has asked Bobby to become more involved in ministering to CRM staff around the world—primarily by giving counsel and training on leading multi-cultural teams. He has also been invited to take part in a CRM “think tank” that is attempting to re-clarify CRM’s core values and find practical ways to see them implemented more fully in all our ministry venues. In addition, Debbie was recently invited to participate in a CRM women’s leadership team that will meet several times to discuss the unique challenges facing women. All of these opportunities travel expenses. We are hoping to raise some additional funds to cover these costs.

Prayer Requests

As our ministry responsibilities increase and broaden, please pray that we will spend more time and not less cultivating our relationships with the Lord and remaining strong in Him. - Please pray that we will be wise in where and how we spend our time—truly led by the Lord and not driven by needs. - Pray that our marriage would not suffer as we spend more time apart traveling to different ministry functions. - Debbie continues to struggle with health problems (myalgic encephalopathy/CFIDS). Please pray for her healing, and that we would see God redeem the years of illness for His purposes. - Pray that the Lord would use us to bring Hungarians closer to Him, to play an active part in strengthening local churches, and to encourage new churches to be planted.

Photos

Budapest

Communion

English Camp