Our Story . . .

---

Thank you for visiting our website. We sincerely hope that you will find encouragement at every turn as you search through its pages

Let us first introduce ourselves: We are Thom and Penny Cooper. We have been ministering the Good News of Jesus Christ together since the mid-1980s. Each of us encountered the Lord at the age of 32 after years of searching for Him in the religious traditions of our parents – Thom in the Presbyterian Church and Penny in the Episcopal Church. In our experience, neither of the churches we attended as children had an accurate revelation or proper understanding of Truth, and as a result they were unable to lead us to an awareness of God’s plan and purpose for us and indeed for all mankind from before the foundation of the world, which subsequently culminated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Right from the very beginning of our lives together as husband and wife we both knew that we were embarking on an amazing adventure, an exciting journey – a journey of discovery. The singular understanding that we have carried with us all these years, the understanding that has kept the journey going and kept it exciting, is the understanding that no matter what we think we know at present, there is always something more. We believe that regardless of how much revelation we may have received, God’s self-revelation is inexhaustible.

The first church we were privileged to pastor was a relatively small, rural Baptist church in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This church had been established in 1805 and it did not take long for us to realize that not much had changed since then. We were so excited to be a part of this fellowship because we thought that God was going to use us to wake up this little dead church. Much to our surprise, however, God used that little dead church to wake us up.

After a couple of years at that church, we realized that the fellowship was not growing or maturing in the way that we had hoped.  It did not take long for our lighting-fast minds to recognize that if we wanted to see the church transformed into the kind of fellowship that God intended, then we would first have to allow Him to transform us. The Lord reminded us that we could never take the church to places we had never been. So we made one of the most important decisions of our lives. We decided to arise at 4:00 each morning simply to spend time with the Lord, thus allowing Him to accelerate the process of our own transformation. So, from 4:00 until 6:00 each morning for a period of one year, we would each spend time alone with God in our respective offices. Then at 6:00 we would get together to share with each other what the Lord had spoken to our hearts. Amazingly, we discovered that what He had spoken to each of us individually was the same. We have always appreciated the fact that God has caused us to grow together, always being on the same page.

During the course of that year we experienced a tremendous amount of growth in our relationship with the Lord. Unfortunately, over time we came to realize that no matter how delicate we tried to be in bringing the members of that little Baptist church into a life-changing encounter with the Lord, they remained quite content to continue experiencing life and church as usual. So, it was time for us to move on.

After one divine encounter after another, we moved to Huntsville, Alabama where we attended a Church and Bible school that offered us an opportunity to accelerate our growth in Grace. After three years there, both as students and staff members, we moved back to Virginia, resettling this time in the tidewater area, where we were privileged to lead two separate home groups full of individuals hungry for the Lord – one in Surry County which met on Friday evenings and one in Colonial Beach that met on Sunday mornings.

At the invitation of a friend from our time in Huntsville who was then pastor of a church in Florida, we moved to the Orlando area to serve as associate pastors where we enjoyed 10 years on staff providing pastoral care and counseling to the church and the community. During our tenure there in Florida we were privileged to meet and become friends with several ministers from South Africa, several of whom invited us to move to South Africa in order to establish a Bible School that would be rooted and grounded in the Gospel of Grace and the unconditional love of God.

In response to those invitations, we moved to South Africa in January of 2007 and didn’t return to the United States until December of 2009. While living in that beautiful country, we helped one couple establish a church during the first year, all the while creating classes for the Bible School in preparation for it’s start-up in January of 2008. The Bible School ran for a full two years from the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2009.

In addition to all of that activity, we held three annual international pastor’s and leader’s conferences designed to help get our South African brothers and sisters rooted and grounded in the unconditional love of God as declared and demonstrated toward all humanity through Jesus Christ in His life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Each of those three conferences provided us with endless opportunities to accept invitations from many of the attendees who wanted us to minister in their churches so that both they and their congregations could learn more about this great good news. As a result of these invitations we had the privilege of travelling throughout the nation carrying the wonderful news of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Since our return to the U.S. we continue to go back to South Africa each year in order to expand the influence of God’s love and to do as much follow-up ministry as possible, training the many pastors and leaders with whom we have enduring relationships.

For the past several years our return trips to South Africa have lasted around six weeks or so. Due to an increased demand for this ministry of love, we are planning longer stays in the future in order to provide pastors and leaders with more extensive and in-depth training in the foundational principles of the Gospel.

When not in South Africa, we make ourselves available to any group of individuals who are interested in learning more about Jesus and the Truth about Him that He said would make a person free. ​