The People Behind the Mission
The following people serve on the various boards of RTN and have a particular focus related to the mission in South Asia.
U.S. Ministry Team
Gary Finkbeiner
Founder & Director
Gary is the founder and the director of Reach the Nations Ministries. He is also the founder of New Life Ministries and established the New Life Christian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he served as the senior pastor for more than 25 years. Reach the nations ministry is devoted to training and supporting church planters, elders, pastors, and evangelists with the strong biblical foundation. Gary holds a Masters in Theological Studies (M.T.S), and a Masters in Theology degree (Th.M.) from Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Timothy Peng
Pastor & Teacher
Timothy received a master’s degree in theological studies (M.T.S) from Calvin Theological Seminary located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a senior pastor of the Lansing Chinese Christian Church and is actively involved in training leaders in Pakistan, China, and Taiwan.
Peter Negron
Peter is the founding leader of Pure in Heart Ministries and has pastored Pure in Heart Church for over 30 years. Besides serving churches and helping to plant churches in the Chicago region, Peter works with church leaders in US and South Asia. He has also helped with humanitarian work in rebuilding 70 homes in Puerto Rico due to its most recent hurricane.
Pastor & Evangelist
Dr. Warren Van Kampen
Missional Leader & Medical Advisor
Warren is a retired physician who has had lifelong involvement in various aspects of medical, educational, and church-planting ministries. He was instrumental in the establishment of Reach the Nations’ outreach into South Asia and remains involved with RTN as a friend and advisor to the ministry.
Daniel Finkbeiner
Pastor & Church Leader
Daniel serves as the pastor of Kingsway Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is affiliated with the Acts 15 network of ministries and church leaders in the north central region of the United States.
Kyle Fennell
Pastor & Church Leader
Kyle is a paramedic in Kent County, Michigan and serves as an elder of Kingsway Community Church where he preaches regularly. Kyle is also part of the Acts 15 network of ministries and leaders in the north central region of the United States.
Andrew Finkbeiner
Business Leader
Andrew is a business consultant for companies in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. He has a passion for leadership development in corporations and ministry and provides consultation in the development of micro-businesses related to the mission in South Asia.
PAKISTAN Ministry Team
The following people comprise the RTN team working in various roles in fulfilling the vision and mission of RTN in the country of Pakistan.
PAKISTAN Advisory Team
Shakeel Rehmat
Rustam Masih
Shahzaib Nadeem
Mehboob Naz
Irfan Naz
Manzoor Masih
Rashid Manzoor
Regional Leader & Church Planter
Shakeel is a lead church planter, pastor, teacher, and evangelist for RTN. As a graduate of CLTI, he also teaches regularly in that training program.
Pastor
Rustam, with a unique understanding of local dialects, works with Shakeel as an associate church planter, pastor, and evangelist in the Khairpur region of Sindh Province.
Pastor
After becoming a Christian more than a decade ago, Shahzaib began sharing the Gospel with others, doing the work of an evangelist. A few years ago, he graduated the CLTI coursework and then began to work in association with Shakeel in evangelism, church planting, and humanitarian work in the area of Sanghar, Sindh Province.
Pastor
Mehboob serves as a lead church planter, pastor, and evangelist primarily among Christian-background cities and towns surrounding Sialkot in Punjab Province. He felt God’s call to serve in this capacity in 2000 and began a ministry at that time. He joined the RTN team in 2018.
Pastor
Irfan is a brother to Mehboob and has worked with him in village ministry since 2005. He, too, joined the RTN team in 2018 and is actively engaged in evangelism and church planting. He is a graduate of CLTI.
Advisor
Manzoor Masih has served in an advisory capacity for Reach the Nations since our very first ministry efforts in Pakistan. Manzoor has a masters degree in political science and a history of advocating for the rights of minorities in Pakistan. He has worked in the government’s Office of the Federal Ombudsman, has served as the General Secretary of the Pakistan Welfare Society, and, most recently, has served on the National Commission for Human Rights in Pakistan appointed by the President and Prime Minister of the Nation. In addition to his governmental roles, he serves as the Chairman of United Christian Fellowship in Pakistan.
Pastor & Advisor
Rev. Rashid Manzoor is the Associate Vicar of Christ Church Rawalpindi. Christ Church is an Anglican church established in 1852 and is one of the oldest parishes in the region. In addition to his role as vicar, Rashid is involved with the oversight of three schools and one orphanage all in Rawalpindi. He has been associated with RTN for a number of years and is actively involved with RTN's literacy program.
Statement of Faith
The Holy Scriptures
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
The Trinity
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.
Jesus Christ
We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven.
As the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross he canceled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him.
The Holy Spirit
Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the other Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit's agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God's family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.
Salvation
We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.
We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God. Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.
The Church
We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.
The Sacraments
We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things.
The Kingdom of God
We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order this is, and because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.
The Gospel to the Nations
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is Christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is: "Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events), and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).
Consummation
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace. *
* The Confession and Statement of Faith provided by The Gospel Coalition and used by permission.