As the ministry of BCM Worldwide (BCMW) continues to expand to the far corners of the globe, Bryan and Susan Nevin have the opportunity of ministering to Christian brothers and sisters in Mexico, just to the south of the border with the U.S. Bryan comes to the BCMW team with previous missions experience, especially within the Hispanic community. His story displays a deep and abiding passion to see the nations not only hear the gospel and come to Christ as Savior, but also to develop deep and personal relationships with the Lord that bleed into local church communities and beyond.<\/p>\n
Bryan\u2019s story is deeply rooted in the Christian faith as he recognized at a very young age that he was a sinner rightly under God\u2019s just wrath and so in desperate need of a reconciliation with Him. His heart and eyes were opened to the truth of the gospel around the age of four when he received Christ as Savior. By God\u2019s providence, his father was a pastor, so his upbringing was soaked with gospel truth. As he grew into a young man, he had no intention of undertaking cross-cultural missions or Christian ministry, yet the Lord began planting seeds in his heart during his first ever mission trip, which was to Honduras. He continued to plan on pursuing a very different career path following this trip, as he went on to college to study Math Education.<\/span><\/p>\n However, during his time in college, he visited Honduras a second time and the Lord changed his heart. He decided when he came back to the U.S. to switch his major to a Bible degree, pursuing a Master\u2019s in Ministry at the Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA. Attaining his master\u2019s degree was a slow and steady process as both Bryan and Susan began their life in formal ministry during that time. They moved overseas in 1997 to help in different ministries in the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Then in 2002, the family moved to Mexico and lived there for the next eighteen years, continuing to plant churches in various places in the Mexico City area.<\/p>\n Bryan first was introduced to Biblical counseling in 2000 when his mission agency at the time required him to attend a Biblical counseling training conference.\u00a0 This conference opened his eyes to something he had never heard of before.\u00a0 He started to use Biblical counseling after this, but the first several years it wasn\u2019t always Biblical, and it wasn\u2019t always very good.\u00a0 Counseling wasn\u2019t a central part of his ministry until starting a new church plant on the North side of Mexico City in 2012.\u00a0 There, they started a community center which included Biblical counseling with the goal of starting a church through this ministry. People would think that Bryan was a psychologist, but he states he would let them know that he is not, but that God\u2019s Word has the answer for all of life\u2019s problems.\u00a0 He would just begin with the gospel, in evangelism, and then move into ongoing, purposeful discipleship.\u00a0 He knew that it is only by the Spirit of God working in the hearts of the people through His Word, the Bible, that true and lasting change happens.<\/p>\n In 2016, while on a trip back to the United States, Bryan attended a counseling conference where he met a very influential pastor working in Mexico, Kike Torres, who was just starting to bring Biblical counseling training to Mexico.\u00a0 Because of Bryan\u2019s desire to be a part of this movement in Mexico, he decided to pursue further training through certification with the <\/span>Association of Certified Biblical Counselors<\/a> (ACBC).\u00a0 As he pursued viable means for offering this type of training and certification in Mexico, he came across BCM Worldwide during an Internet search on how he could establish counseling certification in another country and culture.\u00a0 After attending an BCMW conference in 2018, he committed to one trip to Honduras where he fell in love with the ministry\u2019s vision for and commitment to building up local churches. Bryan believes a highly effective part of BCMW\u2019s training is the \u201cProjects for Growth\u201d that each participant must complete in order to graduate to the next module. These components put the information and theory the students are learning into practice, including through the fifteen hours of counseling they must do before finishing the program. It is this kind of practicality that Bryan knew would be advantageous for church leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n After prayer and consideration, Bryan committed to becoming BCMW\u2019s Coordinator for Mexico. The first Church Leadership Training<\/a> (CLT) module he scheduled was to be held in October of 2020, however it had to be postponed until the fall of 2021, due to the Covid pandemic. Even with the delay, Bryan determined it would be necessary to conduct it online. And along with this online module, Bryan has had the opportunity to help serve with several other CLT modules in Honduras and Costa Rica in the past few years as well as an in person CLT module in Ciudad Juarez in December. However, he is highly excited to lead his first in-person CLT module in the Mexico City area in the fall of 2022.<\/p>\n