DOVE Christian Fellowship International (DCFI) started with a group of young Christian believers who had a burden to reach out in love to the un-churched youth in the local community in Pennsylvania, USA. Through friendship evangelism, many young people came to know Jesus as their Lord.
In 1978, a cell group was started in Larry and LaVerne Kreider’s home and when their living room was filled to capacity, they turned over the responsibility to leaders they had trained and started a second cell in another home. The roots began to grow for this "underground church" where believers were nourished in these "underground" cell groups as they gathered together to pray, evangelize and build relationships with each other. Twelve years later more than 2,300 believers were meeting in over 125 cell groups all over south-central Pennsylvania. Churches were planted in Scotland, Brazil, Kenya, and New Zealand. However, the vision the Lord had given us could not be fulfilled under our current church structure. We recognized the Lord had called us to be an apostolic movement. In 1996 the church became eight individual churches. These churches, along with the majority planted overseas, expressed a desire to work together to plant churches throughout the world and became a part of the DCFI family. Becoming an Apostolic MovementWe see an "apostolic movement" as a family of churches with a common focus—a mandate from God to labor together to plant and establish churches throughout the world. Although some may call us a new denomination, we prefer the terminology "apostolic movement."
Networking with the Body of ChristWe believe another important aspect to kingdom building is networking with other churches and ministries outside of the DCFI family. In this way, we can resource one other. There is no single church or family of churches who has it all! We welcome the exchange of Christian leaders between the DCFI apostolic movement and others in the body of Christ as we learn from the rest of God’s family and share what the Lord has given to us. We believe the Lord has called us to work as a team together—with a shared vision, shared values, a shared procedure, and to build together by relationship. Simply put, these are our "roots",
and our continued focus today.
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