God’s
Chessman
By Mike Dragon,
Associate International Director,
Every Community for Christ
Living a Legacy: Folmer Strunk
Those who are obedient followers of God’s plan
for their lives often find their ministry path intersect-
ing with that of other followers. The game of chess is
an excellent analogy for this reality. The chess board
is our world, and our battle is with the enemy. How-
ever, God is the one moving his chessmen to claim
victory in battles and retain his kingship. This de-
scribes my movement into the path of a stately man
from the northwest United States. Here’s our story.
God’s plan creatively positioned me to be in Asia in
2006 to spend 17 days with an OMS coworker, Folmer
Strunk, to lead church planting training. Folmer, a ma-
ture man of God with over three decades of service as
a pastor in Oregon, joined OMS after his “retirement.”
God led Folmer to use his pastoral experience to shep-
herd ministry leaders in seven countries and lay the
foundation for church multiplication in many of them.
Folmer became a spiritual father to many of
these leaders as he trained, coached, encouraged,
and prayed for the
leaders, their fami-
lies, and their minis-
tries. His role developed to become what today we
call a church multiplication facilitator (CMF), with
primary ministry focused in Myanmar, Singapore,
Malaysia, India, and Sri Lanka. He traveled three to
four times a year to lead vision casting, training, and
development of action plans for several ministries.
As Folmer cast the vision for church multiplica-
tion to his home church in the U.S., they became
interested in providing support for training centers
in the Asia Pacific region. His passionate battle cry
was to see ordinary people do extraordinary things
through the power of the Holy Spirit. The impact of
these training centers has accelerated the process in
multiplying disciples, leaders, and churches around
the world. His ministry was blessed by prayer and
financial support from his home church, his family,
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