DOVE International
DOVE International belongs to the Charismatic and neo-charismatic networks family of churches.
Governance: network.
A network of churches and ministries that began in 1980 as DOVE Christian Fellowship under Larry Kreider in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and became an international apostolic network in the 1990s.
Not tracked by RCMS 2020. Figures are self-reported; no congregation count is stored.
A family of churches that began as one Pennsylvania fellowship built on house-to-house discipleship, and grew into an international apostolic network.
Heritage
DOVE began in 1980 as DOVE Christian Fellowship under Larry Kreider in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, growing out of youth ministry among unchurched young people whom existing congregations struggled to hold. Its growth came through cell groups — church happening house to house through the week — and in the 1990s the single megachurch deliberately decentralized into a network of congregations, reorganizing as an international apostolic movement. DOVE (Declaring Our Victory Emmanuel) now relates congregations and ministries on several continents through relational oversight rather than denominational control.
Theological family
Evangelical and charismatic, with an Anabaptist-country accent: new birth, Spirit-filled discipleship, and everyday community as the normal Christian life.
Who decides what
Apostolic and relational: an international leadership team and regional apostolic leaders relate to self-governing congregations by covenant; the structure exists to serve the relationships, and DOVE does not call itself a denomination.
What a first-time visitor would find
Contemporary worship and practical teaching on Sundays, but the load-bearing structure is the small group in a living room during the week.
What it has always cared about
The cell as church, not church program; raising leaders young; voluntarily dismantling a big church to multiply small ones — the reverse of the usual ambition.
Its gift to the wider church
DOVE's 1990s decision to decentralize its megachurch into a planting network gave the church-multiplication movement one of its cleanest working examples of giving size away for the sake of mission.
Commonly confused with
With Dove-named churches and ministries of no relation — the acronym is this network's own; and with denominational structures, which its apostolic covenant model deliberately is not.
Range of views inside it
Congregations vary by country and culture; the cell-based pattern and relational covenant are the constants.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. RCMS 2020 does not track this network and its figures are self-reported, so this record carries no count. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "DOVE congregations typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: DOVE International — our story (DOVE International) · House to House: Growing Healthy Small Groups and House Churches (Larry Kreider, House to House Publications)
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