Bob Allums
Our beloved Pastor Bob is now a full time missionary, serving as the Director of A Praying Life for SeeJesus Ministries. When we asked him about his background, he simply replied “I am a sinner saved by the glorious grace of God but you probably need a little more than that, huh?” A Praying Life calls itself "a ministry for badly praying Christians" and offers studies that teach people to pray like Jesus did.
Jamie & Jacki Gildard
Jamie and Jacki are part of a church-planting team with MTW in the growing aerospace technology corridor west of Toulouse, France. They are building relationships, sharing the good news of Christ, and encouraging evangelism and leadership among French Christians.
From Jamie and Jacki: "France lies in the heart of spiritually barren Western Europe. Centuries of persecution and ridicule have left the 60 million people with less than one percent evangelical Christian witness. Yet God will call His people from every nation (Rev. 5:9). There is searching among the French and a void in their hearts that only Christ can fill."
The Gildards served on a church planting team in Marseille, France from 2001 until the team’s transfer to west of Toulouse. In 2007, a team from Spring Valley had the privilege of visiting the Gildards in Marseille, to see their work up-close and meet with local Christians there. The Gildards have four adult children: Rebecca, Jimmy, Owen, and Angelle.
Ian Hammond
Ian and Hanna married during his time at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. During their time in Jackson, they planted an RUF International among the students at Mississippi College. While serving with RUF International, both Ian and Hanna were convinced that serving internationals was the best job in the world, so upon graduation, they moved to Evanston, IL to plant an RUF-I at Northwestern University and serve there full-time. Ian enjoys good movies, good books, and being a mediocre basketball player. http://www.ruf.org/mi
Dale & Carmen Phillips
Dale Phillips serves as the Director of Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness for ReachGlobal, the missions arm of the EFCA. Dale and Carmen joined Spring Valley as members in 2001, before their first assignment overseas. They consider Spring Valley their sending church, and one of our short-term mission teams visited them in Budapest in 2011. What a blessing to be able to be part of their ministry!
From Dale and Carmen: "We love to tell the stories of all that God has done in our lives. As children, growing up in Latin America, we both developed a huge love for missions. Serving for 10 years in Europe with our own children deepened our walk with God in a way we never imagined possible. Our stories are filled with joy and pain, but interwoven throughout is the constant thread of the grace of God. The more God works in us and shows us our own brokenness, the more his light shines through us. This truly is amazing grace. Out of what God has done in us, we now help facilitate a process called the Deep Community Experience. Deep Community is a four-phased experience that takes leaders and their communities toward the core of who God has designed them to be, resulting in grace-filled kingdom impact.
"Serving as the Director of Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness for ReachGlobal, it is a privilege to travel to mission fields all over the world and walk alongside ministry leaders in their own personal transformation process, seeing God use our story to create a safe place for others in ministry."
Andrew Barber
After spending 9 years working as an English teacher at the Stony Brook School on Long Island, Andrew Barber has transitioned into the role of Campus Minister for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) at Northwestern University. He has a Master's of Divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary and enjoys helping students live their lives in light of the gospel. He is married to Jessica and together they have four children who love to read good books and wrestle in the backyard: Murray (9), George (7), Wendell (5), and Posey (3).
Ted Powers
Ted Powers has been an ordained Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America since 1980. Currently, Ted is serving the PCA as Director of the Midwest Alliance providing training resources, and coaching to church planters and church planting networks as well as providing vision and leadership for PCA churches in church planting in the Midwest Region. Ted served as Mission to North America’s Church Planting Coordinator from 2002 until spring of 2019.
In addition, Ted is Director of the Chicago Friends of Haiti. He has spearheaded and coordinated our Presbytery’s mission activity in Haiti for 18 years in cooperation with El Shaddai Ministries International (ESMI), which is led by Dony St Germain, a PCA pastor on staff with Mission to North America. During this time, we have worked together to train pastors who have planted 210 churches which have now been organized into a denomination modeled on the PCA called The Reformed Church of Haiti totaling over 50,000 members. We have also worked alongside ESMI to start 54 schools with over 10,000 students. A key focus has been caring for the 85 orphans in Cavaillon who have been sponsored by our churches and various members in our churches. We have usually taken two medical teams there each year who have cared for these children as well as children in other orphanages and have been used to lay the groundwork for starting churches in new communities. We have also dug wells and installed water-purification systems in multiple locations and contributed to the starting of various micro and macro businesses in what has been a wholistic ministry to our brothers and sister in Haiti.
Ted earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Covenant Theological Seminary, has a Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston, and his undergraduate degree is from the University of Michigan. Ted and his wife, Ann, were married in 1978. They have one adult daughter, a middle school choir director and vocalist.