Explore the Need

Mark and Crystal Blackburn have been in full-time ministry for over 27 years. They served for 14 years at Gateway College, first as Campus Pastor and then as Vice President, before spending six years as administrator of Pentecostal Publishing House. For the past seven years, they have served as church planters and Metro Missionaries to Kansas City. At the 2016 General Conference, God called the Blackburns back to the city they love, the city where Crystal was raised and where they were married and began their life together. In 2018, they left St. Louis and moved to the Kansas City metro area as Metro Missionaries. They launched Cross Church the following year. At the 2023 General Conference, God solidified a plan that had been germinating for several years—a plan to begin a church planting residency in the Kansas City Metro area. The purpose of this residency program is to equip and empower leaders to plant healthy, multiplying Apostolic churches in Kansas City and beyond! For more information, please visit www.focuskc.org. They have now been appointed as Career Church Planters to see this project come to fruition and to see dozens of new churches planted in Kansas City.