Christian Doctor’s Digest – April 2015

Pastor Jim Cymbala is a native New Yorker, raised in the borough of Brooklyn. After graduation from the University of Rhode Island, he entered the business world and soon married Carol, his childhood sweetheart. Before long, though he did not have formal theological training, he felt a call to ministry. In the early 1970s, he took over the leadership of The Brooklyn Tabernacle, a struggling congregation which numbered less than 20 people and met in a small, run-down building surrounded by the physical and moral blight of the inner city. Realizing the limited impact any one church can have in a large metropolis like New York, the church’s leadership began planting churches in other needy areas of the city. As they trained pastors and sent them out with small groups of workers from the congregation, a replication of the work in downtown Brooklyn was begun. At the same time, they began planting missionary stations in impoverished places like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Guyana and the Philippines. Today he oversees a congregation of several thousand people and is the author of several books, including Spirit Rising, his newest release. Pastor Cymbala and Carol with three children and six grandchildren.