As a church, our journey began sometime in 2005 when a group of believers in Arad, Romania sought to glorify God through the making of disciples. After many blessings and many sorrows, even a full reset in 2013, our church's vertical mission has stood its ground.
Harvest Arad is part of a national and international family of churches, that have one vertical purpose - to glorify God. Through the Vertical Church Europe platform, we seek to plant other vertical churches in Romania and in Europe.
We believe that the Bible needs to be studied fully and in it's historic and social contexts, but it must be applied in a practical and relevant way in our day to day lives.
The songs that we pick are participatory and contemporary but without horizontal compromises, focusing instead on God (vertical). The church is encouraged to worship whole-heartedly, in the limits of Scripture. You can find sample of our worship on our worship albums: they give a sense of the worship we enjoy each Sunday.
We fervently believe in the power of prayer, and therefore we are intentional in seeking opportunities to pray in our services, small groups and other situations.
Salvation is personal, but the Christian life is lived out in community. Jesus chose the small group as the place in which disciples are made. That's why we divided our entire church among small groups. We are not a church with small groups, but one of small groups.
In our church we have a Training Centre for church planters, where our staff interact, train and mentor future church planters both from Romania, and from abroad. Are you interested in planting a Harvest church, or do you want a Harvest church in your city?
The elders are the ones who protect and watch over the doctrine, direction, and discipline in the church. They are faithful men, chosen and validated by Him according to their calling. Among them are the pastors, who by the Holy Spirit's guidance decide by consensus in the team.
Starting with the Trinity, where each Person has a role/a function that is well established, and continuing with the disciples that were sent in pairs, then with the mission teams of the New Testament, where the apostles and missionaries always worked as a team, the model of delegating tasks is biblical.
The foundation of biblical counseling is The Holy Bible, where God "has given us everything we need for a godly life" (3 Peter 1:3), and the power of the Holy Spirit and of Christ's sacrifice, that can change one's life, offering healing, liberaion and transformation through repentance, prayer and sustaining believers.
That is why in our church there is an annual meeting where we establish the vision based on what the Spirit shows and in accordance with the needs of the church, having clear goals that are intentionally and often evaluated throughout the year by the elders and leaders.
We fight for absolutes and stand united in these fundamental teachings of our faith, but we recognise that there are believers and churches that can have different convictions and opinions in non-essential things, and we respect a church's autonomy.
Cristian Barbosu is the Senior Pastor of Harvest Church Arad, in charge of vision, preaching and representation. A graduate from Moody Bible Institute (BA), Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM) and Trinity International University (PhD), Cristian is also an author (13 books), conference speaker and he has a broad preaching ministry on radio and TV. He is the founder and leader of Vertical Church Europe, a church planting and revitalization movement. Married to Anne, they have 3 daughters and a granddaughter. Cristi is passionate about mountains, movies and weird food.
Pastor Raul is in charge with Discipleship and Small Group Ministry in Harvest Church Arad, being actively involved in pastoral ministry for 23 years. He is a graduate of Emanuel University of Oradea and recently completed his Doctoral studies (DMin) in Christian Discipleship. He has been married to Dana for 24 years and they have two children, Elias and Zara. Raul is passionate about history, driving, gardening and travelling.
Marcel is the pastor in charge of the Pastoral Ministry. He graduated from the Pentecostal Theological Institute in Bucharest and has a Master’s degree in counseling and social work (UVT Timisoara). He is involved in several ministries: pastoral care, preaching, connection and integration, counseling, prayer. He is married to Neliana and they have two married daughters. His passions are books and travelling.
We do not offer means of transportation to the church.
