Keith Major’s personal history

I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on January 21, 1970. At the age of seven, my entire family accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior in a Catholic Charismatic fellowship.

I was eager to learn of spiritual things. At seven years old, I would lay hands on sick people and pray for their healing. I even prayed for my pets to become Christians. About a year later my family started to attend Bethany World Prayer Center.

I attended Bethany Christian School for seven years and graduated there. In junior high, I was a children’s church leader and went on a mission’s trip to Mexico for 10 days with my youth pastor, Ted Haggard. He taught me so much about spiritual warfare, boldness, and helped me to become missions-minded. He signed me up to begin receiving Richard Wurmbrand’s The Voice of the Martyrs “Christ to the Communist World” monthly newsletters. At the age of thirteen, I was consumed about knowing more about Christians in communist countries. I began praying for Eastern Europe.

In my high school years I was very active in two youth groups in town, Bethany’s and Crossfire (the youth pastor was Glen Berteau) at Jimmy Swaggart’s Family Worship Center. During my first semester at Louisiana State University, I took a break from church, because I got very disappointed with the life styles of most of the Christians I knew. I depended only on my personal life with Jesus. I stopped attending the youth groups because I felt them no longer benefiting me. I had compassion for people but just didn’t know what I could offer them. I lacked proper equipping and training.

My third semester of college brought more transformation than I’d ever experienced. It was at this time God wanted me to get involved in the youth group again; but instead of working on others, God began working on me. I began praying more often and longer. His voice became very clear. The Holy Spirit began gently stretching me. I then began evangelizing every week and teaching others to evangelize. I was finally excited about something meaningful in my life! Half-way during my fourth semester God totally took away my desire for money, business, and material possessions. The Holy Spirit clearly revealed to me to go to the Bible school.

I began MTI School of Ministry at the age of twenty, but really didn’t know what I would do after I finished. I began a fellowship group and led the worship. This was a great growing and learning time. In January 1991, I went on a 28-day fast asking God what was my purpose. At the end of the fast, the Holy Spirit clearly spoke to me, “You are going to Russia.” I just received it! It was strange. In just thirty seconds, purpose was birthed into me. I said, OK. Four days after I graduated, I was standing in Red Square in Moscow.

I flew to Moscow June 11, 1991 to help out in a new church plant in which I became the youth pastor. I prayed for God to send me a female helper who was fluent in Russian and understood Slavic culture. My prayers were answered in a month when a Polish girl named Iwona arrived after just completing her YWAM-DTS. We saw the youth group grow from zero to 350 youth in eight months. When everything looked like it was going so well, we were told to leave Moscow by our leadership (details here).

Iwona returned to Poland and I to the States. We were separated for 15 months. During that time she had many wonderful encounters with different ministries in Europe that were “doing the stuff”. I on the other hand, was stuck in a very spiritually stale Baton Rouge. I started to attend Hosanna First Assembly of God and began to walk through the process of becoming an A/G missionary. During that process, Iwona flew to the States and we got married three months later on June 11, 1994. Six months later, we were desperate and miserable regarding ministry. We didn’t have a clear response from the A/G headquarters about their decision concerning our missionary status, and we didn’t have an opportunity to be fully used in our giftings and calling at the church we were at. We had friends, but there was no challenge, no expectations, just “the same old stuff”.

During our vacation, we visited Melbourne, Florida and a church there having some renewal meetings. By divine appointment, we met with Randy Clark and he invited us to move to St. Louis. We spent time with Randy on the road as well as trained their worship team to sing in Russian.

In October 1995, Randy and the St. Louis Vineyard ordained us and then released us to return to Moscow, Russia to plant a Vineyard as well as coordinate two “Catch the Fire” conferences. I was a truly amazing time in our lives.

Our first daughter, Teah Yvette was born on September 8, 1997 in Wroclaw, Poland. While traveling back to Moscow, the Holy Spirit told me it was time to move to Poland. I shared it with our leaders in Moscow and they were prepared because several of they had dreams that week of us moving to Poland.

In December 1997, we moved to Poland and developed a team to start a Vineyard church plant in Iwona’s hometown. It was difficult to get a team established that fully understood the Vineyard model we wanted to follow. I began teaching English at a language school named Berlitz as a way to meet people and to supplement our support, but it took a lot of time away from focusing on the plant. We had our son Kevin Louis on September 24, 1999.

In July 2000, I received an offer to work at Berlitz in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I needed a sabbatical plus we needed some extra money to purchase some land in Poland and possible come back with a down payment to build a house there. Living on the Red Sea and being located 40 miles from Mecca, added to the adventure of learning about Islam and Muslims. We moved there and had a very difficult time there. We had absolutely no Christian contacts and it was the most demonic place we’ve ever been.

In August 2001, we moved to Doha, Qatar. By divine appointments we met local underground missionaries and a local church plant, with whom we got involved. We were active in their worship team, youth group and the children’s church. We also developed very close relationships with missionaries there; helping them to embrace prophetic and power evangelism as well as deliverance and healing into their ministries. Our daughter Sophie Ruth was born there on February 9, 2003.

We moved back to the States in March 2003, because the school I was teaching at evacuated all British and American instructors. We lived in Baton Rouge and were involved in a local church named Healing Place Church. Summer of 2003, we traveled through thirteen states reconnecting with all our friends and supporters we haven’t seen for several years. During that trip we attended a few conferences and visited IHOP.

In February 2004, God lead us to relocate to Kansas City to learn and experience what has been our heart’s desire for a long time. I am currently full-time staff and work in IHOP’s media department. We are totally amazed at what God has been revealing to us. The apostolic prayer of “Lord, release your spirit of wisdom and revelation…” has truly been coming to pass in our lives. The two months prior to moving to Kansas City, God woke me up eighteen times exactly at 3:33 AM. I checked out every scripture in Bible that was chapter three, verse thirty-three and nothing spoke to me. Iwona told me to check out Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” This is what has been happening to me since arriving to Kansas City.

where I’ve lived

Russia (Moscow), Poland (Wroclaw), Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), Qatar (Doha), USA (Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Kansas City).

my passion - missiology

Missiology, or mission science, is the area of practical theology which investigates the mandate, message and work of the Christian missionary. Missiology is a multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural reflexion on all aspects of the propagation of the Christian faith, embracing theology, anthropology, history, geography, theories and methods of communication, comparative religion, Christian apologetics, methodology, and interdenominational relations.

Because mission science considers both the positive and the negative consequences, as well as the strategies of the spread of Christianity, missiology also touches on the environmental impact of evangelization and charitable work, including practical facets of international politics and economic development.

One goal of missiology is to distinguish between practices that are essential to Christianity and therefore must be practiced by Christians in all cultures, and other strictly cultural expressions of Christianity that can vary between societies while still expressing the Christian faith.