Church Twinning International lives on through a mantle of mentorship, global Christian relationships, and a mission adapted for the present age.

By Charlene S. Bowden

How Church Twinning International Found Its Next Leader

In 2019, I was looking for an opportunity to do more in international ministry. I had traveled to the Philippines in 2016, an experience that awakened something in me—a desire to connect with and serve the Body of Christ beyond the borders of the United States.

A mutual friend told me there was someone I should talk to and gave me his telephone number.

His name was Rev. Dr. Sidney Richard Holston.

I didn’t know that Dr. Holston was looking for someone to carry forward a vision that had consumed much of his life. I didn’t know that Church Twinning International (CTI), the ministry he had helped build for more than four decades, was approaching a transition.

I thought I was calling him for information.

Apparently, every conversation was an interview.

The Voice Across the Room

For months, Dr. Holston and I knew each other only by telephone. Then we both attended a mutual friend’s book reading.

I heard a man speaking from across the room and immediately recognized the voice.

It was him.

I rushed over afterward to finally meet the man I had spent months talking with.

The connections between us seemed to multiply. The author whose event brought us together had been involved with CTI since its early years and had produced television content for the ministry. We later discovered that Dr. Holston had known my uncle, a writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who had written about Dr. Holston’s wife, Isabelle Daniels Holston, a bronze medalist in the 1956 Olympic Games.

Then Dr. Holston overheard me telling a friend that I was preparing to travel to Ghana.

A few days later, the telephone rang.

He told me, “I am impressed in three ways.”

I knew the author. The AJC writer was my uncle. And I was going to Ghana.

Then he said something I wasn’t expecting.

He wanted to meet with me about becoming Director of CTI-USA when I returned.

Suddenly, I understood that our conversations had been about more than international ministry.

He had been listening for my heart.

A Mentor, a Mantle, and an Unexpected Calling

I returned from Ghana and interviewed with Dr. Holston in December 2019.

There was no large organization waiting for me. There was no salary and no immediate plan for compensation.

But somehow, that didn’t matter.

I felt that saying no to Dr. Holston’s invitation would be like saying no to God.

So, in January 2020, I humbly accepted the appointment.

Early that morning, before the appointment was official, I had awakened with the biblical story of Elijah and Elisha on my mind.

Elijah’s mantle had eventually fallen to Elisha, but the mantle represented more than succession. It represented responsibility—the continuation of an assignment beyond the person who first carried it.

A few weeks later, I told Dr. Holston what had happened.

It became something we could laugh about together.

But beneath the humor was a truth neither of us could ignore.

A transition was taking place.

I was also stepping into territory CTI had not previously entered: I was its first woman director.

Church Twinning International Through the Pandemic

Then came 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted ministries everywhere, but CTI faced a particular challenge. Its model had been built largely around relationships cultivated in person—pastors traveling, congregations meeting and churches forming bonds across cultures and nations.

Virtual ministry had never been part of the original vision.

For a time, the visible work of CTI simmered.

The mentorship did not.

By then in his mid-80s, Dr. Holston—whom I came to affectionately call Papa Holston—began placing pieces of CTI’s history into my hands.

He mailed twinning documents and old articles. He gave me names of pastors and churches. He introduced me to people through telephone calls and emails. He told me the stories behind the ministry.

And we built trust.

That mattered because CTI had been part of his life’s work for approximately 40 years. A person does not simply hand four decades of prayer, sacrifice, relationships, disappointment and hope to someone new.

The transfer took time.

Papa Holston was soft-spoken, but when he became excited about the possibilities of bringing people together, his voice changed. His passion surfaced.

And he ended every conversation with prayer.

Looking back, I realize that during the years when it seemed CTI was doing very little publicly, something essential was happening privately.

The mantle was still being passed.

The Vision Lives in Ghana, Liberia, and the United States

In 2023, new life began to move through CTI.

CTI-Liberia was organized. New websites gave the ministry a digital presence. Three remaining twinned churches were reconnected.

Relationships began moving again.

In 2024, Papa Holston envisioned CTI Global Ministries as a parent organization under which CTI organizations could develop in different nations. I became President of Global Ministries, which today includes member organizations in Ghana, Liberia and the United States.

Related UMI coverage: the changing face of global mission.

But the most meaningful evidence of renewal wasn’t organizational.

It was relational.

Pastors from the United States traveled to visit their sister churches in Ghana. Ghanaian pastors traveled to the United States to fellowship with theirs. CTI-Liberia twinned its first church in March 2024, and that December the U.S. pastor traveled to Liberia to meet the pastor and congregation with whom a genuine relationship had already developed.

In 2025, CTI-Liberia twinned another congregation with a church in Hampton, Georgia.

Papa Holston was elated.

He sent emails. He made telephone calls. He wanted people who had known CTI through the years to know one thing:

The vision lives.

As his health declined and he relied on oxygen, his calls sometimes had to be brief. But he used the breath he had to tell people what God was doing.

And he thanked me.

He thanked me for having a heart for CTI, for carrying the passion and, most importantly, for honoring the vision.

Those words meant more than any title he could have given me.

Serving the Present Age Through Global Christian Partnerships

Papa Holston passed in 2026.

He had once walked away from a career in corporate America—not because ministry promised wealth or recognition, but because he believed God had called him to help bring the Body of Christ together.

His life reminds me of a simple truth:

Only what we do for Christ will last.

Honoring his vision, however, cannot mean preserving CTI exactly as it existed 40 years ago.

A mantle is not a museum piece.

It is an assignment.

For me, that means “to serve the present age, my calling to fulfill.”

Serving the present age means using the resources available to us now. Technology allows relationships to begin across oceans before anyone purchases an airline ticket. Young people can encounter Christians from other cultures without leaving their communities. Churches, Christian schools, Bible colleges, seminaries, youth ministries and faith-based organizations can discover one another and collaborate in ways earlier generations could only imagine.

Related UMI coverage: a new mission model for the present age.

The methods can change without abandoning the mission.

And perhaps that is the greatest lesson Papa Holston entrusted to me.

CTI began with church-to-church twinning, but bringing the Body of Christ together ultimately means bringing people together—not merely institutions.

The mantle he passed was never simply an organization.

It was a conviction that relationships matter, that the Body of Christ is stronger together, and that each generation has a responsibility to find the means available in its own time to make that unity visible.

I met Dr. Sidney Richard Holston because I wanted to know how I could do more in international ministry.

I didn’t know I was being interviewed.

I didn’t know I was meeting a mentor.

And I certainly didn’t know that one day I would be entrusted with helping carry forward a vision he had nurtured for decades.

But Papa Holston knew he needed to prepare someone for what came next.

Today, I understand the assignment differently than I did in January 2020.

I am not called simply to preserve what he built.

I am called to honor why he built it.

And as long as the mission continues to bring the Body of Christ together, the vision lives.

Church Twinning International continues to unite Christians across cultures while adapting its methods for a new generation.