Dr. David W. Graves is a general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.

Dr. David Graves was chosen for the highest elected office in the denomination at the 27th General Assembly held in Orlando, Florida, USA, in 2009. At the time of his election, Dr. Graves was the senior pastor of College Church of the Nazarene in Olathe, Kansas, where he had served since 2006.

Prior to College Church he served as director of Sunday School Ministries for the Church of the Nazarene International Headquarters from 2001 to 2006. He has had pastoral assignments in Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. Graves is a graduate of Olivet Nazarene University and received his Master of Divinity degree from Nazarene Theological Seminary. He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Olivet. He is the author of three books and has written for numerous publications.

Dr. Graves and his wife, Sharon, have four married children, Michael, John, Stephen, and Rachel, and 12 grandchildren. He is a fourth-generation Nazarene on both sides of his family. His parents are Harold and Bettie Graves.

Verne’s life verse is, “May the God of peace…equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” Hebrews 13:20-21
Natalie was Verne’s High School sweetheart and they married in 1976. They now have four children and eleven grandchildren. Verne and Natalie make their home in Lenexa Kansas. Natalie has a passion for sharing the life of Jesus through caring and nurturing relationships.
An ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, Verne has studied business administration, religion and spiritual formation and has a BA, MA, and honorary doctorates from Northwest Nazarene University and Korea Nazarene University.
Verne and Natalie began their ministry as missionaries in 1983, in the country of Papua New Guinea. They have seen the Lord faithfully direct, enable, and equip them for various ministry opportunities; giving guidance in their lives daily. Verne ministered in church development as District Superintendent in Papua New Guinea and as Field Strategy Coordinator for the Melanesia Field. The field included the nations of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, East Timor, and Vanuatu.
Elected Asia-Pacific Regional Director in 2005, Verne emphasized the need for discipleship, creative outreach, mentoring of leadership, and development of the local church as God’s redemptive people in the community. His responsibilities included giving strategic, apostolic, and administrative leadership to the region, with the support of a fine team of colleagues.
February 2012, Verne was elected Director of Nazarene Global Missions. In this ministry assignment, he seeks to assist the church in accomplishing the mission of God in the world through the denominational network. Understanding that God is essentially a missionary God and invites His people to have His heart, also realizing that God’s people worship and serve from local churches around the world, Verne seeks to lead the global church to plant the church where the church is not yet.

In October 2013, Arthur was elected as Regional Director for the Eurasia Region.

Prior to his election, Arthur worked as professor at an interdenominational evangelical college and he has been a district superintendent (DS) of the Netherlands District for 13 years. Before that he pastored in England and the Netherlands.

Annemarie and Arthur have three grown children: Job (33), Anna (31), and Bart (27) who all live in the Netherlands.

Four years in Eurasia Region are barely enough to grasp the immense cultural and religious diversity of the Region. The Snijders have travelled to many areas. They have enjoyed the many different flavours in food, clothing, family life, religious expressions, and they have struggled with some of the economic realities of poverty and displacement. Besides the cultural curiosity they bring their pastoring and teaching experience to the districts they visit.

Being trained as a developmental coach and a real team-player, Arthur understands that the work of Nazarene Missions is only as strong as the team that leads and supports it. A strong group of missional support leaders are serving to bring the regional mission work to a high level of functional and strategic excellence.

These past five years have been the fulfilling of a deep desire to serve the Lord in a cross-cultural setting. “I speak for both of us as I say that this assignment has opened our eyes for what God is doing in a radical new way. We have discovered and used muscles of faith that were unknown before. Our understanding of the way holiness is lived out in very diverse contexts has been stretched.”

Annemarie was born in the Netherlands and has a BA in physiotherapy. Early on Annemarie felt a call to the ministry and to missions. Her first mission trip was in 1981 for nine months to Suriname (South America). It was there that she had a strong sense of the Holy Spirit asking: ‘Annemarie, do you really love these people who are so different from you? “It was a stretching of my heart that really impacted me”.

Annemarie studied for a MA in World Evangelism at Tyndale Theological Seminary. In 2002 she felt a strong calling to start a church plant in an area where there wasn’t any Church of the Nazarene. Since that time, she has developed her leadership skills in the area of Pioneering. She was ordained as an elder in 2007. She started a second church plant, and in 2013 she was asked to join the Mission in the Eurasia Region. She is responsible and passionate about Mobilization, and has helped to start the M+Power program to help the Region to become a sending Region.

She is married to Arthur, and they have three children. They are originally from the Netherlands.

Rev. K and is wife are pastoring the Church of the Nazarene for 20 years now. People tell about them that they are partners in ministry and life not only a couple. Their church is very active and considered to be a community church that serves its surroundings. They have two daughters who are also very much involved in ministry.

In 2015 Rev. K became the Field Strategic coordinator for the East Med Field.This gave him an official excuse to travel preaching the gospel and equip leaders.

Rev. K was the first person who became a believer in his family after he was involved in serious trouble as a teenager that put him in jail. God called him to serve Him, his main call to equip leaders and plant churches. His wife has a call to reach children as God pointed to her that children are the good soil of the land.

Rev. Rajiv Yangad was born and brought up in a Nazarene pastor’s family. He is a third generation Nazarene Christian. Rev. Yangad married Mona Sofia in 2000. They have two Daughters, Shreya (17) and Shruti (13).
Rev. Yangad was saved and called to full-time ministry in Rev. Dr. Louie Bustle’s meeting at Chikhli on 20th January 1991. He was sanctified in 1993.
He studied at South India Biblical Seminary and earned B.Th. and then studied towards M.Th. at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, TX.

Since 1994 he has ministered within the Church of the Nazarene in the following capacities: local NYI president. district NYI president. local church pastor, district Jesus Film Coordinator, church planter, SANBC faculty, editor of Marahti District Magazine named Mangal Warta, revival and leadership conference speaker, District Advisory Board member, Board Member General Board of the Church of the Nazarene Mission in India.

At present, he is ministering as District Superintendent of the Central Maharashtra District of the Church of the Nazarene since 2008, as well as Communication Coordinator for India Field since October 2017. Beyond The Church of the Nazarene he has ministered as a revival speaker to several churches, conference speaker, faculty at Haggai Institute, seminars in several Marathi, English and Hindi seminars teaching Leadership, lecturer at Maharashtra Bible College, Bodwad, as President of Grace Bible College Amaravati, as Vice Charman for Unnati Trust, Pune, and as Vice Chairman of All Maharashtra Church Planting Movement (AMCPM).

Gusztinné Tulipán Mária ministers as a pastor of the Budapest Nazarene Church on the Hungary District of the Church of the Nazarene. She pioneered with her husband, Imre, to start the Nazarene work in their country alongside those investing from the global church. They are both ordained, and Imre serves as district superintendent. Their son, Rudolf, a musicologist, also serves as an ordained deacon on the district.

The Church of the Nazarene played an initiative role to form and register a Wesleyan Alliance in our country. The first informal gathering was initiated in September 1998, and now we serve together with 10 member organisations. Mária fulfilled an active role in the process and has served as a vice-president since 2009. This partnership has allowed to do publishing and theological education together, and to build the culture of theological conferences, leading to Wesleyan theological writings in the Hungarian context. Mária also serves as a part time faculty member of the European Nazarene College and fulfills an administrative leadership role for the Learning Centre in her country.

Mária enjoys her various areas of ministry in the pastoring, teaching, administrative roles, as well as, the partnering with numerous Christian denominations to serve together in her context.