Doug and Penny Lucas

The idea for Team Expansion was born in 1978, during a small prayer meeting at a Bible college in Eastern Kentucky. There were eight guys in a crowded dorm room and all of them signed their names on a world map. Our president, Doug Lucas, happened to sign beside the country of Uruguay. Four years later, Team Expansion fielded its first team, to Uruguay, by God’s grace.

In 1982, five missionaries left for Montevideo, Uruguay, to start the very first Team Expansion work. In 1983, Team Expansion launched International Services, the people who would recruit, train, coach, and sustain the cross-cultural disciple makers around the world.

For the next 40 years, Team Expansion continued to send out teams to unreached parts of the world. As we learned more about disciple-making movements and multiplication, Team Expansion evaluated and shifted strategies and tools. But our goal was always the same: to take the Gospel to people who had never heard it before.

To date, Team Expansion has sent more than 1000 workers to 70+ fields, including many creative-access locations. Several nations that were once receiving missionaries are now sending out their own Team Expansion workers into the world.

Team Expansion couldn’t exist without the stories of local churches who have partnered with us to encourage and sustain the work. Alongside the local church, our workers serve in businesses, in medicine, in schools, and in churches. Through God’s power, they’re shining the Light of Christ in some of the darkest places in the world.

In 2018, Team Expansion celebrated it’s 40th anniversary. To commemorate this achievement, we created an overview of our history that can be viewed here.