Draft, Not Yet Approved
This page is a working draft. It has been corrected against Dr. Richard Wilkins' review, and it does not go public until Apostle Delmar himself has read and approved it. Items still marked Needs Review are the ones not yet settled. Please do not share this link.
For pastors and church leaders
Watch a full service before you decide.
If you are considering handing your pulpit to a visiting minister, you have real questions. What actually happens in the service. How long it runs. What your team needs to have ready. What it does to your church the week after.
This page answers those questions plainly, and it starts with the thing no brochure can do: three complete services, filmed on the road, unedited. Watch one before you read anything else.
Our criteria is simple. Wherever God opens a door. We have ministered to six inmates in a county jail and we are ready for a stadium. What matters is people who are hungry.
Three traveling Miracle Breakthrough Services, start to finish. Nothing trimmed, nothing staged. Send one to your elders.
A stop on the five-day Tampa and Lakeland run. Worship, the word, and an extended prayer line.
Apostle Delmar Coward Jr. and Charlotte Coward lead Encounter, also known as The Vision Ministry International, in Liberty, Texas. More than forty years of ministry, with a documented history of healings, deliverance, and salvations across churches, city parks, ballrooms, stadiums, prisons, and death row.
The ministry travels most months of the year, and the same cities keep asking them back: Wilmington, Dover, Blythe and Phoenix, Tampa and Lakeland, Des Moines, and San Antonio. In most of those places the invitation came from a member or an elder who wanted their city reached, not from a pastor. Encounter found the venue and went.
Restoring Kingdom living to all the people in all the world.
More than forty years in ministry. Apostle Delmar came up under Kenneth Copeland Ministries. He is affiliated with HIM Ministries, led by Tracie Harris, and with World Ministry Fellowship International, where he serves as director for Southeast Texas. He holds credentials with Maranatha and Cornerstone churches, and he is chaplain for the Liberty, Texas jail and the county's sheriff, police, and fire departments. He is accountable to several ministries, which he refers to as his covering.
Here it is. Apostle Delmar wrote and signed a one-sheet that states the vision, the covering, where Encounter meets, and what happens in a service. It is a page on this site, so you can forward the link or print it to PDF and hand it to your board without asking us for a copy.
Read “What is Encounter?”Always. There has never been a service that happened without Apostle Delmar first talking with the pastor directly. He answers every question you have on that call, and the two of you work out the specifics of the meeting together. This page exists so you can do your reading beforehand, not so it can replace that conversation.
No, and we want to be honest about that early. Apostle Delmar goes where the Holy Spirit sends him. Somebody wanting us to come is not the same as the Lord leading us to come. He listens and he follows what the Holy Spirit says, so the first conversation is as much about discernment as it is about logistics.
Three months is the absolute minimum, and three months is tight. The schedule usually already has something in it that close, and within the same month is virtually impossible. A year out is ideal. Encounter is now publishing the travel schedule twelve months ahead so you can plan against real dates.
Most invitations do not come from pastors. They come from members and elders who want their city reached, and Encounter works with them to find a venue. A home, a hotel conference room, an apartment community room, or a church rented outside its own service hours all work. Start by praying about the location, then reach out and we will help you size it.
Never less than three hours. It has never once run shorter than that. Counting everything that happens afterward, the average is closer to three and a half. Do not schedule anything hard against the back end, and do not plan to cut the prayer line short.
Usually just the Sunday. It is rare now for one church to host both a Saturday and a Sunday. When Encounter is in your area on a Saturday, that is typically a Miracle Breakthrough Service that Encounter hosts at its own venue for whoever answers the invitation, separate from the Sunday church service. We are glad to do a Saturday at your church if you want one.
Worship to build the atmosphere, then Apostle Delmar brings the word, then altar ministry. The prayer line is part of altar ministry rather than a separate segment, and healings happen inside that ministry.
Apostle Delmar Coward Jr., typically with Charlotte Coward ministering alongside him.
Provide an interpreter and the service runs in any language. Encounter has seen salvations, healings, and deliverance in Spanish-language services.
At a minimum, one microphone available for our worship leader to sing, and a hookup on your soundboard for the Apostle. He carries his own lavalier about 95% of the time and prefers to use it, so yours is a backup. The same handheld is used by whoever introduces Encounter, unless your team does that introduction themselves.
You do not need to provide either. Encounter catches its own, every time. What we do ask is that your ushers help organize people into a single file line at the altar so our team can stand behind them. We will give your ushers those instructions when we come up.
When someone goes down under the power of God, let them lie there. Do not touch them, pat them, hand them a tissue, or talk to them. It distracts them from what the Holy Spirit is doing, and where deliverance is taking place it can affect the person touching them. We will minister down the sides of the room rather than clear the front early. When it is time for them to get up, we will handle it.
Encounter brings its own worship and leads it by default, which is why we ask for a microphone. Worship is not a warm-up here, it sets the atmosphere the rest of the service depends on, so it is led by someone who knows where the service is going. If you would rather your team lead, say so on the call and we will work it out.
There is no fee and there is no minimum. Apostle Delmar has never set a price to come. When the Holy Spirit says go, we go, and we trust God to provide. Many churches take up an offering or give as they feel led, and we receive whatever they send back to the ministry, but we do not ask for it and we will come whether or not it covers us.
Encounter books its own. We know who is traveling and what the team needs, and we prefer a vetted vacation rental with enough beds, so it is simpler for us to arrange it. The one thing we do want from you is local knowledge: which parts of your city are good to stay in and which to avoid. If your church wants to cover the cost afterward we will gratefully receive it, but no honorarium is requested.
If your church already records its services, attendance carries implied consent to being recorded, including at the altar and in the prayer line. That is the standing legal guidance a long-time partner church operates under. Individual testimonies are different: before Encounter publishes any person telling their own story, we get that person's consent in writing.
We will say the quiet part out loud. Most pastors never invite a visiting minister, and the reason is usually fear that someone ministering at a different level will unsettle the house or take the people.
Paul wrote that the church was given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Every congregation should have access to all five. An apostle sees things a pastor is not positioned to see and does things a pastor is not called to do. He comes in, does what he is called to do, and goes back out. You keep leading your people exactly as God leads you.
I want my people to have everything God has for them, and I know exactly what I am. I am a pastor. I am not an apostle. So come and do the thing you were sent to do, and then go back out. My people are the ones who gain, and this house grows.
Keep preaching Kingdom. Apostle Delmar says so from the pulpit while he is with you, because the fruit of the service depends on what your people are fed after it. Ask God for wisdom and direction and preach past where you normally preach. Pastors who do this almost always see their ministry expand and their congregation grow, because the things that were hindering the house have been cast off.
That they feed themselves. A relationship with God is not a Sunday and a Wednesday. If you eat twice a week you are starving, and it is the same with the word. Encounter teaches people to be in the presence of God daily, in their own prayer time, in their own house, with their Bible open. A service should spark that, never replace it.
Yes. Where Encounter has ministered, the presence of God stays in that place. Churches and venues have reported that the next meeting held there went beyond what they normally see, because what was hindering the room was cast out.
Generate promotional posters for your service with your church name, date, and venue.
Download logos and high-resolution photos of Apostle Delmar for your promotion.
A lav mic and one operator with a gimbal. How to capture testimony so the fruit outlives the service.
See where Apostle Delmar is booked and which dates are still open before you reach out.
Check the travel schedule, pick two or three candidate dates at least three months out, and reach out. Tell us about your church, your venue, and what you are believing God for. A real person answers, and the next step is a conversation with Apostle Delmar himself.
Call and Andrea will answer. She can get you what you need or point you to the right person.
If you are hungry, let's roll.