12Aug 2021 by Nigel Ring

Burundi – Community development amongst least-reached people

Poor
Recently I interviewed Donna Bloomfield, a very good friend, while she was in Burundi. This was for the Unreached Network of Newfrontiers to help potential church planters get a feel of what working cross-culturally implies. In the interview Donna talks about her calling and vision, and tells of the amazing ministry God has given her among the poorest of the poor. She is seeing hundreds of people becoming followers of Jesus and being empowered to become food-secure for their families using Foundations for Farming as pioneered in Zimbabwe by Brian Oldreive. https://vimeo.com/565020638 This is a tremendous example of ‘good practice’ in working cross-culturally. I think you will be inspired. Hope for Tomorrow Global is a charity (which I chair) but the ministry is firmly embedded in the church which has…
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05Aug 2021 by Nigel Ring

Principles of good practice when working with people experiencing poverty and marginalisation

Uncategorized
The Broadcast Network has just released the latest training module helping prepare those who feel called to mission. The module is entitled Working with those who are Poor and I had the privilege of recording one of the training sessions under the title Pursuing excellence - Principles of good practice when working with people experiencing poverty and marginalisation. Click on photo In this training session I have sought to show how local communities of believers (churches) can achieve this and have suggested ways in which such support and nurturing can be carried at a high standard.
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29Jul 2021 by Nigel Ring

Resetting and Rebooting Mission

Equipping
‘Reset’ and ‘Reboot’ are words we hear frequently these days as we move through the covid pandemic and its consequences. We recognise there will be a ‘new normal’. Such terminology could well be applied to the content we were exposed to at the excellent Unreached Network ’21 Conference held online at the end of June. The conference was privileged to have as its keynote speaker Dr Harvey Kwiyani from Liverpool University. Harvey has a special interest in contemporary mission in Europe and North America, including intercultural theology, migrations, and African Christians in the diaspora. Decolonising mission Harvey opened our eyes to the rapidly changing profiles of Christianity and the church across the world today, and the urgent need in mission to be aware of the different cultural expectations and interpretations…
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17May 2021 by Nigel Ring

40 years on… 23. Dream big dreams

News, Poor
God speaks It was 3.15am on March 23rd 2000. I was in Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. I was there to visit a church that had been planted with Sierra Leonean refugees a few years earlier; they had fled over the border to escape the horrors of civil war. I was suddenly awoken with ‘Dream big dreams’ ringing in my ears. Audible? I am not sure, but it was very real. This posting is, thus, very personal. It was only the third month of the year and yet, since Christmas, I had visited South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone before reaching Guinea. I was monitoring some of the ministries to whom we, as a family of churches, had given money, a necessary discipline…
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22Apr 2021 by Nigel Ring

40 years on… 22. Remember the poor

News, Poor
This blog series is a personal recollection of the first 40 years of Newfrontiers, not a definitive history. Those who know me will be aware of my love for and involvement in ministries with those who are poor or in need, and it is to this I will now turn. The exceptions In the 80s and 90s ministry with people who were living in some form of poverty was not a high priority for most Newfrontiers churches. Yet there were some notable exceptions as I discovered when, one year at Stoneleigh, I interviewed, during one main meeting, some key people for whom ministry with those in need was their passion: Piet Dreyer from Project Gateway in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Angela Kemm about the townships in Cape Province, South Africa, and…
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31Mar 2021 by Nigel Ring

40 years on… 21. Consolidation and Expansion

News
Although the Stoneleigh Bible Week took much energy in the 90s this decade also saw consolidation and expansion both in numbers of churches and our geographical spread. This was greatly helped by the eleven years of the Stoneleigh Bible Week. But this event was never seen as an end in itself; it was primarily a vehicle to help growth – for individuals and churches. It provided a context for sharing enlarged vision, for equipping people and for helping them embrace a worldview that crossed cultural and geographical boundaries. Threefold increase Records show that in 1990 there were 76 churches worldwide in the Newfrontiers family in only seven nations. 64 of these were in the UK. By the end of the decade there were 240 churches in 22 nations. It was…
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