23Apr 2019 by Nigel Ring

Short-Term Cross-Cultural Teams – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly pt 1

Equipping
I am delighted that David Lockyer accepted my invitation to write about the good, the bad and the ugly of short-term mission teams. He is particularly well qualified having not only been a member of such teams but subsequently having both sent and received them as a church leader. He knows about them from all angles! Good? Bad? Ugly? I’m a big believer in the benefits of taking teams on short-term ‘missions’ trips to connect with a church in another culture. 100 years ago travel would have rendered this impossible but now it is easy. I’ve been a part of short-term teams myself, both within the UK and Europe. Instrumental in my own involvement in cross-cultural mission was an Operation Mobilisation ‘Love Europe’ conference that gathered thousands of young people…
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03Apr 2019 by Nigel Ring

Conference – Empowering the Church to Empower the Poor

Equipping, Poor
I strongly commend this conference to you which is organised by Pathways from Poverty, an initiative of the Relational Mission apostolic sphere of Newfrontiers led by Mike Betts in the UK. Its purpose is to encourage and equip everyone to be part of a church that welcomes the poor and sees lives transformed, as people are empowered to walk on pathways out of poverty. The Need In the UK and across continental Europe, the church is finding itself coming face to face with an ever-growing tide of needs within its local community. From food and fuel poverty, to loneliness, isolation and relationship breakdown, and from debt, to housing insecurity, long term unemployment and addictions. These issues are robbing people of hope for the future, damaging the mental health and well…
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13Feb 2019 by Nigel Ring

Social Enterprise 2 – Identifying talents, wooing investors

Equipping, Poor
Nick Priggis continues his series on Social Enterprise One of the joys of being part of an emerging and growing Social Enterprise is seeing how the Lord has made the connections connect. One of the identified challenges in the particular area where we live is the lack of aspiration and ambition around work and employment. Generational underemployment and a lack of academic success leave many people with a sense of despair and hopelessness. Our solution and the connectiions the Lord brought about was to address this through our Hope Initiatives vocational training programme. Connection 1: What latent gifts and untapped talents are in the church? The starting point wasn’t, for us, found in identifying the problems in our community. Rather, the Lord identified the resources in our local community church,…
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05Feb 2019 by Nigel Ring

Social Enterprise 1 – Enterprising, Social and Christian

Equipping, Poor
Social Enterprise to uplift the poor For many months I have been wanting to feature the important topic of Social Enterprise as I see this as one significant way of helping people who are poor or in need. So I was delighted when Nick Priggis responded to my invitation to write a series. I have known Nick (bio below) for nearly twenty years; he worked with me in the early 2000s to develop the Act Together Initiative which helped the Newfrontiers family of churches bring ministry with the Poor into the heart of church life. Nick’s and Tracey’s passionate hearts for the poor are conspicuous, so it was no surprise to me when empowering the poor became a central part of their church’s agenda when they moved into church leadership…
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06Jun 2018 by Nigel Ring

Global Humility – Book Recommendation

Books, Cross-culture, Equipping
Global Humility is a ‘must read’ book for anyone who is involved in or has an interest in cross-cultural matters. It will particularly help equip those who are church-planting or who live in an ethnically diverse environment. But it is so well researched and written that you will enjoy it even if you do not fall into the above categories. My own failings... I have travelled quite widely, and have visited and stayed in the homes of people in widely differing cultures from my own. I thought I had some grasp of cross-cultural matters – until I read this book! Now I have discovered how ignorant I really am – and how many cultural mistakes I have made. ...and Andy's credentials For much of his life Andy McCullough has lived…
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30May 2018 by Nigel Ring

Finance 6. Developing financial administration – some key ingredients

Church, Equipping, Finance
This is the concluding part of the series on Finance. I am grateful to Stephen Mathews of Stewardship for writing this for me and hope that churches, in particular, will improve their practices as a result.   The issue In our churches administration can be like housework – only thought about when it is not done. To Paul it was much more than that. It was: A ‘gift’ alongside those of apostles and prophets (1 Corinthians 12) An action which “honours the Lord” (2 Corinthians 8) Respect for authorities (Romans 13) Every week at Stewardship we see churches with failures in financial administration; some are minor, but some are major which result in pain and real cost. In those cases the church is like a ‘leaky bucket’, allowing funds to…
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