Category: Poor

Charles Glass continues his series about the Seed Fund by sharing how the team bring support to emerging businesses. Training and Mentoring Many in the contexts in which we are working have little business experience. For them, particularly, Training and Mentoring are vital. But we have yet to find someone for whom it is not needed at all! So we have a number of the team members who have been involved in training initiatives, ranging from large groups to coaching individuals. They can bring personal input and support to ensure not only that the business has a good chance of success but that this opportunity to start a business also provides a context for strengthening the individual in his skills and abilities. Both Martin Fakely and Charles Glass have at…

In part 1 Charles Glass showed how Seed Fund is designed to assist with church planting by starting businesses in parallel with a church planting initiative. Now he begins to share some of the practical considerations necessary for a successful business. Getting it right from the start Supporting businesses that help church planting and also uplift poorer communities involves a lot more than just lending money. There are the important questions as to whether the business is viable, whether the individual is right to start that sort of business and what support would help make it a success. Over the years the Seed Fund Team has been involved in all those areas and has developed resources, guidelines and simple systems to help. Our particular focus in this posting is on…

It is a pleasure to have a close friend and the CEO of Seed Fund, Charles Glass (biography below), as a guest writer for this short series on how start-up businesses can help support church planting by supporting individuals and families.   Introducing Seed Fund As Apostolic Spheres in the Newfrontiers family are increasingly planting churches in the poorer and less accessible regions of the world the need to create businesses to support these churches and give dignity to the people in them has become more and more important. Since Seed Fund was formed 10 years ago by Martyn Dunsford (Founder and, until recently, Pastor of King’s Community Church, Southampton, UK and founder of Seed Fund and of Care and Relief for the Young [CRY]) it has been doing exactly…

Last time I started to report on the recently held Jubilee+ Conference ‘Churches that change Communities’. I gave the whole post to the opening key-note contribution by Martin Charlesworth, a call for the church to recover the influence we once had in shaping communities, particularly touching those in need. The bulk of this post will be given to the second main contribution, complementary in many ways to Martin’s. The party is saved by the poor! Guest speaker Philip North, Bishop of Burnley, took us to the parable of the banquet in Luke’s gospel (Lk 14:15-24). Reminding us that those initially invited gave excuses he showed us that those who are marginalised were the ones who ‘made the party go’. The majority of U.K. churches are white middle class. The bishop…

Recently I published a blog about the Thebault family who have just returned from Guinea in West Africa after 15 years. I then asked Maina to write about a typical day in the life of the school for which she is the Principal. What she has written makes sober reading. How would your children get on in this sort of environment? Once you have read this you may feel you would like to help. It costs £10 ($14) per month to fully educate a child. If you would like to become a supporter please write to me. The details are at the end of the posting. Maina writes: The school environment: frightful or happy place? The answer to the above question for many will absolutely be a ‘happy place’ which,…