Guiding Principles

As a body of believers, we sincerely want to help people both near and far. But we've also learned that in our desire to help, sometimes we can cause damage we didn't anticipate. We've developed these principles to guide us toward an active, compassionate, and helpful way to love our neighbors.

We are committed to both King & the Kingdom

The Gospel is both word and deed, both the King and the Kingdom. As followers of Christ, we care for both the body and the soul. We're committed to communicating the Gospel and also restoring and developing the broken natural and social aspects of communities both locally and globally.

We recognize the difference between relief & restoration

Relief is the immediate and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from a man-made or natural crisis. Restoration is working with people to restore the positive elements in a community back to their pre-crisis conditions.

We partner with other organizations

We complement our strengths by working with organizations who plant churches, offer relief, develop leaders, and strengthen communities. To ensure accountability, partner organizations have systems in place to manage any financial support and to effectively report on the goals stated at the beginning of the project.

We exercise asset-based development

We value the strengths and gifts already at work in individuals and communities, so we identify assets that can be developed rather than problems we feel we can solve on our own. We begin with questions rather than answers, and we craft solutions together rather than applying our own blueprint approach.

We recognize our mutual brokenness

Poverty is the result of brokenness in our personal lives and in the world around us. We all experience poverty in some way, whether we lack material resources, meaningful relationships, purpose, materialistic values, perspective, or more. We acknowledge our mutual brokenness and recognize poverty alleviation and community development should help everyone involved to be more of who God made them to be.