Great Lakes District | The Christian Missionary Alliance

In seven countries throughout northeast Africa, LIA is mobilizing, training and equipping local churches to implement wholistic ministries focusing on the poor, orphaned and vulnerable within their very own communities.

When disaster strikes around the world, Save the Children is there to save lives with food, medical care and education and remains to help communities rebuild through long-term recovery programs. As quickly and as effectively as Save the Children responds to tsunamis and civil conflict, it works to resolve the ongoing struggles children face every day — poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease — and replaces them with hope for the future.

Operation Christmas Child is the ministry of Samaritan’s Purse  (Franklin Graham, President). Your church group can fill shoe boxes with gifts that send hope and much-needed items to children in designated places (it varies each year), along with a personal note about the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. This is a hands-on project, for which your church or group will be collecting anything from toys to hygiene items.

This Christmas, 1.7 million children will have a parent in prison. Angel Tree, a program of Prison Fellowship, seeks to reconcile prisoners and their families to God and to each other. Through partnerships with churches across the nation, they connect parents in prison with their children through the delivery of Christmas gifts. The kids receive a message of love from their parents along with the Gospel message of the true meaning of Christmas—Jesus Christ!

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.  Wherever World Vision works, their prayer is that their efforts will be used by God to heal and strengthen people’s relationships with Him and with one another. They do this by demonstrating God’s unconditional love for all people through our service to the poor — which includes providing for daily needs, working to build peace and promote justice, and partnering with churches and individuals to encourage spiritual transformation.

Founded in 1909, The Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries has embarked upon its 103rd year of continued service providing food, shelter and services to intervene where homelessness and drug addiction occur. DRMM is a faith-based, non-profit organization, recognized by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) and has devoted a wealth of resources to meet the basic needs of humanity while motivating individuals to rebuild their lives, one life at a time. The Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries is one of the largest providers in the fight against homelessness and substance abuse in the country.

YouthWorks focuses on ministry. Although they use work projects as a way to see the love of Christ, it is not an end all. They do not call their trips “work camps” or spotlight a repaired house, instead the “works” in their name are about what God will do in our lives if we allow it. They desire to be Christ centered in everything that they do.

Over the years, Christian Aid has been the catalyst behind the present reformation in foreign missions methodology.  They have provided more than $100 million in assistance to more than 800 evangelistic ministries based in 122 mission field” countries overseas.  These boards deploy a combined total of 100,000 missionaries serving in the most unevangelized nations of the world.

One Day’s Wages (ODW) is an international grassroots movement dedicated to ending extreme global poverty. They are not trying to re-invent the wheel but rather to collaborate and partner with others.  In short, One Day’s Wages is joining them in the fight.  The numbers are staggering:

• 25,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to poverty-related causes.
  
• Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Nearly 900 million people do not have access to clean water.

Churches Helping Churches was created to address the immediate and long-term needs of churches when disaster befalls a country, region, city, or people in the spirit of Galatians 6:10—“…let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”  Both throughout history and following specific tragedies, it is often the local church that cares for widows, orphans, and the poor. Rebuilding local churches helps address the practical and spiritual needs of a country, one person, one neighborhood, and one community at a time.