By Stephen R. Lewis, Associate Director for Global Strategy

“Better Yet: Run.” You might be wondering where the theme for Global Strategy’s 2021 year-end campaign comes from. The phrase itself comes from Eugene Peterson’s translation of Ephesians 4:1 in The Message, where Paul says, “Here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel.”

At Global Strategy, we’ve been called to walk alongside the local church globally, in pursuit of the long-term health and sustainability of local churches. And in recent years, we’ve chosen to focus our year-end fundraising on encouraging the local church by helping to bring development projects either to completion or to completion of their current phase. So you might say that we’re choosing to run alongside the local church globally in this season. Walk. Better yet: run!

But why $150,000? Well, that figure will help us fund the current phase of ten projects and provide seed money to three initiatives intended to improve the sustainability of the global church (more below). But it’s a matching campaign, which means that because of the generosity of several donors, we’re challenging individuals to help us raise $75,000, which will then be matched dollar for dollar, for a total of $150,000. Will you help us reach that goal of $75,000? Because of the match, your gift will be doubled! Every gift, small and large, makes a difference in getting us to that goal.

Gifts to the campaign all go into a single fund, which then benefits ten projects and three global initiatives, as mentioned above. Those ten projects are:

• All Africa Assembly
• Tanzania Pastoral Continuing Education
• Uganda Health Care Ministry & Management
• Safe Drinking Water for Bengali Kids
• Sri Lanka: 3 Decades 3 Churches
• Haiti St. Ard Hospital
• Egypt Church Planting & Leader Development
• Multiply Madrid Network
• Timothy’s School
• Honduras Entrepreneurial School

And the three initiatives receiving seed money to work toward the long-term health and sustainability of the global church are:

• Crisis mitigation (disasters and climate shocks)
• Small business development
• Framework for connecting the global church

How do we split the funds between these projects, you might ask? At the end of the campaign, once we’ve received all of your gifts and the dollar-for-dollar match has been calculated, we will fund these projects based on their actual need at that time, generally in mid-January. The amount of money that these projects receive directly between now and then affects the level of funding needed from the year-end campaign to complete their current phase, and then beyond that, the three initiatives will be funded.

Come run with us in this season as we encourage churches involved in these projects and the witness of Christ in their communities. Visit www.chogglobal.org/betteryet to partcipate.