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44 
 

 

TOGETHER: 

A Collaborative Approach to Christian Relief, 

Development, and Advocacy 

Peter Greer 

 

 

Against a backdrop of division in our world today, followers of Christ are invited to engage in relief, 

development, and advocacy efforts together. There is a new movement of organizations and leaders 

abandoning an individualistic approach for a collaborative one, and this kind of cross-sector teamwork 

is radically changing the landscape of international development. From Christ’s prayer for our unity 

to His exhortation for us to seek first the Kingdom of God, we are invited to participate in a mission 

greater than anything we could ever accomplish on our own.  

 

 
 

 

Introduction 

 
Years ago, I had two simple charts on my wall—one 

for fundraising revenue and another for the families 

served. By 2010, I was focused on ensuring that HOPE 

International was serving one hundred thousand 

families and had annual fundraising revenue exceeding 

$10 million. With clarity, I saw the annual growth rates 

we’d need in these two categories over the next five 

years to achieve that goal.  

In setting these goals, my thinking was rather 

simple: Growth is good; ambitious growth is even 

better. Besides, $10 million and one hundred thousand 

families served by 2010 sounded catchy. There wasn’t 

detailed deliberation in setting these goals, and although 

they were established rather arbitrarily, they quickly 

became my obsession. 

It didn’t take long to realize that growing at a 

measured, incremental pace would not get us to these 

ambitious targets. So, I began to dream of other ways to 

boost our growth.  

On a trip with a group of supporters, I excitedly 

pitched a new initiative that had the potential to help us 

reach our goal of one hundred thousand families and 

$10 million of revenue: apricots in Uzbekistan. 

Through a connection, I had learned of a partnership 

opportunity for an apricot farm in the former Soviet 

Union. It would require a significant investment, but it 

would create opportunities to serve thousands of 

families and hopefully raise additional funds.  

Mentally, I said yes to this opportunity almost 

immediately and began exploring ways to raise the 

funds. I could almost see the growth charts moving up 

and to the right and could almost taste the apricots. Did 

I mention I love apricots? 

After my pitch to the group of supporters, Wil, a 

friend and investor, asked me something that knocked 

me right out of my apricot trance. “What is the current 

unmet demand for what you’re currently doing?” 

Roughly speaking, at the time, microfinance institutions 

and savings groups were at best serving 25 percent of 

the global market. And Christian organizations were 

meeting less than 1 percent of the global demand. 

His second question was even more pointed: 

“What expertise does your team have in apricots and 

farming?” His message was clear: Why would we 

expand to apricots when there is so much unmet 

demand for our core mission? What was the 

compelling reason to expand programmatically? Wil 

challenged me to remember our organizational limits 

and reconsider if this type of expansion was the right 

choice for us. His questions forced me to realize I just 

wanted more. 

By God’s design we are limited. To leaders with 

insatiable appetites for growth, these limitations chafe. 

But temperate leaders know there is beauty in 

embracing our limits. The truth Wil helped me 

discover is that an insatiable or gluttonous approach to 

leadership will lead our organization astray. Apricots in 

Uzbekistan wouldn’t have been an area of strength for 

us. Moreover, shimmying our way into the apricot 

market could very well have taken business away from 

our “rival” organizations like Partners Worldwide, 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

45 
 

Sovereign’s Capital, and other Christian ministries 

equipped to serve entrepreneurs with these types of 

businesses. 

In retrospect, my initial response when hearing 

about an apricot farm should have been, “That’s 

outside of our area of expertise, but I would be honored 

to introduce you to people who are doing terrific work 

and might be able to help” (Greer and Horst 2018, 131-

132). 

This approach is powerfully captured in a speech 

about the future of charity by Baroness Stowell, the 

Chair of Charity Commission in the United Kingdom. 

She shared that she recently met with the leader of a 

well-known charity and described: 

 

Under their leadership, the charity will not 

compete to deliver a contract if that service is 

already being provided well by another local 

charity. Why? Because that leader understands 

that the charity’s purpose is to help their 

beneficiaries, not to grow bigger and stronger for 

the sake of it – or worse, at the expense of 

another, smaller charity.  

 

And because they are aware that as a leader of a 

charitable organisation, they have a wider 

responsibility towards the flourishing of charity as 

a whole, so more people benefit. To making 

society a bit better, a bit kinder (Gov.UK 2018).
1

 

 

As leaders and organizations grow to understand their 

limits, and their role in a bigger mission, the entire 

world benefits.  

Of course, recognizing that others are more 

qualified for a job requires a modest amount of 

humility, but it leads to far greater outcomes. What if 

would-be “competitors” recognized and validated one 

another’s strengths, deferring opportunities to the most 

qualified player? Imagine the Kingdom impact if this 

attitude were common.  

In time, HOPE grew. Perhaps not at the rate I had 

hoped when setting my short-sighted goals, but, thanks 

in large part to Wil’s courage in questioning my 

motivations, our growth was measured and mostly 

healthy. It did not compromise the quality of our 

services nor the heart of who God called us to be. We 

aren’t purveyors of the fine fruit, but we are honored 

that God has chosen to work through us—in our 

limitedness—to provide financial services and 

discipleship to impact families around the world. 

The truth is that we don’t have to be experts in 

everything; in fact, we’re far better off if we’re not. 

Specializing in one mission gives us the opportunity to 

                                                        
1

 Quoted verbatim from Baronness Stowell’s speech, The Future of Charity, as presented by Gov.UK. Please forgive any 

grammatical inconsistencies. 

focus on building our strengths while, at the same time, 

empowering others to do the work that they do best. 

Followers of Christ are invited to engage in relief, 

development, and advocacy together to fulfill the 

mission God has given us. We were never meant to do 

this work alone. 

Already, God is on the move as we work, share, 

and partner together to advance the Kingdom. Leaving 

egos and organizational logos behind, Christ-centered 

leaders and organizations are moving the needle in 

relief, development, and advocacy work like never 

before, growing our reach and furthering our impact.  

 

Wind at our Backs 
 

To effectively capture a Kingdom vision and not 

just hawk our individual organizational agendas, 

Christian leaders need to better understand the 

transformational work God is doing through all of us 

together.  

Collectively, Christ-centered organizations play an 

enormous role in alleviating suffering and advancing the 

common good in our world today. This is not based on 

conjecture but on research done both here and abroad. 

Where Christian faith-based organizations abound, 

communities flourish. 

For example, in American cities where there are 

more faith-based homeless shelters, there is a smaller 

homeless population (Goodrich 2017). In American 

cities, the average church contributes approximately 

$150,000 of social services to their communities 

annually (Brookings 2016). Forty percent of the top fifty 

American charities are faith-based (Grim 2016). Across 

all sectors, churches and faith-based organizations 

create $1.2 trillion in economic value annually in the 

United States alone (FaithCounts 2017).  

Faith-based urban mentoring organizations, 

Christian schools, pregnancy resource centers, prison 

ministries, refugee settlement agencies, job training 

organizations, and all sorts of other creative endeavors 

dot street corners across the country. And when 

disasters hit, it is often Christians who lead the 

response. According to the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency (FEMA), 80 percent of hurricane 

and other disaster recovery happens because of 

nonprofits. And 75 percent of the nonprofits doing the 

recovery work are faith-based (Singer 2017).  

But the effect beyond our borders is perhaps even 

more striking. 

Over a dozen studies confirm political scientist 

Robert Woodberry’s findings that countries in which 

“’Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in 

the past are on average more economically developed 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

46 
 

today, with comparatively better health, lower infant 

mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, and higher 

educational attainment (especially for women)’” (Dilley 

2014). Beyond Protestantism, the Catholic Church has 

made a colossal impact in the world—specifically within 

the health care system. Rachel Leinyuy Kahnyuy, of the 

Norwegian School of Theology notes, “The Catholic 

Church is the largest single non-governmental provider 

of health care services in the world” (Kahnyuy 2017, 

24). In addition to providing health care services, 

Catholic ministries have engaged in disaster relief, 

conflict resolution, education, and more throughout 

Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  

“In an age where there’s a growing belief that 

religion is not a positive for American society, adding 

up the numbers is a tangible reminder of the impact of 

religion,” said Dr. Brian Grim, scholar at the Religious 

Liberty Project at Georgetown University. “Every single 

day individuals and organizations of faith quietly serve 

their communities as part of religious congregations, 

faith-based charities, and businesses inspired by 

religion” (FaithCounts 2016). The Pew Research 

Center reports that 85% of men and women across the 

world consider themselves “religious.” Therefore, faith-

based organizations have the important opportunity to 

provide a tangible expression of their faith through their 

service. 

From leading initiatives on clean water, Bible 

translation, job creation, and literacy to fighting human 

trafficking and hunger, Christians are actively 

responding to material, spiritual, and social needs in 

communities around the world. God is at work through 

the Church. And this remarkable work gives our 

neighbors a glimpse into the Kingdom of God.  

 

Moving the Needle 
“No single organization is responsible for any 

major social problem, nor can any single organization 

cure it,” wrote John Kania and Mark Kramer on the 

collective impact trend in the Stanford Social 

Innovation Review. “Large-scale social change requires 

broad cross-sector coordination” (Kania and Kramer 

2011, 38). 

For faith-based leaders and organizations, we are 

small players in a much more significant story. Take 

poverty alleviation, for example. Global poverty is 

multi-dimensional in nature, affecting an individual not 

only physically, but also personally, socially, and 

spiritually. Because of this, the solution to poverty 

cannot be one-dimensional. It requires a holistic 

approach. We are abundantly grateful for the wide 

variety of specializations and connections that so many 

organizations provide to help fuel our mission at 

HOPE to invest in the dreams of families in the world’s 

underserved communities as we proclaim and live the 

Gospel:  

Curriculum 

 

The Chalmers Center has poured time and 

resources into listening to and learning from those living 

in poverty, answering the question: how can our poverty 

alleviation efforts truly help our brothers and sisters 

rather than continue an unhealthy cycle of 

dependency? Through their resources and curriculum, 

Chalmers empowers the Church to address poverty 

holistically. They have a host of resources for 

individuals, organizations, and churches who seek to 

learn how to care for those in poverty biblically and 

effectively. We have benefited from their expertise in 

savings group curriculum and consider them allies and 

friends in this mission.  

 

Partnerships 
 

We cannot hope to alleviate the injustices in our 

world on our own, but partnerships with like-minded, 

missionally-aligned organizations and churches are a 

powerful force for the Kingdom. While formal 

partnerships aren’t always the right answer, 

organizations can support each other by sharing 

resources, knowledge, and connections. Most recently, 

we have been fortunate to partner with Compassion 

International in training their staff in implementing 

church-based savings groups to positively impact the 

families of the children they serve. (There also are 

many opportunities to collaborate with secular, and 

even other-faith, organizations. When determining how 

to respond, we might consider the advice of Dr. Barry 

Corey, president of Biola University, who shares the 

significance of developing a firm center and soft edges 

in his book Love Kindness. When you know your 

identity, you have the freedom to pursue different 

partnerships with care and intentionality, even if you 

don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.) 

 

Church mobilization 

 

Organizations like World Relief are mobilizing the 

global Church to care for the most marginalized and the 

least reached. Their commitment to going into the hard 

places to spread the love of Christ has paved the way 

for organizations who follow in their footsteps. These 

organizations have rallied the Church to seek justice, 

love mercy, and walk humbly alongside brothers and 

sisters in countries around the globe. Partnering with 

them in joint programs has made both of us stronger 

and better able to implement our missions—especially 

in emergency or fragile contexts.  

We could keep adding to this list as we consider 

the growing number of organizations around the world 

bringing relief to war-torn areas, combatting human 

trafficking, establishing property rights, eradicating 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

47 
 

homelessness, reconciling racial differences, and 

advocating for refugees. Poverty alleviation, specifically, 

relies on the success of many of these individual 

missions. Truly, we need all in the body of Christ in 

order to see the Kingdom of God advance. 

What would it look like if we regularly recognized 

other organizations in our space and celebrated what we 

were all doing together? What if celebration and 

collaboration, rather than rivalry and competition, were 

our default approaches? Or at the very least, what if we 

could all take small but important steps towards greater 

unity and deeper relationships in this work? What 

would change? Already, this is beginning to happen 

around the globe as organizations pool together 

resources, knowledge, and ideas.  

 

Rooting for Rivals Case Study: Esperanza 

International 
 

Led by Alex Nunez, Esperanza International is a 

Christ-centered nonprofit organization in the 

Dominican Republic with a comprehensive approach 

to poverty alleviation. Over 40 percent of the men and 

women living in the Dominican Republic live below the 

poverty line, making between $2-4 each day (Esperanza 

2017). Esperanza restores dignity and hope to these 

men and women by offering financial and holistic 

services to lift themselves out of poverty.  

But they aren’t doing it alone. 

“People need a lot more than just money,” Nunez 

notes. “They not only need capital to start a business, 

but they also need other services like health screenings 

and education trainings. Most importantly, they need to 

know that there’s a God who loves them and who came 

to give them life in abundance” (Greer 2018).  

Esperanza specializes in financial training and 

access to capital, but they partner with other 

organizations to care for the physical and spiritual needs 

of their associates as well. For example, Esperanza 

partners with the Crown Council and Smiles for Life to 

provide routine dental care services for their associates. 

Twice per year, Esperanza takes the Smiles for Life 

dentists to the rural communities they serve in the 

Dominican Republic. Men and women who typically 

can’t access dental services now receive high-quality 

services—cleanings, extractions, fillings, reconstructive 

surgeries, and more—through Esperanza’s partnership. 

Not only that, but in biweekly health trainings 

Esperanza educates associates and their communities 

about the importance of oral health. 

“We are not the dental experts,” Nunez shares. 

“But we partner with a group that is not only amazing at 

what they do, but they have the resources to do it well. 

This leads to beautiful results for the people we serve” 

(Greer 2018). 

Dental hygiene aside, Esperanza has made an 

intentional effort to care for their associates’ spiritual 

health by establishing alliances with local churches of 

different denominations, groups who may traditionally 

have been defined as competitors. Esperanza’s team 

meets with pastors who want to serve their community 

outside of the four walls of their organization, but don’t 

know where or how to start.  

Instead of jumping into church partnerships with 

their own ideas and plans, the Esperanza team asks 

local pastors: “What are the needs in your community? 

How can we support you?” 

Since learning the pastors’ desires and the 

community’s needs, Esperanza staff have given local 

pastors the opportunity to join loan meetings and share 

the Gospel. Many of Esperanza’s associates may not 

want to step foot inside of a church, but this provides a 

way for pastors to address spiritual hunger without 

anyone showing up for a church service. Esperanza may 

visit the groups only twice per month, but because the 

pastors are regularly available, they’re able to serve the 

needs of the community, even without Esperanza staff 

present.  

It’s not just these formal partnerships that define 

Esperanza’s spirit of unity. Their entire organization—

from their earliest beginnings to their operations today—

is bathed in collaboration and a Christ-centered 

mindset.  

Esperanza exists to glorify God with their entire 

organization. They serve with an underlying belief that 

these are not our resources, our people, or our mission. 

The resources belong to God and we are simply 
stewards of all that He has given to us. This is not our 

mission, but rather God’s mission that we have been 
invited to join.  

Out of this emerges an upside-down, Kingdom 

perspective on partnership. Instead of “what can I get,” 

they ask, “what can we achieve together?” Instead of 

“how can I be served,” they ask “how can we serve?” 

Instead of seeking to win points with donors, they seek 

to celebrate all that God is doing through a united front 

with a variety of organizations. It’s about playing a 

smaller role in the bigger Kingdom. It's about less 

repetition and more cooperation. “We could work 

alone,” Nunez says, “but together our work is better” 

(Greer 2018).  

As Esperanza works with other organizations and 

churches around the world, their associates not only 

receive remarkable services, but they are empowered to 

lift themselves out of poverty and truly understand the 

truth of Jesus Christ. Esperanza is but one example of 

the numerous organizations around the world who are 

seeing transformation in international justice through 

cooperation. 

 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

48 
 

Assessing Impact  
 

But how do we know if collaboration is really 

making a difference? 

Let’s take a look at extreme poverty again: Just two 

hundred years ago, nearly the whole world lived in 

extreme poverty. Today, less than 10 percent do. In the 

past forty years alone, the percent of people living in 

extreme poverty has dropped by over 30 percent (Roser 

and Ortiz-Ospina 2017). There is no one approach or 

organization that can claim credit for this massive 

movement. Many factors have contributed to this trend, 

and we celebrate that poverty is on the decline as 

businesses, investors, organizations, leaders, and 

churches work together to transform the landscape of 

international development.  

Across the world, everything from Bible translation 

to college ministries has seen rapid acceleration simply 

because a few leaders said yes to cooperation. The men 

and women pioneering this “rooting-for-rivals” 

approach are not weighed down by trivial 

disagreements nor concerned with who gets the credit. 

More important than being recognized for good deeds, 

they understand, is the ability to together move the 

needle of relief, development, missions, and advocacy 

in a way that we haven’t been able to do on our own. 

As cutting-edge thinkers on organizational 

collaboration, Hanleybrown, Kania, and Kramer state, 

“There is no other way society will achieve large-scale 

progress against urgent and complex problems, unless 

a collective approach becomes the accepted way of 

doing business” (2012, 2). 

Intentional, Christ-centered collaboration allows 

us to participate in more significant initiatives with far 

greater impact. 

 

Seek First 

 
In John 17, Jesus, in his longest recorded prayer in 

Scripture, prays “that [we] may become perfectly one” 

(Jn 17:23),
2

  so that the world may know the Father’s 

love The implication is that our witness to the world 

hinges on our unity.  

“Christ’s prayer for unity and endurance is formed, 

uttered, and accomplished at the greatest hour of trial 

in all redemptive history,” writes K.A. Ellis. “At this 

critical juncture there is one relationship on his mind, 

and it is ours” (2015). 

Jesus says that our oneness is the way that others 

will identify us as His followers: “By this all people will 

know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one 

another” (Jn 13:35).  

                                                        
2

 All biblical passages are taken from the English Standard Version. 

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus reminds us in clear 

language to “seek first the kingdom of God and his 

righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  

Our hope is that we might all be encouraged and 

equipped to keep looking up and to keep seeking first 
the Kingdom of God. To choose to serve with open 

hands instead of clenched fists and be reminded that 

“our mission” is so much greater than “my mission.” 

The beauty and joy of what God is doing through us 

working together is far more compelling to the world 

around us than anything we can do alone.  

 

First Steps 

 
Collaboration accelerates transformation as we 

focus on our shared goal of living out the two Greatest 

Commandments—as we take our focus off “what’s in 

this for me?” and instead ask how to fully love God 

“with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul and with all 

[our] mind and with all [our] strength” and to “love 

[our] neighbor as [ourselves]” (Mk 12:30-31). 

Once leaders understand their “why”—and 

establish interest and vision for collaborating—what are 

some practical first steps to working together in relief, 

development, and advocacy to see the Kingdom of God 

advance? 

 
Focus on a Kingdom mission  

 

We acutely feel the gravitational pull toward self-

preoccupation. When we wake up in the morning and 

go to work, our vision rarely extends beyond the walls 

of our own organization. There are urgent issues 

clamoring for our attention, looming deadlines, 

fundraising constraints, and a variety of other 

organizational challenges (Greer and Horst 2018, 53-

54). But what if we first focused on the Kingdom of 

God? Dream about what it could look like if the 

Kingdom came fully to your areas of influence. Submit 

your dreams, plans, ideas, and missions to this grander 

mission. 

 
Identify what we have been given 

 

In Exodus 4:2, God asks Moses what he has in his 

hand. Little did Moses realize that the staff he held 

would be used by God to give powerful signs to 

Pharaoh, to split the Red Sea in two, and to deliver the 

Israelites to the land God had promised to them. What 

is in your hand? What resources, connections, and 

knowledge do you carry to bring about God’s plans and 

purposes? Is there curriculum that you could give to 

another organization for free? Is there time you could 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

49 
 

invest in building stronger relationships with leaders 

from other organizations? What is the unique role you 

could play in a Kingdom mission?  

 

Enlist collaborators 
 

“The size of your dreams must always exceed your 

current capacity to achieve them,” writes Ellen Johnson 

Sirleaf—the first female head of state in Africa—in her 

memoir, This Child Will Be Great (“If Your 

Dreams…” 2011). Who do you need to help you 

achieve the mission God has called you to? What (or 

whose) skills or gifts might be missing? Make a list of 

the names of potential leaders and organizations 

already doing great, like-minded work. How can you 

spend time prioritizing these relationships and 

dreaming together?  

 

Serve with humility 

 

Seize opportunities to serve and love—and do it often. 

Look for the tasks that receive little recognition and be 

the first to jump in. Find your area of expertise and 

serve with excellence. Clothing ourselves with humility 

means rejecting comparison games, “how am I 

different?” language, and subtle critiques that elevate us 

at the expense of others. 

 
Celebrate together 

 

Take steps to intentionally remember and celebrate 

God’s goodness together. Share the victories—the ways 

you have seen God on the move as you’ve worked in 

collaboration instead of competition. How can you 

integrate gratitude into the daily rhythms of your work? 

Look for ways to highlight other organizations and 

celebrate shared success.  

This certainly is not an exhaustive list, but rather 

the beginning steps of collaboration and 

openhandedness as we seek to advance God’s 

Kingdom.  

 

The Invitation 

 
As Christ’s followers, we have the opportunity to 

work as one body to bring Shalom: peace, flourishing, 

the world as God created it to be. That is a grand 

mission and one that will require our unity. 

We’ve entered a time when the Church is no 

longer associated with love and compassion but rather 

with judgment, hypocrisy, and infighting. We’re no 

longer known for the sacrifice or humility Jesus 

modeled but rather for failing to look beyond ourselves 

and our issues. If we want this to change, we must take 

hold of the invitation to rediscover our unified mission 

and prioritize it above our own agendas. 

We need to look beyond our organizational 

boundaries to catch a glimpse of a bigger and bolder 

vision of the Kingdom of God. Our organizations are 

small players in a much more significant story. 

Understanding this story and the imperative of unity 

among followers of Christ should help us to do more 

than just get along. 

God calls us to engage in relief, development, and 

advocacy as a unified team, not as fractured and 

disconnected organizations. He calls us to rediscover 

our unified purpose and tenaciously pursue a mission 

that extends beyond any one organization. 

Partnership won’t always be the answer. 

Partnerships are difficult and some can even be unwise. 

Just because two faith-based organizations work in 

Zambia doesn’t always mean they should work 

together. Partnership can be a philosophical, 

geographical, or strategic impossibility. But even when 

we decide against partnership in the formal sense, it’s 

always possible to assist one another by sharing 

resources, knowledge, or connections. It’s worth 

investing the time to thoroughly consider opportunities 

that could help us step more fully into our shared 

calling of furthering God’s Kingdom. 

When we consider coming alongside others, we 

can go beyond just fighting extreme poverty to thinking 

about ending extreme poverty. Beyond rescuing young 

girls and boys from human trafficking to putting 

traffickers out of business. Beyond translating parts of 

the Bible into just a few languages to translating the 

entire Bible into every language. 

It’s time to reaffirm a higher allegiance than the 

logo adorning our business cards. We are not just 

people working for organizations. We are not on rival 

teams, but, in Christ, we are brothers and sisters united 

for eternity. 

As we take part in relief, development, and 

advocacy efforts around the globe, we must remember 

that we’re not just fulfilling individual missions. Our 

success is not defined by where we stand in relation to 

our “rivals” or how long our name endures.  

In that light, rooting for rivals—cheering on those 

the world sees as our competitors—doesn’t feel all that 

crazy. Hundreds of years from now, our descendants 

will likely not know our names, nor those of our 

organizations. But if we successfully embrace the unity 

Jesus taught, our descendants will remember what the 

Church did together. They will remember that this 

generation continued the work of bringing good news 

to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, and 

setting the oppressed free. They will remember that the 

gospel was translated into every language, racial injustice 

was confronted, and extreme poverty was eradicated.  

If our descendants talk about us, they will talk 

about the miraculous ways God worked in and through 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

50 
 

the Church to bring hope, truth, compassion, and joy 

to our world (Greer and Horst 2018, 21). 

 

Imagine what we could do together. 

 

 

References 
 

Brookings. 2016. “The Halo Effect and the Economic 

Value of Faith-Based Organizations,” November 

29. https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-halo-

effect-and-the-economic-value-of-faith-based-

organizations/.  

Dilley, Andrea Palpant. 2014. “The Surprising 

Discovery about Those Colonialist, Proselytizing 

Missionaries.” Christianity Today, January 8. 

http://christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-

february/world-missionaries-made.html.  

Ellis, K.A. 2015. “Standing as One.” The Gospel 
Coalition. May 12. 

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/standing

-as-one/.  

Esperanza International. 2017. “Who We Serve.” 

https://esperanza.org/about/who-we-serve/.  

Faith Counts. 2016. “New Study Values Faith in 

America Over One Trillion Dollars.” PR 

Newswire, September 14. 

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study-values-faith-in-america-over-one-trillion-

dollars-300328315.html. 

FaithCounts. 2017. “Research: A New Study Looks at 

the Significant Impact of Faith and Religion in the 

United States.” Accessed October 30, 2017. 

http://faithcounts.com/Report/.  

Goodrich, Terry. 2017. “Faith-Based Organizations 

Shoulder Majority of Crucial Services and 

Develop Creative Solutions for Homelessness, 

New Baylor University Study Says.” Baylor, 
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http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/ne

ws.php?action=story&story=176953.  

Gov.UK. 2018. “Baroness Stowell: The Future of 

Charity.” Last modified 5 October. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/barones

s-stowell-the-future-of-charity.  

Greer, Peter K. 2018. “Episode 6: Global Ministries.” 

http://www.peterkgreer.com/episode-6-global-

ministries/.  

Greer, Peter, and Chris Horst. 2018. Rooting for 

Rivals: How Collaboration and Generosity 

Increase the Impact of Leaders, Charities, and 

Churches. Bloomington: Bethany House. 

Grim, Brian and Melissa. 2016. “The Socio-Economic 

Contributions of Religion to American Society: 

An Empirical Analysis.” Faith Counts. 

http://faithcounts.com/wp-

content/uploads/Summary-Sheet.pdf. 

Hanleybrown, Fay, Kania, John, and Kramer, Mark. 

2012. “Channeling Change: Making Collective 

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Peter Greer is President and CEO of HOPE 

International, a Christ-centered microenterprise 

development organization serving throughout Africa, 

Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. For more 

information, please visit www.peterkgreer.com.  

 

Author email: PGreer@hopeinternational.org 

 

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