Hello from 35,000 feet!  I’m en route to the Dominican Republic on our 3rd DurhamCares international trip, and so I have international missions on the mind.

As most of you know now, DurhamCares was founded with inspiration from the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  The Parable has two lessons for us that we seek to apply every day:  1.  the concept of the broader definition of neighbor, 2.  the example of physical love (as opposed to just financial contributions) that the Samaritan provided to the Jew in the ditch.  It’s the broader definition of neighbor that serves as the foundation for what I want to write on today.

The Samaritan, was of course, from a different nation than the man in the ditch that he served.  As an extension of that, we’d like to think that our neighbor is not just in Durham, but across the world, in Nicaragua….in Africa….in India.  Not, of course, that we need to ignore the needs in your back yard, but we have a real opportunity to bless those in other countries as well, and I believe that we’re called by God to do so.  It’s out of this realization that we’ve started the international trips concept of course with vision trips for folks from Durham to see how they might serve other nations together.

As we’ve spent more and more time looking into international ministries (we focus primarily on Christ centered word and deed ministries with our international work) and organizations that we might visit, we found that there isn’t a good resource that inventories and/or reviews these organizations.  Yes, there is charity navigator or the ECFA, but they primarily review financial metrics and accountability as opposed to true outcomes and other than a quick summary of the organization’s efforts, it’s hard to understand what the organization really does or how well it does it.  Sure, some of the large Christian foundations have done some great research on the effectiveness of various word and deed ministries, but by and large, they don’t share that with the general public, or oftentimes not even with other foundations like themselves.  So, the rest of us are left to do our own research.  Most of us tend to give to folks that we might have seen when they visited our church or an organization recommended by a friend. I’m pretty sure that that isn’t the most effective way to invest in the lives of folks abroad.  For this reason it’s thought that there are more than 3,000 ministries in Haiti alone!  Surely, they can’t all be just as effective.  But which ones are really making an impact?  We’re left to do our own research, and that, for most of us is a very daunting task.

So, in the coming months you’ll see the launch of ministryspotlight.org.  It will be separate from DurhamCares,  but we’ll likely have a link between the two.  We’ll share with you some of the ministries that we have found to be most effective, and ask you for those that you think are doing a great job.  We’ll have a function that encourages a discussion on the issue of effectiveness, and what place if any return on investment has in the field of ministry (after all, a kid’s education isn’t a widget…...and qualitative measures are oftentimes difficult to measure).  The format will be partially inspired by the current partner section on the DurhamCares site, where we inventory 9 different organizations in a common template that helps folks quickly understand what an organization does and how it measures its outcomes.  We’ll also have a multimedia function which will allow visitors to see videos and photos that we hope will engage them into the ministry in a way that text, facts and figures misses.  Lastly, we’ll have a submission function that will allow folks to submit information on ministries that they think are worth promoting as well.

Our goal is threefold:

1. By sharing research we hope to increase the effectiveness of the current giving of Christians internationally.
2. By telling information in a way that gives the donor increased confidence in the outcomes/accountability of their investment, we hope to increase the aggregate amount of giving
3. We want to play a role in the transformation and blessing of the donor, and believe that we can do so as we relate the stories of how fellow Christ followers are doing amazing things overseas.

The site might look something like this image - ministryspotlight.org.jpg.  Think this is a good idea?  Have some ministries that you think we should be looking at?  Please let us know.