Global Poverty

“Be serious hombre. You gotta catch up on your payments.” That message ticked in on Carlos´ phone while I interviewed him last year. We were sitting in a parked car with the A/C on max yet sweat was pouring through his t-shirt. Carlos was a victim of extortion, a terrible crime that affects over 200 thousand households in Honduras every year. Extortionists, traditionally gangs, charge regular payments from small businesses, vendors, taxi and bus owners and threaten with or commit acts of violence if they don’t pay up.

Harouna Issaka is the regional director for West Africa with World Renew and also works with Timothy Leadership training. In this episode Harouna speaks with us about how the Timothy Leadership Training has build relationships across unexpected divides.

For many Christians around the world, the day after Halloween was not just a day to recuperate from children’s sugar highs and pick up discarded candy wrappers from the sidewalk.  No, it was All Saints Day - the day in the church calendar to remember all those disciples - living and dead - whose lives inspire us to live more faithful, more loving, more Jesus-shaped lives.  

Editor’s Note: Please be aware that this blog contains a reference to suicide.

The agony of displacement due to insurgency and civil unrest in my home country has left many homeless, missing loved ones, and lonely. Desperate situations engulf many people’s livelihoods.

In this episode Andrew Reinstra joins us to talk about what it's like to reconcile his experiences his birth and adoptive families. We get into the questions *not* to ask an adopted person. If you've wanted to think about the intersection of justice and adoption this is the episode for you.

We are dab-hands at fishing: why should we incline
To net people instead? {Matt 4:18ff
‘There’s a catch to convince you that I am divine.’

We’re five thousand famished; you tell us to dine
On two herrings? They’re red! {Mark 6:30ff
‘Except for a soul I will give you no sign.’

Whale Catch Sole Catch Pike Catch Plaice by Michael Ward

Like a significant number of people in the CRCNA, I spent time serving with Resonate Global Mission (then Christian Reformed World Missions) in Nigeria.

My husband Gil and I left as seminary interns in January 1998. We were among the last who lived and worked in a remote, rural village. My family left 19 years ago, but in my current role with Resonate, I had the opportunity to go back for a ministry strategy evaluation.

Haitian immigrants and denationalized Dominicans of Haitian ancestry in the Dominican Republic are under constant threat of being deported.

During our annual staff retreat in June 2023, we reckoned with the fact that we are each other’s neighbours. Jesus causes us to recognise the needs of others and the call to be a neighbour irrespective of the differences in ethnicity, location, and other social factors.