Why we support quietly
Visitors to this site sometimes notice what is missing from it. There are no photographs of the people we support, no map with pins in it, no running total of funds raised, no testimonies with faces attached. For a foundation that exists to support messengers of the Gospel, we say remarkably little about them.
That is deliberate, and this letter is an attempt to explain it.
The first reason is practical
Some of the people we support serve in places where a photograph on a website is a genuine risk — to them, and more importantly to the local believers who meet with them. A name and a face, indexed by a search engine and translated automatically into any language, can travel much further than the person who published it ever intended.
We would rather be a less interesting website than a source of exposure for someone whose work depends on discretion. Where publicity would cost a worker their visa, their welcome, or their safety, the calculation is not difficult.
The second reason is older
Long before there were websites, there was a warning about doing good conspicuously.
Beware of practising your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
The instruction that follows — not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing — has never been a prohibition on generosity being visible. Paul wrote openly about the collection for Jerusalem, and the churches knew who had given what. The warning is about motive: about the moment when the account of the good work becomes the point of the good work.
That temptation is stronger now than it has ever been. Every ministry is invited to become a brand, every act of giving an occasion for content. We have watched good organisations drift, by slow degrees, from raising money for the work to producing material about the work in order to raise money.
The third reason is the work itself
Support that lasts is rarely dramatic. It looks like the same amount arriving on the same day of the month for eleven years. It looks like a family staying in place through a season when nothing visible is happening, because their support did not depend on that season producing a story worth telling.
A foundation that needs a compelling update every quarter will, eventually, fund the work that produces compelling updates. We would rather fund the work that produces disciples, most of which is slow, ordinary, and unphotogenic.
What this means if you are reading this
It means this site will stay thin on detail, and that we are content for it to be so. It also means that if you want to know more — who we support, how we decide, how the foundation is governed — the answer is not to look for it here. It is to write to us. We will tell you what we can, personally, and explain what we cannot and why.
The Gospel is public. The Great Commission is a command to speak, loudly and to all nations. But the work of supporting those who go can be done in the quiet, and we think it is better done there.