From Relief to Empowerment: How Your Church Can Cultivate Sustainable Mission

Move mission beyond “us and them” to “all of us together.”

Mission flourishes when relationships are characterized by mutuality—a difficult, but important, balance to sustain. While there are times for the relief efforts and traditional charity when disasters strike, if years later the same people are receiving the same aid, an opportunity is lost. Mission that moves beyond relief to empowerment opens up ways to address systemic forms of oppression and poverty. Suitable for group study, this book is ideal for those who want to engage or re-engage in mission.

This book looks at ZOE, a Christian non-profit and United Methodist advance special, as an exemplar of sustainable mission that can empower even the most vulnerable to help themselves. Proceeds of book sales go to ZOE.

Gaston Warner is Chief Executive Officer of ZOE, a non-profit organization that empowers over twenty-eight thousand orphans and children in seven countries, across three continents including: Africa, India, and Guatemala; and he is an elder in The United Methodist Church.

 Laceye C. Warner is Associate Professor of the Practice of Evangelism and Methodist Studies at Duke Divinity School and a United Methodist elder.