With today’s economy and political debate going haywire, it’s more important than ever to buttress our commitment to the children we sponsor. It’s as vital as connecting other, unsponsored children with sponsors.

When God puts a child on our hearts, it is easy to answer His call … at least initially. However, it can be difficult to remain invested in the commitment over time. And current economic circumstances aren’t making this any easier.

Sponsors at my church have been experiencing financial hardships with gas prices, unemployment, and the overall cost of living. We’re just squeezing by, paying what is necessary, but mostly going about things without passion.

I’m not sure if you’re experiencing this same tension, but I suspect that with finances being tighter, some of us are investing less time or financial support in Compassion’s ministry to children in poverty. We’re having to reassess the decisions we’ve made about our time, talent and treasures.

I held a Compassion Sunday at my church, but given the tough financial times my pastor and I felt it would be best to not participate in next year’s Compassion Sunday campaign. We wanted to give full attention to the needs among our congregation.

Taking our church’s situation into account, my pastor suggested that I continue to encourage existing sponsors within our church and community. That way, when we do give another presentation, we will have more families who can testify to what a wonderful organization Compassion is and encourage others to sponsor children.

So after meeting with my pastor and my advocate coach, we began to implement activities to help keep sponsors engaged and keep Compassion’s ministry present at our church.

I also came up with some strategies to welcome new sponsors and acted as their contact person should they have any general questions about the ministry. Here are some of the ideas we have started or are in the process getting off the ground:

• Welcome Kit for New Sponsors

  I purchased pocket folders in bulk. They were inexpensive and served as a nice addition to the child packets sponsors receive upon beginning their sponsorship.Inside each folder, I included quick facts about poverty, information about Compassion’s financial integrity and its holistic child development model, and a few other pamphlets affirming the new sponsor’s decision to get involved.

  

  One new sponsor told me she was impressed to see how Compassion is committed to serving Christ and serving His children. She mentioned that she keeps the letters from her sponsored child in the welcome-kit folder I had given her. 

• Compassion Board

  I purchased a world map from Barnes & Noble to create a Compassion board in our church gathering area. I then called Compassion with the names and numbers of the children who are sponsored from our church. Compassion sent us pictures of the children and we posted them on the map near each child’s location.

  

  The Compassion Board encouraged others to be in prayer for the children. We also placed a brochure display in the gathering area should someone wish to start a sponsorship.

• Compassion Sponsors’ Letter-writing Potluck

  Any time you can involve food, you can get people to come and fellowship! The idea is to get sponsors together once a quarter for a letter-writing potluck.

  In addition to bringing their favorite dishes to share, participants also “potluck” letter-writing supplies. For example, one person brings envelopes and another brings a variety of stationery.

  Others bring small items we can include with our letters, such as stickers, paper frames to put pictures in (construction paper cut into the shape of a frame with contact paper around it), paper dolls, small children’s magazines, etc.

  The potluck creates a place for everyone to give updates about their children and to encourage one another as we continue our relationships with our sponsored children through Compassion.

• Bible Studies/Book Groups About Compassion 

  I was doing a Compassion-related Bible study on my own when a friend asked about it. As I described Compassion’s commitment to releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name, she mentioned that she wasn’t in a place where she could financially support a child sponsorship, but that she would like to do so in the future.

  

  I told her she could pray for children in poverty and that God’s hand would be upon the Compassion ministry. She asked if she could borrow the study after me. We also plan to do one together.

I know that God has pressed it upon the hearts of others to explore ways to keep the Church involved and to encourage existing sponsors while looking for new ones. It would be great to get fresh ideas to use. What are some ideas you can share with us?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Maria Le has been a sponsor for two years and a member of our Advocates Network for one. She lives in Minnesota, where she teaches first grade.

If you’re interested in writing a guest blog post, we are happy to consider publishing it. Read our guest blog post guidelines.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

These are statements we hear from moms in our Child Survival Program:

“I didn’t know the importance of cleaning with soap.”

“I didn’t know that I was not feeding my child correctly.”

“I didn’t know that it was important to play with my child.”

Mothers in our Child Survival Program range in age from the young teens to the early 40s. Knowledge that we consider common sense is not always common for them. These moms typically lack the opportunity to learn basic home economics skills. And sometimes, the lack of one of these basic skills means life or death for an infant.

So what do we do?

Our Child Survival Program builds trust between a mother and a church staff member who visits on a regular basis. These visits provide opportunities to teach home economics skills in a safe and trusting environment.

We provide church partners with a list of necessary home economics skills; the staff then adapt the list so that the skills fit the context of their communities.

Our resource curriculum provides “mini lesson plans” enabling Survival Specialists to teach these skills to mothers in the program.

Samples of these skills include:

• Ensuring a source of fuel for cooking, like firewood or gas, and safely handling the fuel source.
• Understanding a balanced diet and providing it to the infant. This helps the mother avoid giving her child “empty calories” such as those found in tea or colas or carbohydrate-rich diets that lack essential protein, vitamins and minerals.
• Purifying water to make it safe for drinking.
• Identifying the early symptoms of illness so mothers can seek medical assistance for her children as quickly as possible.
• Using soap and water to wash hands before handling food and after using the toilet or latrine. And, teaching the same to their children.
• Understanding a baby’s temperament so that mothers can better and more quickly address the baby’s needs.
• Making and using laundry detergent to clean the family’s clothing.
• Making safe and fun toys for the children from recyclable materials.
• Removing or being vigilant about hazards that can harm children in the home.

Because many moms in the Child Survival Program are also illiterate, our resource curriculum also contains mini lesson plans to teach them functional literacy and basic math skills. Basic skills mothers should have in order to properly care for their children, especially in emergencies, include:

• Reading a medicine label and instructions so medicine can be properly administered when necessary.
• Reading a map or a bus route to go to the hospital when necessary.
• Understanding a bill.
• Managing a simple budget.
• Understanding a proper business transaction (such as giving cash and counting change).
• Understanding simple arithmetic such as addition and subtraction and some multiplication and division.

Moms in our Child Survival Program also have opportunities to learn income-generating skills so they may eventually help provide for their families financially.

Examples of these income-generating skills include:

• Sewing and tailoring.
• Baking and cooking.
• Confectionery, such as making chocolates and candies.
• Beauty services, such as manicures and pedicures.
• Simple agriculture and animal-husbandry skills, such as growing their own vegetables and raising their own chickens and goats.
• Cleaning services.

So, next time you slip on your dishwashing gloves, or pick up a bar of soap to wash your hands, or take out food to prepare a meal, remember how valuable your knowledge of home economics is. It helps keep you healthy.

Similarly, next time you read a medicine label, get directions from a Global Positioning System, or receive change from a vendor, thank God that you are not dependent on other people to explain these things to you. You are less likely to be taken advantage of.

And next time you set about to do your work, even if it is drudgery, thank God that you have an income. Many people don’t even have the skills or opportunity to work. Thank God that He gives us common-sense knowledge to share with others!

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Just take a look at your church.

If it has a senior pastor, five associate pastors, two youth pastors, three children’s ministry directors, two worship pastors, three small group directors and a congregation of 50 people, that’s a problem, wouldn’t you say?

Top heavy, perpetually over budget, ridiculous amounts of overhead.

Now say it’s located near an inner city and its main goal is to do targeted outreach. Now the church is potentially lacking in both talent and funding to achieve its outreach goals.

Mission and budget are crucial pieces of the puzzle for an organization. They drive strategic planning one year and five years down the road and govern the here and now.

They help dictate the best structure of an organization and enable managers to make important decisions around hiring — Who? For what purpose? When?

Last year alone Compassion grew by 371 full-time employees — a 19 percent increase. We have more than 1,500 International Program staff in the field — 67 percent of our total staff is made up of nationals. That says a lot about how we use our resources and go about our mission.

Organizational structure is important, especially for us as we have been growing so rapidly.

You all know we’ve surpassed 1 million concurrently sponsored children. What on earth does it take to support a boatload of new employees and more than 1 million sponsored children?

Well, let’s take a quick look at the mission-keepers and budget preparers at Compassion. They fit under the umbrella title Global Support Services and are one part of what makes things tick here in Colorado Springs.

Global Support Services serves all of Compassion across the board. Made up of Ministry Services and Administrative Services, it is one of four main business units within the Global Ministry Center.

The International Program Group, International Partnership Development, and USA are the other three. (We’ll talk about them another day).

Above those four business units are the Chief Financial Office, Executive Vice President David Dahlin and a small group called MI2 or Ministry Integration and Innovation, which provides across-the-board leadership and coordination for the long-term success of all of our ministries.

Providing oversight and invaluable leadership is the Chief Executive Officer, and the heart of Compassion, the beloved Wess Stafford.

But we wanted to get into the nitty gritty, right? Well, here goes.

The business unit I work in, Ministry Services, is made up of a few different departments. Some are fairly self-explanatory and others might need a descriptor or two.

In no particular order, we’re talking about Human Resources, Information Technology (IT), the Global Strategy Office, Facilities, Travel, the Distribution Center and Procurement. (Apologies if I’ve missed any).

Administrative Services is made up of Finance and the Office of Risk Management. And maybe these sound like laundry lists, but each one is a living, breathing organism. These are some of the gears in the great Compassion machine.

In Administrative Services, take Finance, for example — the budget preparers. (And budget preparation is only one small aspect of what they do). The Finance department alone has a key objective, values and a vision statement.

The Finance function enables the mission of Compassion by

“providing excellent financial services that promote integrity and stewardship while equipping the global organization to make wise ministry choices.”

Its values center on trust, teamwork, communication and being proactive and customer-focused.

Lastly, its vision by 2015 is to transform in order to

“provide value-added, influential and outstanding financial services globally while modeling excellence in customer service, innovation, collaboration and education and training.”

These are talented folks. I’d personally like to invite a few to work some magic with my personal finances, but alas, they are busy serving Compassion’s mission to make sure that we are financially viable now and in the future to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

In Ministry Services, let’s take a quick look at the Global Strategy Office.

It is made up of the Office of Corporate Planning, the Global Project Office, Global Internal Communications and Business Enterprise Architecture. Intimidating sounding names, eh?

I thought so when first coming on board.

Well, Corporate Planning folks are essentially the mission-keepers. They work to ensure that “both the long-term (three to five years) and short-term plans (within the fiscal year) for Compassion and all Compassion domains are clearly aligned with the mission to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name and move Compassion closer to our envisioned future.”

Biz talk for they keep us on track. They connect our mission to measurable outcomes so we can know we are doing what we set out to do.

Mission. Budget. Organizational structure. There is a lot more to talk about with regard to these things, but I’ll leave us here for now.

Next time we can explore some of the other major business units or dive into a smaller division, like the Distribution Center, to finally figure out how all our child letters get in and out.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

But face reality I must. Waking up helps, too.

Truth is, there’s some very exciting stuff going on at Compassion. Growth, regrouping, a fresh look at what ministry looks like when the Church is mobilized. We’ve just got to be poised and ready…ready to listen, hear, obey. And act. Act boldly, because we’re given a bold mission that will succeed even in the face of a brazen enemy.

This is how you know you’re onto something, and that — perfect or not — you are in the midst of God’s divine purpose. Things don’t come easy, but they come. It’s not because we’re so good or smart or driven, but because of who God is and what He wants to accomplish through us…and through you. We’re just mobilizers.

Several years ago, I took a life-changing course called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement that gave me a view into the history of Christianity — its ebbs and flows; rises and falls; the good, the bad and the ugly; and the blessing and persecution. What became very clear to me was this: When God wants to move, He moves. He’d rather move through His people rather than in spite of us, but He will move.

The key part for us is finding our place in the movement called the Great Commission. Mine, I learned, is mobilizing — promoting a cause and encouraging others to find their place in it. Yours might be sending others to the mission field (here or “there”). It could be going yourself (mission field, short-term missions or visiting your child). Or it might be praying and supporting. It could be working here or at another NGO that serves those in need. Point is, we each have a part.

Just after I finished Perspectives, God gave me the faith to offer what I thought was a resumé a mile wide and an inch deep. And after that, it was clear He was making my life deeper and wider than I could hope or imagine.

I’m no saint (ask around), but like anyone, if I’m willing I can be a tool of impact in the right Hands. By God’s grace, that even includes crunching numbers.

Nydia Teter works as Compassion’s Field Communications Director, her job is to get the great stories from our country offices to our global partners so they can share the good news about what God’s doing through sponsors and donors around the world.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates