Heres HOPE

Small is
BEAUTIFUL
Andy Hawthorne, Jane Holloway and Ian Chisnall
W
e wanted to keep
everything simple
and
to encourage as much
participation as
possible. Taking a step
of faith, we challenged
the whole Church to a whole year of mission,
holding the tension of words and action as we
worked together. We decided to give away
the HOPE 08 logo so any church could use
it free of charge and without a formal
sign-up process. We weren’t prescriptive
– we simply wanted to empower churches
to do more; to do it together and to do it
with words and action. The support staff
was kept to a minimum with a minimal
budget and we said we were going to close
down after one year. We didn’t want to become
an institution.
WE
CHALLENGED
THE WHOLE
CHURCH
TO A WHOLE YEAR OF
MISSION
Soul Survivor, the Message Trust and Youth for
Christ released Mike, Andy and me as well as
other staff to do the work of HOPE 08. As always,
we worked on the basis of relationship, with key
people being released by other organisations to
be on the HOPE Board and Leadership team.
They included Steve Clifford from Pioneer, Rob
Cotton from Bible Society, Laurence Singlehurst
from Cell UK, Matt Bird from Make It Happen,
Paul Bayes from the Church of England, Eustace
Constance from Street Pastors, and Jane Holloway
from the World Prayer Centre.
It is hard to imagine now,
but back in
the day, news from organisationss was
almost always sent out by ‘snail mail’.
To keep costs down, HOPE 08 made full
use of new technology with information
shared by email and text-messaging.
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