TONY'S NEWSLETTER
JULY 2010 + FOR MISSION YEAR SUPPORTERS
Dear Partner in Mission,
Below is my regular newsletter about the overall work of EAPE, but since you are specifically supporting Mission Year, I wanted to start off with this note from one of our urban missionaries:
My naueme is Isaac Rice, and I'm serving in Houston. I currently work at Yellowstone Academy as a teacher's aide, tutor, and after school teacher. Yellowstone is a private Christian school serving the poorest of the poor in Houston's third ward. One "neighbor" I have been able to connect with is our homeless friend Don. Don and I are both artists and we connect in that, but Don also has a joy about him that can only be described as an outpouring of love. It is our constant desire as a team to help Don see that his joy is Christ loving through him. Please pray that God would help my teammates and I see where His justice is needed in our neighborhood.
This month I want to let you know a little bit more about how EAPE functions and how we use your gifts.
Fifteen years ago, on the advice of some very wise friends, the board of EAPE and I decided to decentralize our organization. Up until then, EAPE owned and operated all the ministries we now support, and I was the primary fund-raiser of the whole kit and kaboodle, which grew bigger every year. When we decentralized, however, each of what we now refer to as our core ministries was incorporated separately, with its own executive director, its own board of directors, and its own fundraising program.
The results have been astounding! At first, we at EAPE still provided the vast majority of these ministries' support, but within five years these new organizations were raising most of the funding needed to undergird their rapidly expanding mission projects.
This largely answered the question of what would happen to the ministries of EAPE once I pass from the scene. Many good works die when they lose their primary fund raisers, but that won't happen to ours. So then, you may ask, now that we don't sustain all those ministries all by ourselves, just what is it that we do with your financial support?
First of all, we supplement the budgets of not only our core ministries but also many others we have helped develop over the past fifteen years, especially if any of them have critical shortfalls, as has often been the case during this most recent recession. Having EAPE behind them gives these programs great confidence and stability.
Secondly, we fund and provide technical support to the new ministry programs of young people who have been developed by our ministries. These young leaders are the future of the Kingdom, and once they have a track record lots of people want to get behind them, but EAPE often plays a special role in helping to get their fledgling projects off the ground.
Finally, your financial support maintains the office that manages all my speaking engagements, radio shows, writing projects, and personal correspondence, and which keeps track of all fundraising and ministry activities. Happily, thanks to the wonderful office space and student workers provided by Eastern University, and thanks to our small but intensely dedicated staff, we are able to keep overhead cost to a bare minimum and deliver the biggest possible 'bang of your ministry buck'.
In the end, however, you are the ones who have made - and still make - all of the good work of EAPE possible. I thank God for you and your sacrificial support. Please, keep us in your prayers, and keep giving for the sake of the Kingdom.
Sincerely,
Your gift will make a difference!
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ABOUT TONY + JULY 2010 + FOR MISSION YEAR SUPPORTERS