TONY'S NEWSLETTER
MARCH 2007
Dear Partners and Friends,
If there ever was any doubt as to whether or not your support of EAPE is one of the best investments you can make for God's Kingdom, set your mind at rest. Over the last couple of months, my travels took me across the country as well as overseas, and everywhere I went I could see the impact of the EAPE ministries.
I spent two days in London with a group of young Christian activists called SPEAK. This is an organization that EAPE helped create. These hundreds of university students who gathered with me are radically committed to addressing the great concerns of our times. They are dealing with the sex trade that enslaves hundreds of thousands of Third World children, the poverty crisis in Africa, the genocide in Darfur, the war in Iraq, and the destruction of the environment. But these student activists differ from the activists of the sixties in that they are wholly Christian. They nurture their activism with intense prayer and Bible study. Not only are they trying to change society, but they are also working intensely to win fellow young people to Christ. For them, evangelism is recruiting participants for a movement through which God's justice and love can infuse the institutional structures of society. They realize that developing spiritual depth is essential for those who will do Kingdom work.
Brilliant things are happening here in America, as well! Even though the 20/20 television show that featured Urban Promise got shoved to a different time slot than originally had been announced, the results have been astounding. Bruce Main, the executive director of Urban Promise, and his team of workers have received hundreds of phone calls from people pledging support and wanting to volunteer in their programs. There is no doubt that the response to that TV show is helping to change Urban Promise. It is becoming a movement that is drawing a host of new workers and expanding its ministry throughout the several North American cities where new programs have already been established.
Enrollment has been greater than expected in the Mission Year programs that place teams of young missionaries in tough, "at risk" neighborhoods located in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Atlanta. Now Mission Year has established a link with the graduate programs EAPE has helped create at Eastern University—a program that David Black, the president of Eastern, says has created close to a million jobs for the poor in Third World countries and in urban neighborhoods here in America. If Mission Year workers are willing to stay for an extra year and enter this program they can complete a graduate degree in microeconomic development or education.
Our adult literacy program, initiated by our Beyond Borders program in Haiti, has had fantastic results. Using the Bible as the textbook, the program is reaching as many as 15,000 Haitians daily, and it is growing exponentially.
This is just a brief survey of some of what is happening. There is a spiritual awakening and a new student activism breaking loose and EAPE is a major part of what's going on. What is amazing is that all of this, and much more, is being accomplished with a very limited budget. That's why I can tell you your gift is playing a big role in what's happening, and that's why I enthusiastically ask for your gift this month. Give all you can! Your gifts are making a huge difference!
Yours in the cause of the Kingdom,
Tony Campolo
ABOUT TONY + March 2007