Story number 5 for 29 Jul 2002

(USA)–And finally, churches in the west are needed to help churches abroad reach out with the Gospel. Joe Richter with Farms International believes the church in the third world can be self-supporting. Richter says they’re helping churches do just that. “We do that by providing micro-credit loans to Christians for family income generating projects. We also instill in the people that we work with, the idea of stewardship so that they tithe and give to their local church so that that church can carry on the work of evangelism.” Richter says that’s allowing these churches to do cross cultural evangelism. Farms is appealing to churches to support the work. “Where a church will just adopt a program, or part of a program and say, ‘hey we can put 3 to 5,000 into that.’ It helps jump start some of these things that would have taken longer to do.” Eight programs currently need funding.