Alternative Giving
Many individuals, families, and groups enjoy sharing Global Ministries Alternative Gifts to honor, remember, or celebrate loved ones on special occasions. Alternative Gifts are wonderful for holidays, birthdays, ordination anniversaries, weddings, and more.
Whether your Alternative Gift is designated for where needed most, the appointment of a Mission Co-worker, the work of a specific partner or in a specific country, or to a programmatic theme highlighted below, any gift to Global Ministries can be shared as an Alternative Gift in memory or in honor of someone near and dear to you!
For example:
- One family made an Alternative Gift for a family friend’s 100th birthday!
- One former board member made an Alternative Gift for Global Ministries in memory of her father and shared the news with her family over the holidays.
- One pastor requested Alternative Gifts to support the Global Ministries Child and Elder Sponsorship program for her baby shower in lieu of gifts.
Join us in sharing in God’s abundant life through alternative giving, by making a gift online or send a check to:
Global Ministries
Office of Resource Development
P.O. Box 1986
Indianapolis, IN 46206
Once you have made your Alternative Gift, Global Ministries will send a card to share the news of your gift to the person or family of your choosing.
Interested in receiving a printed copy of the Alternative Giving Catalog? Call 317-713-2555 or email gifts@dom.disciples.org
As always, 100% of your gift is used as you designate, and nothing is taken out for administration or banking fees.
A Gift of General Support
Your general support of the work of Global Ministries is critical. General gifts enable the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ to engage globally through relationships, visits, advocacy, and education. General support to Global Ministries provides an important pastoral presence globally with more than 290 global partners in 90 countries. Your gifts are a significant witness in walking with global partners through hopes and joys in all parts of the world.
Unrestricted gifts help facilitate every relationship mentioned in this catalog. Whether through the sending and receiving of mission co-workers, planning pilgrimages to visit the ministries of partners, or amplifying partner voices for advocacy, action, and celebration, Global Ministries relies on gifts like yours to make these opportunities possible. With your support, new curricula and virtual experiences are created for children, youth, and adults that lead to a fuller understanding of God’s mission in the world and invites deeper participation. These materials are freely available on the Global Ministries website, which is intentionally partner-focused to connect you directly with the priorities and perspectives of partners around the world.
Give a gift where it is needed most
Give a Themed Gift
You can make a gift toward a specific theme of global work that is near and dear to the person you are honoring, remembering, or celebrating. All gifts to each programmatic theme are divided equally between the five area offices: Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and Europe, and Southern Asia. Area offices then send these funds to support partners and programs who are working to address the designated theme.
The sending of mission co-workers, whether for the long-term, or as volunteers, or as young adults, fosters deep relationships with international partners. Upon their return, the witness of mission co-workers in churches in the United States and Canada build new and strengthen existing connections between ministries around the world and local churches like yours. As co-workers with God, international partners, and the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the appointment of Global Ministries mission co-workers is one example of how the Global Ministries Core Value of Mutuality: to walk in hope with others in God’s mission is lived out.
Global Ministries also welcomes Mission Co-workers in Residence, individuals sent by global church partners to the United States and Canada to visit congregations and share about the current realities in their home contexts and ways they minister to their communities.
Global Ministries receives requests for mission personnel from international partners on an ongoing basis. Your special gifts help Global Ministries send dedicated individuals to walk together in hope with partners.
To learn more about current mission co-workers, click here.
Give the gift to support mission co-worker appointments
Learn more about the New Missionary Emphasis Endowment Fund
Working toward Peace with Justice is acknowledging the reality that true peace is more than simply the absence of conflict. Through Global Ministries, we join our voices with the voices of advocates around the world to promote opportunities to confront powers that deny the fullness of life and the integrity of creation through living out God’s radical love. By working in long-term partnerships, Global Ministries brings attention to global realities in a way that provides both immediate responses and long-term solutions to injustice.
Alternative gifts for Peace with Justice support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Youth Empowerment project for Peacebuilding of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, which facilitates ecumenical youth forums for peace, group dialogs on emerging issues, and supports social participation of youth in local and national settings.
- The Shalom Center of the Pentecostal Church of Chile, which provides a safe space for transformation, facilitating peace education, trauma recovery, environmental education, and spiritual development in a holistic way, so as to strengthen the dignity and resilience of individuals and communities.
- The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, which develops a spirituality based on justice, peace, nonviolence, liberation, and reconciliation for diverse national and faith communities.
To learn more about specific partner initiatives providing peace with justice, click here.
Give the gift of Peace with Justice
Efforts for the caring of creation continue to evolve with natural disasters and shifting weather patterns. The negative impacts of climate change disrupt and damage the natural world, reduce resources, and threaten food security. Global Ministries partners are taking action to care for creation.
Global Ministries partners address climate change in multi-faceted, holistic approaches. These approaches include programs to raise awareness on the effects of climate change, training farmers on methods to produce agriculture with less water, planting trees, and supporting climate refugees who are leaving home because of rising sea waters.
Alternative gifts for addressing Climate Change support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Climate Change Resilience project of the Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh, which helps families assess disaster risks, promote climate resilient agricultural methods, and install freshwater technologies.
- The Pacific Council of Churches, which plants gardens to offset carbon emissions, and helps relocate communities who are migrating because of climate change.
- The Green Church project of the Theological Education by Extension College in Zambia, which incorporates care for creation into their theological education studies, assists local church leaders in raising awareness of climate change, and promotes the planting of new trees across the country.
To learn more about specific partner initiatives addressing climate change, click here.
Give the gift of Addressing Climate Change
In far too many places, medical treatment is seen as a luxury for the wealthy instead of a basic right for all. Global Ministries works closely with community health programs, nursing schools, and hospitals, in addition to sending health professionals where requested, so that many might have better access to medical treatment, medicine, and live healthy lives. Whether it is a tobacco cessation program in Chile, a clinic for those struggling with Tuberculosis in East Timor and in Mexico, responses to the coronavirus pandemic, or rural hospitals preventing and treating patients with Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – ensuring access to basic health care has always been a priority of Global Ministries.
Through the work of local doctors and nurses and through public health awareness campaigns of Global Ministries partners, tens of millions of patients have received treatment and hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved. This profound legacy, spanning well over a century in many places, would not be possible without the thousands of nurses and doctors who were trained through the medical education programs of international partners. Global Ministries affirms the medical and health ministries of global partners so that communities that are ignored by the more formal health systems may receive healing.
Alternative gifts for Health support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, which is distributing hygiene kits and raising awareness on how to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
- The Evangelical Hospital, Khariar, related to the Church of North India, which offers medical care for families in the state of Orissa, India – including surgery, intensive care, and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.
- The Las Memorias Hostel in Mexico, which offers a residential service and treatment center for individuals living with HIV/AIDS and is building a Tuberculosis (TB) clinic and program in the Tijuana community where cases of TB are increasing.
To learn more about specific partner initiatives in health, click here.
For families around the world, education is a high priority. Through educational/vocational centers, after-school programs, and elementary and secondary schools, international partners provide practical, affordable education. Of equal importance, Global Ministries accompanies partners colleges and universities, and works with partner churches who offer scholarship support programs for students attending higher education. Global partners prepare graduates to participate in a global economy in environments that celebrate and build community.
Alternative gifts for Education support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Dumaguete Kalauman Center for Development in the Philippines, which provides support for education and creates a savings fund for students in the program for college and vocational training opportunities.
- The School Furniture project of the Lesotho Evangelical Church in Southern Africa, which provides locally made desks and tables for classrooms in the 580 primary and secondary schools of the church across the country.
- Haigazian University, a liberal arts higher education institution in Beirut, Lebanon, which seeks to provide quality education in a Christian environment where academic freedom and the value of truth are
To learn more about specific partner initiatives in education, click here.
Empowering women and girls is more than securing a better income for families. It’s creating a world where women are less likely to be abused, more likely to be educated, and more likely to have control over their health and reproductive choices. Empowering women enables them not only to advocate for more just policies from their governments, but also in their own families. Education and work opportunities can make a profound difference in changing the role of women in their families, communities, and nations. Supporting women and girls is the most important factor in building healthy communities and a stable global community.
Global Ministries works with partners who empower women and girls in communities, churches, and countries around the world. Gifts for this theme support programs such as education for women and girls, young adult advocacy programs, and income-generating projects.
Alternative gifts for Women’s Empowerment support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Asian Rural Institute in Japan is preparing women with leadership training and programming.
- The Girls Empowerment Clubs of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, which provides skills training and after-school educational programs for girls and young women, and hosts activities for girls and their mothers to share together.
- The YWCA of Palestine, which seeks to mobilize women’s collective power for action on issues of women’s rights, justice, the dignity of human beings, and the integrity of the environment.
- The Ecumenical Foundation for Integral Development, Training, and Education (FEDICE) in Ecuador, which supports women and families in income-generation projects such as growing produce and raising sheep, guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens, and cows.
To learn more about specific partner initiatives to empower women and girls, click here.
Give the gift of Women’s Empowerment
Through congregations, seminaries, and church leadership programs, international partners help to share the good news of God’s abundant life with all people. At the same time, partner churches seek to develop a vision and mission for their congregations that is faithful both to their lives and to the Gospel. In many communities around the world, the church is growing and vibrant!
Global Ministries works with hundreds of partners in strengthening the body of Christ.
Alternative Gifts for Vibrant Churches support projects of Global Ministries partners, such as:
- The Sunday School Teacher Training project of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches, which provides leadership development and faith formation for young adults who are interested in becoming Sunday School Teachers and are leading Christian Education programs for children in Syria and Iraq.
- The Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas in Cuba, which provides innovative theological education for individuals from 14 denominations and five different countries who have a passion to share the Good News of God’s abundant life.
- The Christian Theological Seminary of the Church of the American Ceylon Mission, which provides theological and practical education to prepare individuals in Sri Lanka for ordained and lay leadership in the church.
To learn more about specific ways partner churches around the world are growing and vibrant, click here.