It’s the International Day of Charity and we’re taking a look back at some great charities who have shared their stories on TBN UK this year. Find out about their fantastic work, and why not watch their interviews on the go! It’s also a great day to say thank you to all of our generous partners who continue to support our channel at TBN UK, and make us able to create this inspiring content…
Kick – Supporting young people through sport
Joe Lowther is CEO at Kick London, a charity that works with over 12,000 young people every week to make a positive difference to their lives through sport. We chatted with him a little about his story and their work.
Joe was the principle of a school and loved his role but felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to resign, without any real assurance of a new job! Joe had seen the work of Kick, and the way they use sport education paired with mission and had thought about contacting them. As it happens, the organisation had already emailed him to say their chairman had resigned and Joe’s name came into their head. Joe knew that this was a divine appointment for him.
“For us, we want to reach the young people where they’re at and unfortunately, they’ve stopped coming to us. So, 4.5% of children in the UK go to church. 95% don’t,” Joe explained.
Kick reach out to young people by working in schools. They lead over 20 different sports including dance. They also offer mentoring and chaplaincy.
For more info, you can watch our interview with Joe, or visit https://kick.org.uk/
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Bible Society
The Bible Society have created amazing resources for churches to learn how to connect with, and share the Word with different types of people across the UK. They chatted with us a little about their newer, innovative projects. ‘Open the book’ is a great training resource to help Christians who go into schools and tell stories from the Bible. Lumino is also a fantastic platform for understanding the country we live in and contains great content, research and studies to help church leaders and Bible communicators to understand the type of people living in the UK – and how to reach them.
Of course, the charity also works worldwide, to spread Bibles in multiple languages, in multiple contexts. “There’s been a lot of Bible distribution in China and a lot of children’s Bibles distributed in Malawi There’s an incredible move among young kids and children in Malawi where they’re getting Bibles and they’re going home and telling their parents to read the stories and it’s transforming family life and so we’re getting all these requests…”
Discussing some of the history of people groups striving and travelling to acquire the Word of God, Nigel said: “There was this passion, not just about the Bible, but the Bible being translated into the language of that particular community.” Visit the Bible Society website to find out how you can support their work and see more and more people receive Bibles they can understand and learn from.
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The Memory Café
Steve Morris is the founder of Memory Café, a place for people to meet others and make authentic relationships. Around 40% of attendees have Alzheimer’s disease, while the rest are members of the local community who may be lonely, or volunteers. He spoke with us about the work of the charity.
“I kept hearing stories from people who came to church, about being lonely, and sometimes people said to me they weren’t speaking to a single person from week to week,” Steve told us. “And this sense kind of built up in me that there’s a whole generation of people whose family have left and are in big houses, often on their own, and I just really felt a yearning to do something.”
At the memory café, members of the public meet to make friends, socialise and take part in activities like aerobics, dance, memory games, breathing exercises and more.
One of the attendees had this to say: “Memory Café has meant the world to me. From being very lonely, I’ve met some amazing friends and neighbours whom I didn’t even know existed in my road.”
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Missional Generation
Missional Generation use experiential learning to help young people understand the importance of mission and how they can take part in building God’s kingdom. They use videos, interactive games, prayer maps, and other great resources as part of their teaching sessions and online content.
“We have a real heart to equip young people to become influential for God in all arenas in life,” said Ben Jones, the charity’s founder and trustee, as he visited us in the studio.
As someone who struggled with dyslexia in school himself, Ben understands the benefit of visual resources for teaching. “Our kids love technology just like any other child and young person does in the world, and there’s a big fear around media and tech and ‘how much should we let young people engage and explore?’ What we’ve done as a charity in the last 18 months is ask the question: ‘how can we use digital interaction, digital immersive experiences to open up conversation to move from digital to discipleship?’”
The charity aims to teach children that they are made by God, accepted by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Helping them to understand their identity and community, connected to each part of the Trinity is part of the charity’s method in encouraging young people to be effective.
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The Spirit Café
Lori Arnott Lawlor is the founder of the Spirit Cafe, a church-based prophetic evangelism model which has been adopted by churches in the UK and many countries around the world. She talked to us about how the café works.
When entering a ‘Spirit Café’ you can expect to be given a menu with 5 choices of ‘treatment’. The language used is to mimic that of a spa or beauty parlour. The treatments are focused on salvation, healing, peace and more. Each one is centred around Jesus and aimed towards providing space for the public to encounter Him. “One of the key things is to talk normal language,” Lori explained while talking about creating an accessible space. “Sometimes we grow up in church and we get so comfortable with church, that we forget the Great Commission.” She reminds us that most people are open to ‘spirituality’ and faith, and just need a space to feel welcome. People can meet with a prophetic team and also socialise, pray or discuss their experience after their ‘treatments’. For more information watch our interview with Lori now, on demand!
