Current Projects

1. CHURCH LEADERSHIP PROJECT

Over the past 9 years Hope In View has given training to hundreds of Ethiopian church leaders from many denominations. Training has ranged from courses in 4 seminaries and a graduate school of theology to seminars for national denominational leaders, local church leaders, and indigenous church planters. Topics have included the theology of the kingdom of God, discipleship through interactive small groups, tent-making and sustainability, stewardship and giving, and church leadership in the era of AIDS. 

These trainings have resulted in the organization of more than 400 interactive small groups in western, central, and southern Ethiopia among several Protestant denominations, Ethiopian Catholics, and others.  Leaders of these small groups have been organized into networks of coaches and congregational coordinators, all of which receive ongoing training, supervision , and peer mentoring.  The goal of these networks is to facilitate worldview and lifestyle change, not just conversion.

In November, 2010 Hope in View launched a non-traditional Bible school in western Ethiopia in partnership with the Ethiopian Addis Kidan Baptist Church to train leadership for a rapidly growing church-planting movement among former animists.  Hand-picked students, all already church leaders, will attend one week of every month, then return to their homes to farm and to implement what they have learned in the groups they supervise.  The curriculum is being designed to emphasize the theology of the kingdom of God, facilitation techniques for small interactive groups, wholistic ministry to practical as well as spiritual needs, and participatory educational techniques, which are particularly important among non-literate people.

2. Self-Help Groups

In partnership with Tearfund, Hope In View is helping these discipleship groups become self-help groups, adding personal economic development to their discipleship agenda.  By saving small amounts weekly and eventually making loans for starting small businesses to their members, self-help groups enable very poor people to rise out of poverty without charity from outside.  See the story of Matnitu for how these self-help groups work

3. Trinitarian Reconciliation Movement

A remarkable movement to reconcile, bring into cooperation, and eventually possibly even to reunite Ethiopian Catholics, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Protestants has emerged in the last two years under the leadership of the Ethiopian Bible Society. Endorsed by the Catholic Archbishop, the Orthodox Patriarch, and the General Secretary of the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, the movement has been bringing together lay people from all three groups in various cities of Ethiopia to create understanding of the unique contribution each group can make to the others and promote dialogue. Hope In View is helping emerging leaders of these three branches of Christianity to discover what they have in common and begin studying the Bible and praying together.

4. Giving Birth to New Businesses

In Ethiopia, only dependence on outside funding limits the growth of church-planting movements and community development ministries. Hope In View brings people with different skills together to foster the development of new for-profit businesses (independent of Hope In View) that could benefit the ministries and communities of Ethiopia. We are at present working to establish businesses in the areas of low-tech well digging, farming of high-value vegetables, chicken and egg production, and guest houses for tourists. We welcome the help of experienced business persons from the West who could work on either side of the Atlantic to help our Ethiopians friends develop these businesses.

5. Ethiopian National Protestant AIDS Curriculum Project

Hope In View helped persuade Ethiopia's Protestant denominations to work together on an AIDS curriculum for pastors throughout the country, and facilitated the work of a writing team that included 16 different denominations. After two years of work including field testing, the curriculum is now being distributed to the leadership of all the Protestant denominations and their theological training schools throughout Ethiopia. Hope In View spearheaded training of faculty members from several schools in the use of this new curriculum beginning in spring, 2009, and will continue to assist the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia in training all established pastors.

6. Child Sponsorship Project

Hope In View currently sponsors 84 children through two churches in different areas of Addis Ababa. Children selected for sponsorship either come from families affected by HIV or from other families identified as “the poorest of the poor.” They receive school fees and uniforms, nutritional supplementation, medical care, spiritual care, and personalized supervision at home through volunteers who also train their parents and guardians in parenting, health and hygiene, and means of supporting their families economically. For information on other children needing sponsorship, see “Sponsor a Child”.