Our Annual Commitments
January 6, 2025THF Weekly Briefing – 1/6/2025
I’m not generally a New Year’s resolution kind of person.
Not that I think there’s anything wrong with New Year’s resolutions. I just tend to think that if you’re going to do something, you should go ahead and do it and not worry about a new calendar year starting. In my mind, there’s nothing magical about January 1 that should make that day a better starting point than any other day for some new venture or initiative.
That said, I am very much in favor of setting goals, and I’m also very much in favor of communicating goals to others. Accountability is a wonderful motivator when it comes to keeping resolutions, whether they’re temporally related to the new year or not.
With that in mind, here are three commitments that I make to every organization that applies for funding from Tyndale House Foundation. These aren’t New Year’s resolutions, exactly, but since our submission deadline was the end of last week (January 2), I guess these are in fact resolutions for the new year.
Prayer
We commit to pray for every organization that submits a grant proposal to THF. The grant application asks for specific prayer requests so that we can pray knowledgeably and, we hope, effectively. We pray over these requests in our staff meetings. Sometimes we invite other people from around Tyndale to participate with us in praying for our grant applicants. Many of the requests make it into our annual prayer book, which we distribute to Tyndale employees and friends of the organization. We absolutely believe that prayer is our most effective partnership tool, and we make good use of it.
Review
We commit to thoroughly review every grant proposal that we receive. Multiple staff members will eventually read every word of every proposal, download and read every supporting document, enjoy every photo, watch every video. Very often, reviewing a proposal also includes reviewing a follow-up report from a previous year’s grant. Sometimes the review process includes spending some time on the organization’s website, looking at statements of faith and lists of board members and financial statements. We ask our grantees to spend a fairly significant amount of time crafting their proposal, and we are prepared to spend a significant amount of time reviewing those proposals. This is a necessarily time-consuming process, but it’s an important part of our work at THF, and it’s a way of honoring the time our grantees put into their proposals.
Communication
One of the frustrations I often hear in people’s experience working with foundations is that they never know what’s going on. An organization will submit a grant proposal and wait for a response. And wait. And wait. And never hear anything back. They don’t receive a grant, and they don’t know why. Or maybe they do receive a grant, but they never hear directly from the foundation about the decision, so they aren’t sure whether they should apply again for future funding or not. At Tyndale, we are committed to excellent communication with every applying organization. Even if a grant is not being awarded, we communicate about that, too, and if asked, I will gladly tell an organization’s leader why their proposal was declined. We believe our relational approach to grantmaking pays off in the depth and quality of the partnerships we develop with these remarkable organizations.
So there you have it—my three non–New Year’s resolutions for 2025. Feel free to ask me or any THF employee about these at any time. Hold us accountable! I believe we’ll be able to give you a positive progress report.
Meanwhile, as of the end of the day last Friday, we have received north of 130 proposals (with another 20 to 30 still to come) to review for our April 2025 grantmaking cycle, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities to put these commitments into action right away. Please join us in praying that the Lord will guide this process.
Here’s what’s happening.
2024 THF Year in Review
Since this is the first THF Weekly Briefing of 2025, it seems like the right time to take a quick look back at what happened in 2024. Here’s a snapshot of the impact we’ve seen over the past year:
- 227 grants to 203 distinct ministry organizations.
- Projects funded on 6 continents, including in some of the world’s hardest countries.
- THF staff visited partners in 10 countries (not including the US) and participated or presented at 7 international conferences.
- Nearly 300 strategy meetings with leaders of partner organizations.
- More than $4.7 million in grants allocated, mostly to organizations operating outside of the US.
- More than $300,000 paid in program funds, supporting THF projects aimed at leadership development, theological education, women empowerment, international Christian publishing, and more.
Mpox Outbreak in Congo
In the second half of 2024, health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo began to track multiple outbreaks of a mysterious illness affecting thousands of people. By the end of August, the illness was had affected over 17,000 individuals and had caused more than 3,000 confirmed deaths. Eventually the illness was identified as mpox (formerly called monkeypox). The situation was further complicated by factors such as widespread conflicts, extreme poverty, and limited access to healthcare services. These challenges exacerbated the spread of the virus, especially among vulnerable populations such as children and those living in refugee camps. In September, I got an email from a friend at World Relief, wondering if Tyndale House Foundation might be able to contribute to relief efforts in DRC, and the THF Executive Committee authorized an emergency grant to help World Relief mobilize resources. World Relief has lots of experience responding to medical crises, so they are a natural partner for a situation like this. As of the end of 2024, the outbreak had not yet been fully contained, but World Relief and other organizations (including the Congolese government) have made tremendous strides in communication about risk and prevention, improving access to healthcare for vulnerable populations, and strengthening coordination among caregivers. World Relief is responding to God’s call to care for the sick, and THF has played a small but impactful role in supporting these efforts in the DRC. Please pray for the caregivers as well as for those battling illness and grieving the loss of loved ones in Congo.
Turning No into Yes
Without question, the hardest part of foundation work is having to say no to good projects. Since our resources are limited, every year we have to make some very difficult funding decisions. But we also get to hear about ways God meets our partners’ needs even when we aren’t able to participate financially. Here’s an example. Two years ago, we had to say no to an organization called Petros Network that was requesting funds for distributing Bibles in South Sudan. A couple of weeks ago, one of the organization’s leaders wrote me about their disappointment and what happened afterward. He wrote, “As our earthly plans fell short, I questioned whether I had misinterpreted God’s calling. It was humbling to admit what felt like a failure. Little did I know, God’s plans were far more significant than I could have imagined at the time.” Partly in response to our declination, Petros Network and a couple of other partners set up a special volunteer group to raise funds for the needed Bibles. The end result was that nine months later, thanks to some unexpected participation by new partners, two containers of Bibles were delivered to the region. The leader who contacted me wrote, “The Petros grant application to Tyndale was like a seed planted. It sat in the ground for a while. Now God is using Tyndale’s faithfulness and sometimes even when your ‘saying no’ goes on to accomplish truly extraordinary things. Together, all of us are doing our best in responding to the need for training and equipping pastors to shepherd their communities effectively.” Praise God for his faithfulness in supplying our partners’ needs!
Educating Non-Christians about Christianity
A few months ago, prominent atheist Richard Dawkins—author of The God Delusion and one of the so-called “four horsemen” of New Atheism, made news when he said, “I call myself a cultural Christian.” How can a proud nonbeliever identify with Christianity? What does that even mean? John Stonestreet from the Colson Center (a THF grantee) has written about this. In his words, “Christianity has been good for the world.” Why? Stonestreet continues, “Western ideas of human rights, political equality, and science and art are products of Christianity. These things do not occur in most civilizations, and there is no reason to expect that they will endure in the West if Christianity fades.” Multiple THF partners are capitalizing on this kind of momentum by producing media that serves to educate non-Christian viewers about the cultural benefits of the Christian faith, particularly in hostile environments. Examples include PAK7 in Pakistan, 3xM in Afghanistan, SAT-7 in Iran, Miras Publishers in Turkey, Dar Manhal Al Hayat in Lebanon, Sanggar Mekah Asih in Indonesia, and others. Through television, online videos, magazines, books, and even feature-length films, these organizations are helping people—many of whom have likely never met a real Christian—understand that Christianity is a cultural good. And even more important, they’re introducing people to Christ himself for the first time. Please pray that through the work of these partners, many will investigate Christianity and ultimately come to faith in Jesus.
That’s it for this week’s briefing. Please send any questions, comments, and New Year’s Resolutions to [email protected]. I send out this email resource most weeks primarily for a Tyndale audience, but you should feel free to share it with others who may be interested, inside or outside of Tyndale. Thanks for continuing to pray for and support our partners around the world.
Jeremy Taylor
President | Tyndale House Foundation
The THF Weekly Briefing provides information about significant events happening in the wide universe of Tyndale House Foundation partner organizations as well as an occasional peek behind the scenes of THF’s operations. It is available to anyone at Tyndale who’s interested in learning more about the Foundation side of the organization. Was this email forwarded to you? Contact [email protected] to be added to (or removed from) the distribution list.