Supporting Mission

Grace Church Loughborough loves to support and encourage mission locally and around the world. Mission for us is to look outside the church to see who we can help in practical and spirituals ways.  These are a few of the organisations we are currently supporting:

Open Doors

Open Doors is an international ministry serving persecuted Christians and churches in over 60 countries, including some of the most dangerous places in the world. Open Doors was started in 1955 by Brother Andrew, a Dutch Christian, who was called by God to serve Christians in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, by smuggling Bibles into those countries. The ministry has now developed into not only supplying Bibles to Christians in countries where it is illegal to own a Bible, or at least very hard to come by; but also to leadership training, literacy programmes, livelihood support and advocacy services. Open Doors also raise awareness and seek to mobilise the church in the UK to serve Christians living under religious persecution. Grace Church is a partner church with Open Doors.

For more information please visit their website.

Health care in South Asia

The area in the world that this individual is serving if fraught with real and violent danger. For this reason, we can not put much information online, but God knows who they are so please pray.

We at Grace church are privileged to pray for and support various people around the world. One such person is in the medical field, living a great distance away serving the local population to the best of their ability. The climate and living conditions, for this person, are more challenging than those which we face in the UK and so it would be good to pray the Lord helps keep this person in good health.

For more information on this we have regular updates during church services or please talk to one of the church leaders who will be happy to help.

The Friths in Bolivia

Debbie trained as a teacher in Leicester and Graham worked in retail management. Attending the Keswick conference in 1994 they felt God’s calling them to work in Bolivia. Initially they worked for two years in Cochabamba (95-97) as staff in an English speaking school. Whilst on holiday in Sucre God spoke to them about opening a ministry for University students there. After two years at All Nations Christian College, they returned to Sucre in January 2000 to begin preparing for opening El Alfarero (www.alfarero.org) The first El Alfarero opened in July 2001 with the aim of reaching out to the students and providing for their needs on all levels – physical, economic, emotional and spiritual.  A Cafe would provide fair priced meals and snacks, students could be volunteers and receive free food as well as feeling like part of the community, free counselling was available as well as other services like a library, training courses and more. The building was purchased and extended with the support of many organisations and churches, some being in England, who provided prayer support as well as funding through donations.

As this El Alfarero continued Graham, Debbie and family saw God’s vision to place another one in Santa Cruz where there were many more students. The building in Santa Cruz was purpose built and once again funded by generous donations from supporters across the world. Both El Alfarero buildings not only provide the café, volunteering opportunities but also other ministries such as pregnancy advice and counselling. El Alfarero in Santa Cruz opened in 2013 and is on a larger scale than Sucre as well as being a training centre for the Masters Programme in Strategic Leadership for ministry. Students that graduate from the Masters are going on to support existing projects across Latin America and beyond or open new ones.  Currently we have graduates working in ministry in Chile, La Paz and Sucre.

As a family Graham and Debbie are missionaries with Latin Link. They have 3 children, two of whom now live in the UK and one who is still at school in Bolivia. El Alfarero is a NGO which has its own legal identity in Bolivia and works in partnership with many different organisations including various mission agencies such as SIM, Latin Link, WGM and others.

Loughborough Student Union Christian Union

The Christian Union is a student's missional organisation on Loughborough campus. The aim of the CU is to give every person at our university the chance to hear and respond to the gospel. There are Christian Unions all over the United Kingdom and further afield which, through the support of UCCF, have the same focus of student mission.

We meet regularly every Tuesday for a time of fellowship and studying God's word together, which is a helpful time to fuel and equip each other. Through this support is then easier to reach out to flatmates, course mates and anyone else we may come into contact with. The CU puts on a number of events to invite friends along to. These range from acoustic nights to 'Dial a doughnut' and include a short gospel talk or testimonies. The Christian Union is not about meeting with other Christians, as people may think, but our aim is entirely missional.

The support given by Grace helps for things like lunch bars which we host during events week and are events which many non-Christians come to. Free food is always a draw for any student and so this help play a huge part! University is an incredible opportunity to share God's love with people and through the support of Grace, both financially and spiritually, that becomes a lot easier.

For more information about LSUCU please visit our website.