Articles from our E-Update

Worried that the vast majority of funders of nonprofit organizations are achieving marginal benefit from their efforts to implement outcomes thinking, Mario Morino, Chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, offers his thoughts on how to really help nonprofit leaders be more effective. The main question funders should be asking? "To what end?"

Click to read article

Gathering participant Fritz Kling has written a new book that Tim Keller says "should be basic reading not only for all Christians involved in global missions but also for any believers trying to reach out to their own city." Also endorsed by Richard Stearns and Gary Haugen, the book identifies seven trends having a major impact on the Church around the world - and on every Christian at home in every country.

Read a review of The Meeting of The Waters

Watch a 1-minute trailer about The Meeting of the Waters

Preview or buy The Meeting of the Waters on Amazon

A Gathering Interview With Laura Waters Hinson

Last September, The Gathering interviewed Laura Waters Hinson, the producer of As We Forgive, to find out more about how her Student Academy Award-winning documentary was being used to further reconciliation efforts in Rwanda. Below, she shares how she became passionate about making the movie, the miraculous ways God provided for her needs along the way, and the personal lessons she has learned and had an opportunity to apply regarding forgiveness and reconciliation.

TG: How did your interest in the reconciliation efforts in Rwanda begin?

LWH: I think God's pretty creative. It began when I was in college. In 2000 I did a study abroad in South Africa. I was a political science major and somehow kept focusing in on Africa. ...In 2005, I was in Washington D.C. working on a Master's in documentary film. My church on Capitol Hill, an Anglican church called Church of the Resurrection, was forming a partnership with a sister church in Rwanda. So, I decided to go on a trip with my church to help build the relationships and partnership with the church in Rwanda. While I was there I met Bishop John Rucyahana. I had no idea when I met him that he's one of the biggest leaders of reconciliation in the country. He's really one of the most beloved, famous people in Rwanda because he's worked tirelessly to rebuild the country ever since the genocide.

TG: How did you meet Bishop Rucyahana?

LWH: We met with him because in many ways he is like a spokesperson for the Anglican Church in Rwanda. He started a school for orphans in Rwanda called Sonrise that has become one of the best schools in the country. So we went to visit the school and hear his heart. When I met him, he told me his own story of how people in his family were killed and how he felt called to come back to Rwanda after being a refugee and to minister in the prisons, and how he inevitably met the people who had killed his family members and his feeling of being called to forgive them.

Then he started explaining this wider issue of how the Rwandan government was releasing tens of thousands of prisoners and how they would be coming home to face the people whose families they had killed. He explained that as a nation, they were trying to embark in a reconciliation movement. I was totally blown away by this. I thought, are you serious? Could [these] people really heal and forgive and reconcile and live together? And he said it was slowly starting to happen.

It was like a lightening bolt struck. I was sitting there with Bishop John as he held my hand and looked me in the eye and I told him, "Bishop John, I'm going to come back and make a movie about it! (Hinson laughs) I don't know how, but I'm going to do it!"

I was about halfway through my Master's program [in documentary film at American University] and when I met Bishop John I thought, this has to be my thesis. But even if it's not my thesis, I have to do this because I'd never heard any reporting on it.

So I got back to the states in August of '05 and basically spent the whole year just fundraising through my friends and my family who made many small donations.

TG: How much money were you going to need to make the film?

LWH: Well, I needed about $10,000 or maybe a little bit more. I ended up raising around $30,000 to $40,000 over time. One person came up to me and said, " I'll pay for the score of the film." And another couple from our church, who I didn't even know, came up to me and just wanted to give me $10,000, and I had only met them one time! There were only about 150-200 people in our church at the time, but everybody really banded together and supported me.

So, we went back to Rwanda in June of '06 with a group of film students - just folks that I knew. I took my roommate to help out as the production assistant. And we had no idea what we were going to do. All I knew was that there were these stories, and I knew Bishop John and I knew Sonrise School and beyond that, I didn't know anything else.

TG: (sarcastically) You didn't have all your interviews set up before you got there?

LWH: (laughter) No, no! I didn't do anything by the book!

TG: Had you just booked a one-way ticket to Rwanda or did you have a time frame you had to work within?

LWH: We only had one month. It's all we could afford. I was working at the time. I had to take a month off. But I was working for the church so they let me go for a month.

TG: Were you single at the time?

LWH: Yea, I was 27 years old and single. Now, when I was 21, I had been engaged to my college sweetheart. And we had broken our engagement after eight months - really, not because of interpersonal strife; he just wasn't ready [to be married]. So that was a very horrible, awful time of my life. And that's when I moved to D.C. to go to film school. ....So now it's four years after the break up and I'm in Rwanda, but I'm still very, very sad about it. I was really rather hopeless about the whole "Will I ever be married?" thing.

Anyway, leading up to the shoot in Rwanda, my roommate and I realized we needed a translator in Rwanda who could be our ambassador. We needed somebody who gets the mission of what we're doing and can communicate it - not just any translator. Oh, and we needed somebody who also had a car - a driver/translator extraordinaire! And so we started praying about it.

TG: So you didn't have a connection in Rwanda?

LWH: No! No connection! So two weeks before the trip, my roommate's mom had received an email update from a missionary in Uganda. In the email, the missionary said, "I just took a trip to Rwanda and I had the best driver translator I've had in 20 years of living in east Africa." When we heard about that, I was like, "Get him!! Get his contact information!" So we emailed him and within a few days we heard from him. He told us that he had just finished at the university where he had studied political history and the genocide, and he could be with us our entire trip and he could also get a car and be our driver.

So on the first day we get to Rwanda to meet him and check him out, as we were meeting with him, [I realized] he was so unbelievably perfect! He was an evangelist, he knew four languages, he had started his own fund for orphans of the genocide, he had this deep heart for reconciliation, he was a survivor of the genocide himself, he had survived hiding in a house with his family - I mean all of these factors just fell in place! He was incredibly articulate, he loved being on time and you cannot find that in Africa - everybody's on "Africa time." He was always earlier than we were. Oh, and his name was Emmanuel!

So we were having tea, and I remember looking across the table at him and just starting to cry. I started thinking, if God can provide a translator that's perfect, I know He will provide a husband for me one day. And it was so healing for me. (She begins to tear up.) I have to not cry about it. The whole time we were in Rwanda, Emmanuel became like my pastor.

Anyway, two weeks after we got back from our trip, my ex-fianc

With a desire to see more young people dreaming and fulfilling 'Kingdom' dreams, LAUNCH, a program of Youth Unlimited (Toronto YFC), is helping young Christian visionaries and entrepreneurs change the world. Through a twelve-month one-on-one mentorship program, LAUNCH helps to influence the character and leadership skills of young people while aiding them in developing a strategic plan to implement their God- given dreams.

Click here to learn more about LAUNCH

Over 300,000 visitors are descending on the city of Vancouver for the Olympic Games, giving believers plenty of opportunities to be hospitable in the name of Christ. Find out how an organization called More Than Gold, which several Gathering participants help to lead, is helping the Christian community collaborate its efforts in mission and hospitality for maximum impact during and after the Olympics.

Learn more at the More Than Gold Website

Related article: More Than Gold Directors Challenge Chinese-Canadian Churches to Outreach at Olympics

Gathering participant Chuck Stetson has organized the "Let's Strengthen Marriage Campaign," including National Marriage Week USA, which runs from February 7-14 each year. The goal of the campaign is to address downward trends in The Marriage Index and turn them around. A recorded webinar featuring Chuck Colson is available online to help educate pastors and lay leaders who desire to help strengthen marriages in their communities.

Visit the Let's Strengthen Marriage Campaign Website

Learn more about National Marriage Week USA

View The Marriage Index: A Proposal to Establish Leading Marriage Indicators

View Free Marriage Webinar featuring Chuck Colson

Related article: Pastors Repent, Unite to Tackle Marriage Problem