Read about seven compassionate and holistic ministries where SIM workers are proclaiming the gospel and living it out, helping to transform the communities where they serve.
Finding joy in the brokenness
Hope For Life
Since the height of the HIV epidemic in the 1990s, SIM has been responding to issues of HIV globally through a range of health and development projects, known as ‘Hope for Life’ (HFL).
By engaging people with Jesus’ love, doors are opened to share the gospel with vulnerable people most at risk of HIV and the communities they’re connected with.
Currently, SIM has more than 20 Hope for Life ministries in 12 least-reached communities around the world that address the different factors underlying HIV such as brokenness in families, the question of identity, teenage pregnancies, exploitation, sexuality, and depression.
In Thailand, the SIM team partners with the local church to teach English at schools and comes alongside people living with HIV and their families at a community drop-in centre, where they’re invited to join in Bible studies and hear of the hope of Christ.
The team has also recently started a badminton sports ministry after the church opened its grounds to families following its Sunday worship!
Breaking the cycle of desperation
Helping The Homeless
In a bustling South Asian mega-city, which is home to more than 22 million people, an SIM ministry is showing God’s love in practical ways to give gospel hope to homeless women and their children.
While their babies and children are cared for, vulnerable women encounter and experience God’s love through the Children’s Uplift Programme (CUP). Each day, they hear God’s Word as they learn vocational skills, like jewellery-making and sewing, so they can earn a living and escape a life on the streets and the risk of prostitution.
Peace for those forced to flee
Discipling Refugees
For ten years Biu has loved sharing the good news with women who’ve gone through great suffering and loss in South Sudan.
Recognising the many barriers these women face — from illiteracy to the challenges of daily survival — Biu developed unique and compassionate ways to share the gospel and connect deeply with them.
She visits the women each week to explain the gospel visually and gives them audio Bibles to make Scripture more accessible. Each time she returns to the refugee camp, the women are enthusiastic to sit down and learn more as God works through Biu to draw them to him.
Protecting those at risk
Preventing Human Trafficking
“God has told us to love him with all our heart, mind, and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. If we think about what loving our neighbours means today, it looks like loving those who are on the margins and who are in vulnerable spaces.
“This includes those who are at risk of being trafficked and exploited,” says Karine, who leads SIM’s global anti-trafficking and exploitation ministry, For Freedom.
Human traffickers are at work in several of the 70+ countries where SIM operates and For Freedom was launched in 2018 to coordinate SIM’s response and address the root causes. The ministry provides training, support, and strategic guidance to SIM teams, partner ministries, and local churches involved in anti-trafficking work.
“Our workers build relationships with those at risk to let them know they’re valued and loved as children of God, caring for them in a multitude of God-inspired ways and building practical protective measures to keep them safe,” adds Karine.
From anywhere to everywhere
Making Christ Known
The compassionate heart of Jesus compels SIM workers to share the gospel with people who’ve never heard the good news because they live in places where there are few Christians.
It’s estimated that more than three billion people have heard little or
nothing about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but through SIM’s pioneering Faithful Witness ministry, gospel seeds are being planted in nine least-reached communities across the world.
In places where people’s hearts are closed or hostile to the gospel, barriers are crossed, new churches are planted, and whole communities are blessed by multi-ethnic teams of workers sent from 22 different nations.
God’s healing power
Finding Restoration
According to the World Health Organisation, approximately 70% of the world’s population have been exposed to a traumatic life event, but God’s love is providing a pathway to healing for victims.
SIM’s trauma-healing ministries equip churches and believers with Bible-based and mental health principles to care for those who’ve experienced traumatic events. People are helped to take their pain to Jesus – the great healer and comforter – and to engage with the gospel in deeply meaningful ways.
Earlier this year, SIM UK’s Sarah Coleman launched her book, Life and Hope Out of Darkness: Creative Interventions for Helping People in Violent Communities that details her ministry among women living in the South Africa townships.
Using art, drama, puppetry, dance, mindfulness and breathwork, Sarah builds relationships to shine a ray of light and hope into the lives of people who seem so hopeless.
One woman, who attended Sarah’s trauma-healing group, said: “I’ve so much to be grateful for from this course. I feel lighter because I was able to dig out my old emotions from the past and deal with all the pain I have. To rely on God for more healing; to take all my pain to Jesus Christ.
Making Christ’s love known
Meeting vital health needs
“The Bible teaches us to put the gospel into action and we hope that in relieving a little bit of the physical suffering among a population who’ve suffered so much in recent history, we can make the love and heart of Jesus known,” says SIM UK’s James Hunter serving at Trinity Dental Clinic and the Dental Therapy School in Liberia.
Driven by compassion, James moved with his family to West Africa in August to use his skills as a dentist to help improve care in a country with just a handful of dentists for more than five million people.
James will train and mentor dental therapists; carry out complex dental procedures and support the day-to-day operations of the clinic to ensure continuity of care and a stronger, self-sustaining dental workforce.