We hope you'll find answers to most of your questions below but if not, please do just give us a call on 0845 521 0021 or use the contact form.

What is it?

Connected Church offers a simple, effective way for your church to link up with churches working to bring transformation to their local communities around the world. It’s a great way to connect with poverty, to see lives transformed – and a chance to really change your own church community.

Connected Church gives an exciting insight into what can happen when the church becomes all it’s truly meant to be in the world. And it’s a lot more besides – a focus for your giving and prayer, a point of connection, an exciting venture for the church, and an opportunity to engage your local community with God’s heart for people in poverty.

How does it work?

It’s simple – you go to the Connected Church area of our website, choose a project to link to from the wide selection on offer, and pledge your commitment to it.

We’ll then keep you updated with quarterly reports on what’s happening in the project and what you can pray for. We’ll also give you ideas for engaging your church and community, and offer you ways of connecting with the people you’re supporting, perhaps even by going and visiting.

Who’s it for?

Connected Church is designed for churches and Christian groups that want to get involved in supporting a project with their prayer and giving through Tearfund. It’s open to churches and group in the UK and Ireland – if you live elsewhere, please contact us before making a pledge.

If you’d like to do something similar as an individual – journeying with a poor community and making a monthly pledge to help bring transformation through the local church – we’ve developed See for yourself especially for you. Click here to find out more. 

Why should we sign up?

When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, he talked about the joy of their ‘partnership in the gospel’ (Philippians 1:50). Through Connected Church, you and your church have the privilege of linking in your prayer and giving with a specific church-based project working to bring transformation in a poor community.

You’ll receive quarterly updates so you can see the impact of your giving and target your prayers. And your own church community can experience positive change as you engage together with what God’s doing in the place you’re linked to.

At the moment we email the main updates to you, but all the content is available on the Tearfund website – so we’ll soon be changing this, emailing you to let you know as soon as new prayer requests, stories or other updates are available on the website.

How much should we pledge?

As a church you can make a pledge of £500 or more per year – we’ve made this the minimum amount because we believe it’s what a committed group of people would expect to be able to raise in the course of a year. Alternatively you might prefer, for example, to work together with other local churches or groups in order to generate a suitable amount.

If you want to be part of Connected Church but think it might be too difficult for your church, give us a call – we’d love to help you get your whole community involved.

Can we find out who else is supporting the project?

Yes, absolutely. Once you’ve made a commitment to the project, we’d be very happy to link you up with the other supporting churches – please contact us and we’ll let you know.

Can we go and visit?

Yes, of course: we’d love to arrange a trip for you. Setting up this kind of thing does take time, of course, and it will also take the people you’re visiting away from their normal work – so when planning a visit we’ll be talking with you about how we can make a lasting impact and get a great return for God’s kingdom from the money and time that’s invested in going.

Call us on 0845 521 0021 to find out more about going on a trip.

Can someone from the project we support come and visit us?

Yes, indeed. As with people from here going to visit projects in other countries, if you’re thinking about inviting someone from there to visit here, we’d like to see maximum impact for the kingdom of God in relation to the time and money involved.

The main things we’d ask are that you cover the person’s costs and that you don’t try to arrange anything that would involve them being away from home for more than two weeks. The best thing is to call us early on in your thinking, so we can discuss it.

Why go through Tearfund to start a link like this?

Linking with an overseas church can be a risky business – for everyone concerned. Disappointments and misunderstandings can arise on either side of the relationship, and these in turn can lead to heartbreak and pain in your own church and the partner church – as well as damaging the work done among poor people.

The advantage of working through Tearfund rather than going it alone is simply that we have more than 40 years’ experience of working to address poverty in partnership with churches and Christian groups around the world. We understand the pitfalls of working cross-culturally, and we also know how to achieve real and sustainable transformation in people’s lives. Connected Church is all about putting our relationships and expertise at your service to make the experience rewarding, secure and beneficial for everyone involved.

To find out more about how we work and what we believe, click here.

Who will we be linking with?

You can choose from a range of exciting church-based partner projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America to link with. By ‘church-based partner project’ we mean a project run by a group of churches to bring spiritual and material transformation in a poor community. Often this will be a large group of churches, and always it is people that Tearfund has an established partner relationship with.

Our experience is that working and funding at this slightly more strategic level means that each local church is treated fairly and the best use of your financial gifts are made

How do we sign up?

It’s simple – all you need to do is go to the Connected Church section of the Tearfund website, follow the links to ‘Choose a project’ and make your pledge. You’ll need to provide some details so that we can contact you when we have updates from the project or any other news.

Can we transfer our regular Tearfund giving to Connected Church, and is that a good idea?

Yes, of course you can. If your church or group already gives to Tearfund, we believe that Connected Church is a great way to get it more involved with the work that we and our partners do. And we’re confident that by connecting you with a specific project, over time we’ll see you deepening your involvement with Tearfund across the board.

Isn’t Connected Church restricted funding, and wouldn’t it be better just to give to Tearfund’s general funds?

It’s technically correct that Connected Church is restricted funding – in other words, the donations can only be used forConnected Church and not for Tearfund’s other work without your consent. But we’re committed to working with you to increase your church’s engagement with Tearfund as a result of your experience with Connected Church. We therefore believe that the benefits a Connected Church relationship brings can far outweigh the minor complications for us of having restricted funding.

How do we give financially?

When you’ve made your pledge you can give by cheque, card, direct debit, bank transfer etc – the information is all there when you complete the pledge forms.

What happens if a project doesn’t get all of its targeted funding?

We’ve deliberately chosen projects that we’re committed to supporting even if the total pledges made by churches and groups don’t reach the target. Our aim is to enable you to choose a specific project to support in a way that will be a blessing to you and the project – so not in a way that puts the partner’s work at risk. Generally, the target is the maximum that we believe the partner project can use effectively.

What happens if a project gets more than its target funding?

Once the target amount is met through pledges, we’ll change the project information on the website.

It’s important to us to make it clear that any additional funding would be used elsewhere, for example in other projects with the same partner, or with other partners in the same country or region. However, we would still want to offer people the chance to follow and engage with the original project, understanding that their giving would in effect be used for other development work of a type represented by the project.

Can someone come and speak to us about the project?

Yes, we can send you a fully briefed and trained Tearfund speaker for your meeting or service. They’ll be able to tell you about the project, and they may have new information about it.

Your speaker may possibly have visited the project, but understandably this won’t always be the case. And of course, if you yourself go and visit the project you support, we’d love you to bolster the ranks of those who are willing to speak and encourage others to get involved with it. Please get in touch if you’d like to find out how to become a Tearfund speaker.

I’ve forgotten my password or username

Give us a call on 0845 521 0021 and we’ll reset your password and tell you your username.

I think our donations are showing incorrectly!

If you think there’s something wrong, do call us and we’ll sort it out. Human error could mean the amount shown on the website is incorrect, but don’t worry: the money will be allocated correctly here, and we can manually adjust any errors if you notify us.

How long will the projects go on for?

The projects that we’ve selected for Connected Church typically run for several years. We fund them in three-year cycles, and of course over time the focus or location of the work may change in response to developments. This is often a sign of success, as it means change is happening and the local church may be able to move on to address new needs.

We always aim to help our partner projects get to the point where they no longer need our financial support. If it looks as though we may need to make changes to your support because of this, we’ll make sure we consult you.

Can we stop giving or commit for just a short time?

Connected Church is all about relationship, so we ask you to make a commitment of one year as a minimum and to fulfil your pledge for that year.

We hope you’ll build a relationship with the project and what’s going on in the community you’re helping and will want to stay connected, but we appreciate you may at some point choose to cease your involvement with a project. If that’s the case, please just let us know.

Can we send letters and photos of our church?

We want to help you connect personally with the project and we’d be very happy to pass on your prayers, words and pictures to encourage them – they will be blessed to know there are people many miles away praying for them.

However, we would offer a word of caution: it’s best not to expect a like-for-like communication in return. Some of the people you support won’t speak English or be able to read and write, so while someone at the partner’s headquarters may send a personal greeting in return, it would be unrealistic to expect a pen pal type of relationship. So for example, if children in your Sunday school wrote letters, the reality is that they wouldn’t each get one back in return.

Nevertheless, we’d be more than happy to send letters of encouragement to partners and local pastors to the extent that this is possible within the logistical constraints of each partner’s work.

How much of the money we give goes to the project?

Ninety per cent – we deduct just 5 per cent for admin costs in the UK and 5 per cent for reporting in the country where your project is working.

Can you help us with our own existing link?

We’ve put together some information and advice to help churches building relationships with churches in poorer parts of the world; just go to the ‘helpful advice’ section of the site.

We hope you’ll find the information really helpful, but if not – while we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to provide the help you’re looking for – do give us a call on 0845 521 0021 or email us on connected@tearfund.org

Can you help us start a link with some people we met?

If the people you met happen to be already working in partnership with Tearfund, this could be possible – but we can’t guarantee it. The best thing to do is contact us, and we’ll see what we can do.

Another possibility would be to consider what we call a ‘tailored relationship’ – that’s a link that we can set up to suit your church’s particular requirements. However, this approach is generally more suitable if you’re considering major financial support (£10,000 per year). Again, get in touch with us with your ideas.

For more information about tailored relationships, call us on 0845 521 0021

Can you help us start a link in a country not listed?

Connected Church is currently limited to the countries listed on the website, but if you’d like to have a link with another country because of your church’s specific interests, we’d suggest you consider a ‘tailored relationship’. This is a link that we set up especially for your church.

As you can see from the target amounts for the projects currently available, the costs of funding a project can easily be more than £25,000 per year. If we’re considering creating a link for one church or group, therefore, we need to know that you’ll be willing to pledge a substantial sum – not necessarily £25,000 per year, but at least £10,000 per year.

For more information about tailored relationships, call us on 0845 521 0021

If you visit a church in another country you may well make lasting friendships, and with email and other modern communications you may be able to keep in regular contact. This could grow into more substantial and fruitful cooperation between your two churches.

Experience shows, however, that it’s important to make sure such a relationship doesn’t create dependency. This is just one of a number of potential pitfalls in building relationships between churches that we discuss in the Connected Church ‘Helpful advice’ section.

What do the projects do?

The projects that we work with are committed to seeing people released from spiritual and material poverty. They’re not just about giving people temporary handouts but about empowering individuals, families and communities to address their poverty needs and experience real and sustainable transformation.

The projects are examples of what we call Church and Community Mobilisation – the local church working with its local community to identify what changes are needed to help people get out of poverty and hunger, and helping them to find the resources to achieve the transformation they’re looking for.

What is Church and Community Mobilisation?

Church and Community Mobilisation is the approach that we and our church-based partners use to help poor communities transform themselves. It includes the church working with its local community to identify needs and resources and then plan actions to bring about the necessary spiritual and material transformation.

We’ve developed a process called Umoja (the Swahili word for ‘togetherness’) which churches and communities use to put Church and Community Mobilisation into effect. We’ve produced a short film that tells you more about this – to order your copy, click here.