The work of the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse is 'lifting the sights' of UK churches and showing what 'God is doing on a global scale', the international organisation's British boss has said.
Interviewed by Christian Today at the Spring Harvest conference in Minehead, Simon Barrington, Samaritan's Purse Chief Executive Officer outlined the work being done in Rwanda, Iraq and South Sudan and how people are being lifted out of poverty and 'coming to know Jesus'.
Samaritan's Purse is an international and evangelical relief and development organisation that works through local churches. The charity has been operating since 1970 and also has offices in the US, Canada, Germany, and Australia.
'Working through the local church, we do that practically everywhere we go right round the world,' says Barrington, whose organisation has a strong presence at Spring Harvest, where some 4,000 Christians have gathered. 'One of the programmes we're talking about this week is the mobilisation of 700 churches in Rwanda – Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian – have come together to lift 14,000 families out of poverty. And that just seemed to fit so well with the theme of [Christian] unity that is here at Spring Harvest.'
'In Rwanda we started quite small with one Anglican diocese, saw them mobilise a hundred churches, saw 2000 families lifted out of poverty out of that, and then the [local Anglican] Archbishop [Onesphore Rwaje] got the vision for what that could become, brought all of his bishops together, rolled it out to the whole of the Anglican church and Archbishop Rwaje started talking about that to his colleagues from other denominations.
'They got excited about it, and what's really exciting about it is it's seeing family lifted out of poverty, but it's also seeing people coming to know Jesus as well, and seeing the Church growing, and that's why people like the Archbishop are so excited about it.
Barrington continues: 'So the whole theme of unity and church coming together for a purpose, church coming together for mission – it's something that we wanted to inspire Spring Harvest: it's not just about the UK, it's actually a global phenomenon. And the story [everywhere] is exactly the same: churches coming together.'
Some twenty years after the genocide in Rwanda, 'where neighbour killed neighbour and the [rival] tribes were warring with one another', churches are coming together and 'there is reconciliation happening, there is healing happening,' says Barrington.
'It is changing the Church as well as changing the lives of those families. So that's why our partnership with Spring Harvest is such a natural fit really because everything that is being talked about in terms of ministry on the stage, is what's happening with our partners in countries...And I think that lifts the gaze about it just being a UK conference about UK churches – and says this is what God's doing on a global scale.'
Samaritan's Purse has also been working in Iraq for the past 12 years of violence, and established the Samaritan's Purse Emergency Field Hospital on the Plains of Nineveh. On 17 March the hospital received its 1,000th patient.
Barrington explains: 'Last year the World Health Organisation (WHO) together with the Iraqi Ministry of Health were saying to us that nobody is prepared to put a field hospital close to Mosul, and that was at a time that the east of Mosul was falling and people were having to be driven for two hours from eastern Mosul to Irbil if they had shrapnel wounds or if they've been hurt.
'So we actually responded to that call and with the WHO deployed a hospital that is twelve miles out of Mosul that has two operating theatres, dozens of beds...and is really bringing life-changing medical care to civilians who are free in Mosul. So that is a big area for us, and mirrors the fact that we are trying to build the medical capacity of Samaritan's Purse.'
The third area the charity is focusing on now is South Sudan, a country currently ravaged by famine and civil war.
'We are focussed on South Sudan and we are involved in providing clean water in some of the most dangerous parts of South Sudan,' he says.
The charity is involved in additional projects include drilling wells to provide clean water, distributing food to fight hunger and malnutrition, providing medical care for the sick and suffering, and working through the local church to build up communities through education and biblical literacy.
