Our Strategy

According to the experts on global poverty alleviation, entrepreneurship is the pathway out of poverty. Data results and best practices show that the most effective and enduring way to address spiritual and material poverty is to lead with discipleship training and provide education, economic development, and employment.

Therefore, our objective is to meaningfully invest in the lives of Liberians—to counter the raging cycle of poverty and joblessness. We do seek to provide immediate relief, as is warranted and necessary. But the difference between relief and development is that the latter is much like a long-term investment rather than an immediate purchase. Thus, our end goal is national development—we desire to make a long-term commitment to the Liberian people in order to bring about lasting transformation. To herald and promote change that enables the people of Liberia to thrive.

Along these lines, the saying goes: "You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime." While we don't want just to give a man a fish, the difficult tension that needs to be navigated in Liberia may be put like this: 'The Liberian people desperately want to fish—and many already know how to fish—but there is a dearth of water in which to fish.' Our approach is to partner with organizations on the ground to provide Liberians—at the very least—with access to the Gospel, clean drinking water, education, and decent medical care.

Our heart's desire is to help lift Liberians—to put them on an upward trajectory out of poverty. We aim to inject dignity and respect by unlocking the people's entrepreneurial spirit and enterprising potential. Our sustainable approach is to help make their dreams and aspirations to provide for their families a reality by encouraging and inviting them to use their God-given gifts and abilities. To tap into their creative capacities and all the resources at their disposal. 

The center and hub of Heart In Heaven's approach is our biblically strategic objective and resolve to ultimately partner with the local church. The roots of parachurch ministries must always grow and extend from the tree trunk of the local church that ministers in the same geographic location. As we pursue the Great Commission, the local church—as the central agent and component—must be ever upheld and strengthened. In other words, our goal is to foster and maintain relationships with the local church that are based upon and characterized by healthy interdependence, not unhealthy dependencies.

Therefore, we apply the "Integral Mission Principle," which affirms that the global church body must function in such a way that it does not disempower the local church from using its gifts to holistically engage in integral mission. The goal of Integral Mission is to proclaim and demonstrate among the materially poor the Good News of the kingdom of God in a contextually appropriate way.

In addition to observing the "Integral Mission Principle," we also acknowledge that material poverty is fundamentally rooted in the brokenness of human relationships between God, self, others, and the rest of creation. Therefore, we also adhere to the "Poverty-Alleviation Principle": the ministry of reconciliation—entrusted by Christ to the church—that seeks to restore people to who and what God created them to be.

Indeed, this is the biblical solution to all poverty. Only then can the damaged relationships that exist between God, self, others, and creation be truly restored. As people use their gifts of time, talents, and energies to build sustainable livelihoods—that enable them to work and support their families—the upshot is that they also glorify God, the gracious Giver of all gifts.