Hope Alive Initiatives
Hope Alive Initiatives is a non-profit evangelical organization that exists to provide community volunteers, empowering leaders, advocates and donors the opportunity they need to improve lives in poor and vulnerable communities in partnership with grassroots’ churches. Based in Tamale city, Northern Ghana, the threefold goals of Hope Alive Initiatives is to envision, train and partner with grassroots churches to bring change in the lives of people in their respective communities. Grassroots churches in poor and vulnerable communities of northern Ghana lack the capacity to minister to the felt and spiritual needs of their communities. This is because the leadership is minimally trained for the work of ministry and the congregations have not been discipled sufficiently to be salt and light in their communities. Grassroots churches have a membership of up to 200 people. In Africa they are found in both rural and urban areas (in slums). Most of the pastors have to work to generate income to support their families because tithes and offerings given are insufficient to cover their needs as well as the church’s programs. Additionally, most of the pastors and leaders do not have theological training or managerial training. Any money received goes to support family subsistence and children education. The members of the churches have temporary jobs or are unemployed. This presents a challenge in having a healthy church. A healthy church should be self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating and self-theologizing (able to read and study the Word of God and apply it to their needs). Because of the daily struggle of these churches, they tend to be self-absorbed with their own needs rather than the needs of the communities around them. As a result obedience to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment of love suffers. Additionally, the members of these churches generally have low self-esteem and easily fall prey to false doctrine and get-rich schemes (where they always lose). The population of people in Africa now equally lives in urban and rural areas. This means grassroots churches in poor and vulnerable communities are equally distributed between urban and rural areas. In both areas the essential services of health, education and income generation are often lacking. This leads to poor health and poverty to people in these areas. Most of the educated young people tend to move out to middle and upper class churches immediately they acquire good jobs. As a result the churches in poor communities lose the skilled lay people they have raised up. They also lose the financial support that could have helped the churches.
Ghana
To provide staff, volunteers, advocates and donors the opportunity/means/organization they need to improve the wellbeing of poor and vulnerable communities in partnership with grassrootsÂ’ churches.
We believe the Bible, in its entirety in the original writings, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the final authority for faith and practice.
We believe there is one God existing in three persons: Father, Son and the Holy Spirit; that all three possess equally all the same attributes, nature, perfections and characteristics of personality. He fulfills His sovereign purposes in creation, revelation, redemption, judgment and the coming of His Kingdom.
We believe God the Father is the Creator of the heavens and the earth; Sustainer of all things. He has shown us His holy love, grace and mercy in giving Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Who died for our sins, in order to put sinners right with Himself.
We believe in that the Lord Jesus is fully God and fully Man. He was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and was without sin. He was the vicarious Sacrifice of the sin of all mankind through His death on the cross. He rose from the dead in His own glorified body, appeared to many, ascended into Heaven and will return in power and glory. He is now the Head of His Body, the Church, sits at the right hand of the Father and continues His Ministry as the High Priest for all believers ever making intercession for them.
We believe in the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit; that He is the infallible author and interpreter of the infallible Word of God; that He convicts, regenerates, indwells and empowers, instructs and guides the believer in holy living, service and worship through His gifts; that in this age He baptizes and permanently indwells and seals all believers into one body; that His chief purpose is to witness and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ; that His fullness, power and control are appropriated in the believer’s life by faith.
We believe that man is created in the likeness and image of God, conferring on us dignity and worth and enabling us to respond to God; that man fell through sin; that he is dead in trespasses and sins; that he is totally incapable of returning to God in himself, and is lost without hope apart from the salvation of Jesus.
We believe salvation is the gift of God through the grace, mercy and faith of Jesus Christ. There is no other Name, except that of Jesus Christ, by which men may be saved. By repenting from sin and trusting in Christ Jesus and His vicarious death on the Cross, man receives the forgiveness of sins and born again into eternal life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We believe the Church is the Body and Bride of Christ; that it is composed of all believers who have put their faith in Jesus and His finished work on the Cross for the forgiveness of sins; that all believers are obligated to assemble together for the purpose of participation in the ordinances, to be taught the Scriptures by gifted servants of God, to edify each other, and to worship God; that this assembling is to be organized as a local church, that the believer is called to holy living in the power of the indwelling Spirit; to fight the spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil; to use his spiritual gifts for the purpose of building up the Body of Christ; that every believer is called to fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.
We believe in the reality of heaven and hell; the reality of the great company of angels who kept their holy estate and are ministering spirits of God for the carrying our of God’s purpose, especially to those who inherit salvation; the reality of Satan and a company of angels who followed him in his fall, some of whom became demons who are active as agents in the carrying out of unholy purposes, while others are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
We believe the consummation of all things includes the personal, physical and bodily return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the righteous dead and the translation of those alive into the Presence of God for eternity; the resurrection of the unrighteous dead for eternal punishment
