::: Micah Challenge ::: Organisation :::

The Council for the Micah Challenge has ten members drawn from the leadership of Evangelical Alliances and Christian relief and development agencies from around the world.. The joint chairs are Joel Edwards, General Director of Evangelical Alliance UK; and Alfonso Wieland, Director of Peace and Hope, Peru. The Council has appointed Michael Smitheram as International Coordinator for the campaign and have asked Tearfund UK to house the International Coordination Office.

The Micah Challenge is a joint project of the Micah Network and the World Evangelical Alliance and is inspired by landmark statements reached by both of these organisations in 2001.

The Micah Network brings together more than 270 Christian organisations providing relief, development and justice ministries throughout the world. The majority are community development agencies in the South. The Micah Network aims to:

	Strengthen the capacity of participating agencies to make a biblically-shaped response to the needs of the poor and oppressed;
	Speak strongly and effectively regarding the nature of the mission of the Church to proclaim and demonstrate the love of Christ to a world in need;
	Prophetically influence the leaders and decision-makers of societies to maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed and rescue the weak and needy.

The Micah Network’s first International Consultation in Oxford in September 2001 developed the Declaration on Integral Mission. The Declaration sets out the biblical basis for the Micah Challenge. A key excerpt reads: “Integral mission or holistic transformation is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world we betray the word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the word of God we have nothing to bring to the world. Justice and justification by faith, worship and political action, the spiritual and the material, personal change and structural change belong together. As in the life of Jesus, being, doing and saying are at the heart of our integral task.”

The World Evangelical Alliance was founded in 1951, and now embraces about 3 million local churches in 111 countries. In structural terms, the WEA is a global network of 120 national and regional evangelical church alliances, 104 organisational ministries and 6 specialised ministries serving the worldwide church.

The General Assembly of 2001 reached the following resolution, which also provides a cornerstone for the Micah Challenge:

“As a global Christian community seeking to live in obedience to Scripture, we recognise the challenge of poverty across God’s world. We welcome the international initiative to halve world poverty by 2015, and pledge ourselves to do all we can, through our organisations and churches, to back this with prayerful, practical action in our nations and communities. We believe …if the poverty targets are to be met:

	There needs to be a commitment to achieve growing justice in world trade in the light of globalisation; this must recognise the role of trade, particularly in arms, that fuels conflict and causes widespread poverty and suffering
	It is vital that a new deal on international debt is agreed by the G7 leaders as a matter of urgency and carried through by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
	Prophetically influence the leaders and decision-makers of societies to maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed and rescue the weak and needy.
	we urge governments and financial institutions of both North and South to act decisively, transparently and with integrity to combat corruption … taking the necessary steps to break the chains of debt and give a new start to the world’s poorest nations.”
Summary The Micah Challenge will bring a prophetic, powerful voice for and with the poor to global efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and will empower ongoing church engagement with civil society and government on issues affecting the poor.