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In late January, 2025, government policy changes were rolled out at breakneck speed, shocking the humanitarian and development community and impacting millions experiencing vulnerability around the world. At World Relief, we experienced this first-hand. Promised funding for nearly 4,000 newly-arrived refugees in the U.S. under our care was stopped, abruptly and unexpectedly. Beyond the U.S., millions in fragile countries like Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti are facing an even greater threat to life as international aid hangs in the balance.
In times like these, when institutions falter, we hold firm to our belief that the church can change the world. For over 80 years, since World War II, we have boldly engaged in the world’s greatest crises in partnership with the church. Today, we’re seeing the church continue to step into the gap — to provide help for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.
Read on for a first-hand account of this story from World Relief’s Vice President of Strategic Engagement, Jeff Walser, who witnessed the impact of the local church in Turkana, Kenya.
Millions around the world need the church today more than ever before. Will you respond?
I can’t believe it’s been six years since my orientation days at World Relief. Reflecting on those early days, I remember a document that felt deeply inspiring. The title was and is straightforward — Seven Reasons Why We Believe the Church Can Change the World. It spoke so well to World Relief’s deep historical commitment to the local church and her theological conviction that God’s plan A (with no plan B in sight) is the church. It called me to a bold and unwavering belief, grounded in God’s Word, that he will put his manifold wisdom and eternal purpose on display through his church.
But that was 2018 and this is 2025 … and a lot has happened since then. Between that inspiring moment and this particular historical period of uncertainty in the spring of 2025, we all know there is an ocean of pain and grief, chaos and loss, disease and disaster, discontent and disunity. Those days and months and years in between rocked us. We saw, heard and experienced things that left us at turns angry, sad and despairing.
Truthfully, these years have been challenging and sometimes even devastating for the church. There were moral failures and leadership feuds. There were great resignations. There was rising and falling. There were allegations and disputations and so many broken and divided congregations.
Maybe you’ve wondered … do we still believe the church can change the world for the better? If I am honest, I’ve struggled with my own questions. Like so many others, this led to sadness, to deep need, then to prayer and a search for answers. For me, one of those answers came in the form of a visit to Turkana County, Kenya, where World Relief has been working with the local church for almost 15 years.
I first traveled to Turkana in 2013 as the Executive Pastor at Wheaton Bible Church during the early stages of our partnership with World Relief. On one of those days in the far northeastern reaches of Kenya, I sat around a table at St. Patrick’s Guest House with pastors from churches across several denominations. They discussed significant challenges in their community and how World Relief could help them navigate a pathway to resilience and even flourishing in the face of periodic cycles of severe drought and vulnerability.
They were just coming off one of the worst drought periods in recent history and their communities were in a fragile state. And the odds against a collaborative solution were pretty high. There wasn’t much trust built between churches, and the scarcity of resources was daunting. The fact that they were meeting and had begun working together at all was encouraging, and I left committed to praying for these precious people, their community and the church.
In a story I could never have imagined back in 2013, I was invited to return to Turkana last January, representing World Relief and traveling with the new senior pastor of Wheaton Bible Church. Wow. Eleven years later I found myself standing outside that same guest house completely overwhelmed at what had happened in the intervening years.
Traveling from site to site, we witnessed where bore holes had been drilled and water was abundant where there had been none. We saw community gardens flourishing where there had only been dust and dry land. We spent time with families and children that were thriving where there had been vulnerability and languishing. We found the churches from that first meeting at St. Patrick’s celebrating a new school, multiple new churches and new followers of Jesus flourishing where there was once hopelessness and despair.
The answer to prayer was there in the faces of those amazing people and the lives of those precious communities. Yes, I still believe the church can change the world because I have seen it.
As we walk together through another divisive time in the U.S., I find great hope in the testimony of my brothers and sisters in Turkana — testimony that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can come together even across great differences to create change that not only lasts in our lifetime but also has eternal value. That, together, the global church truly still can change the world for the better.
Thank you for walking with us and with our global Christian family to deliver the transformative love, hope and peace of Christ in the midst of the world’s greatest crises.