Who Are We Riding For?
- Ends of the Earth Cycling
- Sep 12, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 12, 2022
Written By: Christal Haner, Global Partnerships Liaison
We LOVE it when our beneficiaries get to come on tour and share about what God is doing in their ministry. Nathan and Katye C. from LOAF ministries in Haiti, joined us in TN on our WWBR2019 and shared about their ministry for the full tour (Nathan even rode with us!) It was epic!
Have you ever wondered how we choose our beneficiaries? Where do they come from? Are they trustworthy? As the Global Partnerships Liaison for Ends of the Earth Cycling, I head up the team that works to choose our beneficiaries. I’d like to invite you behind the scenes of our selection process to see a glimpse of what our process looks like and hopefully give you some peace of mind as you begin to raise funds for whatever tour you choose to join us on in the coming year.
A Good Problem
Every year we receive dozens of emails and messages from ministries all over the world asking Ends of the Earth Cycling (EC) to ride for them. It can be daunting to wade through all of those requests and find the ones with whom we believe God would have us partner. That is why we don’t do it alone. We have a proven system in place that helps us choose ministries that meet our high standards of accountability and that align with who we are as an organization. It is our goal to make sure that when you #PrayPedalRepeat (or #PrayTrekRepeat) for a ministry, it has been fully vetted and is a safe ministry in which to invest your prayers, efforts, and finances.
So What Is This "System?"
It begins with an application process. We have created a very detailed application that helps us learn about the ministry that is applying. Once we receive the application, it is sent to our Beneficiary Team that reads and prays through each application and takes notes and grades that application based on our specific criteria. If the application is graded within our parameters, it is now ready for the next step, the interview.
Our brother, Daniel L. joined us all the way from Zimbabwe to #PrayServeRepeat and share about his ministry to youth during our KWBR2016.
The interview is an excruciating interrogation that usually ends in tears. Just kidding! The interview helps us understand more about the ministry - how it functions, who the leadership is, what their financials are, in what capacity they are working with global youth, do they like dogs or cats, all the important things. We share about what God is doing in both EC and in their ministry. We talk about goals and expectations for our partnerships. We talk about visiting them and participating in their ministry. It is the first date of ministry partnership where we just lay everything out there and ask, “Do you like me? Check ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
After all the interviews are conducted, those of us involved in the selection process sit down and start to talk through our ‘green lighted’ beneficiaries and the tours that we have coming up. We pair ministries to tours that we think are best suited for their ministry. For example, when we are able, we like to pair a beneficiary with a tour happening in a state where they already have partners, so there is an opportunity for them to recruit people who already love them to come on the tour. It doesn’t always happen that way but when it does, it is a sweet gift from Holy Spirit.
As the Lord allows, we love to take teams who #PrayPedalRepeat to participate in the global youth ministry for which they rode. A group of men who rode during the SDBR2017 had an opportunity to encourage some young men in Guinea Bissau who were being trained to be evangelists.
The beneficiaries that we select are informed of our joy in getting to partner with them. We hug and high-five via video chat and start making plans. Soon after that you start seeing new tour dates and the beneficiaries for those tours. WOOHOO!
Believe it or not, this whole thing takes about a year from application to selection. While the nuts and bolts of this system look very cut and dry, this is actually a very Spirit-driven process. All of us involved in selecting our beneficiaries take this job very seriously and spend a lot of time praying through every part of the application. When you ride or serve on an Ends of the Earth Cycling tour (or hike), when you ask your friends and family to give to this cause, when you pray and prepare and wreck your body in Jesus name, you can be confident that the beneficiary you are doing this for is trustworthy and doing incredible work wherever they are in the world.
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