By Jim Collins

I’ve often been asked what I have enjoyed most about Manly-Manado – and how my experiences have transformed me. And, as I look back over its five-year journey, Manly-Manado provided some of the richest experiences of my whole life. But more profoundly, these experiences changed how I live.


From the moment I heard Jim Goddard’s crazy idea of a ‘community partnership’, bridging the divide between the developed and developing world I was hooked. 2005 was the year of Making Poverty History – the shame and sadness of our international inequalities showcased by white wristbands, Bono and Bob – and here was a chance for me as an idealistic, Bible college student to join in the grassroots Action Against Poverty.

Offered a spot on the Steering Committee, I jumped at the chance. We helped Jim flesh out the vision, fine tune the purpose – and we prayed… We saw God move powerfully in those early days. It was exciting: Manly’s churches signed up, council agreed to champion the cause. Locals got together and danced, ate and sang; people bought and sold at all number of events, raising awareness and funds for Manado.

As churches, we began to grasp God’s deep desire for His people to stand against injustice, and play our part in bringing change. I began to unearth my writing and speaking gifts God had entrusted to me, and was employing them in antipoverty work. I’d never felt so fulfilled in my work life before. It was wonderful!

When my good friend, Stu Harris asked me to visit Manado to co-write Love in Action, I was thrilled. In Indonesia, I saw the impact of Manly’s collective efforts taking shape in changed lives – people we connected with, fellow members of God’s family. We met smiling mothers who proudly described how they could now feed their kids and provide a brighter future, because of Bridge of Hope’s small business loans. We spent emotional time with our sponsor children – watching Ricky and Nia enjoy life, love and laughter in a Compassion child development centre. The results were tangible. People in Manado shone with gratitude for the opportunities and hope given them.

Seeing raw poverty was confronting. At Sumompo’s rubbish dump, the ever-present stench and stomach-churning conditions that families endured was hard to accept. Hundreds of millions of people live like this – suffering poverty, injustice and exploitation – Stu and I couldn’t change that. But Love in Action was born out of our dream to make a difference – doing what little we could do.

Most of all, Manly-Manado has changed how I want to live. God used it to show me who I am, and helped me begin to craft a justice-oriented lifestyle. Acting against poverty is so much more than giving up loose pocket change. If I’m serious about cutting poverty’s cancer out of the global lung, I must change. It means considering what I do with my time, how I earn my money, what I shop for. It means setting my sights on things that really matter, not just the glittering ‘baubles’ that advertisers dangle before my eyes. It means raising my kids to care for God’s world and showing how they can impact it for good or bad.

God has used Manly-Manado to transform many lives – way beyond what we will ever see or know. But most of all it taught me that doing right can become part of the way I do life…