When Rob our new CEO joined us in September 2018, he spent a number of months praying and fasting, listening to God and others to discern where WIN was going and to get a sense of where God was leading and what He was saying to us as an organisation.
God put on his heart a fresh expression of WIN's reason to exist and as he's shared this with staff, trustees, the fields around the world where we work, donors and church leaders we've received a resounding 'yes' combined with an excitement for what God is doing around the world and through the ministry of World in Need.
This renewed vision is this...
... that World in Need exists for 'Practical Mission'. that as disciples, we help the poor, the hungry and those in need of education. Having experienced this expression of God’s love we then give these people the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus, to know Him more and develop a relationship with Him as Lord and Saviour of their lives. Then we help them to be disciples who make disciples.
This fresh expression and vision that God has given us, along with the aim of serving churches and others so they can engage in global mission is now deeply embedded into our DNA and is being outworked locally and globally.
We then as a team started to consider how we best express this to others and we had a strong sense that our identity in God had become clearer, maybe even we'd received somewhat of a new identity.
And then it struck us... that at key points in the Bible, when God reveals a new stage of His purposes and plans to people He often gives them a new identity - sometimes He gives a new name, or a new anointing for service, often it's a deep renewal of life and purpose in their heart and spirit. At WIN we know we are definitely experiencing a lot of that!
The aim of God's renewal is nearly always the same, He renews hope, renews calling, or equips His people for stepping into a new phase of His plans - all so He can be glorified and the lost can be saved. This renewed identity is never done or taken lightly and is designed to empower and constantly remind those impacted by the change of who God is, what His plans are, and to have hope and trust in Him.
So we explored what this might mean for us at this time and decided that with the strong vision of 'Practical Mission' there is a new season for WIN and with our renewed heart would come a new logo and new visual way of expressing our heart to others in our media, as well as the way we express our heart by serving and engaging with others in the UK and around the world.
So we're excited to say that as WIN enter this new season, we've changed our logo to confidently express the renewed heart of WIN for the next phase in God’s plans that we are being called in to.
When God calls, God provides - and you won't be surprised to hear that as we were deciding all of this, we were connected to a creative design agency that then offered to do all the work on our branding pro-bono - completely free of charge. We were blown away at this blessing and provision and, they and us set about clarifying some pretty high benchmarks for a new logo.
This started in October and over the following weeks, we worked together with them to come up with what we are delighted to say is our new logo.
Working against 12 different criteria, we assessed thousands of combinations of the artwork before deciding which one was right for us...
The logo is simple and expresses God's desire for His disciples to reach out to others across the world in 'practical missional' ways.
As you can see, out of our excitement, we've already updated our website and will be updating all our materials over the coming months.
As we press forward towards the end of 2019 and look into 2020 we're already excited about the plans God has for us and others joining in with Him in the Great Commission.
We hope you will join us in celebrating God's goodness and the exciting new season He is taking World in Need into. We also very much hope you will be a very close part of this too and that we can in some way support you in engaging in global mission - just drop us an email let us know!
We have been greatly blessed through the provision of this logo by Cheeky Communications, a professional creative communications agency based in Tunbridge Wells. They worked tirelessly and donated their time, passion and expertise free of charge to World In Need, to help us move forward into this new season. We are thankful to both Cheeky Communications and to God for this amazing provision and encouragement.
We look forward to the future and all that God has in store for us.
If you would like to help get the word out about World in Need so we can help more people around the world then please click here and select 'Core WIN UK' costs from the dropdown list.
Every blessing,
The WIN UK Team