Faith communities have at all times served the entire person – it’s time funders did the identical

There is a passage in Luke 4 where Jesus broadcasts his purpose within the synagogue at Nazareth: to proclaim excellent news to the poor, to release the oppressed, to set the captive free. It is a declaration that the gospel just isn’t only concerned with the everlasting but with the fabric, the structural, the here and now.

Faith communities have at all times understood this. We have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, counselled the broken and educated the ignored, often within the gaps left by institutions that didn’t reach far enough.

What now we have been slower to do is claim our place within the economic conversation. Not since the conviction was absent, but since the architecture was not there. The rooms where funding decisions are made, where capital is allocated, where policy is formed, haven’t at all times had space for us on the table. And the communities we serve have paid the value for that absence.

The evidence is evident, and it’s uncomfortable

The British Business Bank’s Small Business Finance Markets 2025/26 report, published last month, tells a story that ought to trouble every Christian leader engaged with economic justice on this country. Ethnic minority-led businesses display higher growth ambitions than their white-led counterparts: 71% aim to grow significantly, compared with 40%. They are more willing to make use of finance to grow: 52% against 35%. And yet 51% anticipate difficulties securing that finance. For black entrepreneurs, that expectation of being turned away rises to 59%.

Gross SME lending reached £68 billion in 2025. The capital is there. The distribution of access to it just isn’t equitable. And faith-based organisations, amongst essentially the most trusted and deeply embedded institutions in underserved communities, face the identical structural barriers in accessing grants and social investment that ethnic minority entrepreneurs face in industrial lending. They lack the formal track records institutional funders reward. They serve geographies that mainstream finance finds difficult to evaluate. They are, in lots of cases, doing essentially the most consequential work with the least financial support.

What the Fellowship decided to do about it

The Men’s Fellowship of RCCG House of Praise has for greater than two years been convening professionals, entrepreneurs and community leaders through its Quarterly Breakfast Meeting, a platform spanning business, health, leadership and private development. In those conversations, one barrier surfaced consistently: access to funding. Not lack of ambition. Not lack of ideas. The gap between what was available in principle and what was reachable in practice.

That statement, confirmed by the national evidence, led us to construct something latest. On 25 April 2026, The Elevate Forum holds its inaugural edition at The Ark Pavilion in Birmingham: a cross-demographic, annual thought leadership and capacity-building platform open to entrepreneurs, professionals, charity leaders, academics, funders and community organisations, no matter background, sector or faith. This 12 months’s theme is Unlocking Funding Opportunities for Businesses and Charities. Future editions will address other dimensions of leadership and growth. We begin where the necessity is most acute.

The Forum just isn’t a church event. It is a civic one, rooted within the conviction that faith communities have each the credibility and the responsibility to convene these conversations. We have spent a long time constructing trust in neighbourhoods that mainstream institutions have underserved. We know the people. We understand the barriers. And we’re able to bring those that need funding and those that provide it into the identical room, on equal terms, for an honest conversation about what needs to alter.

An invitation to the broader church

The Elevate Forum is free to attend. It is open to all. And it’s, we imagine, precisely the sort of initiative that the broader church community should find out about, support and, where possible, attend. If your congregation includes entrepreneurs, charity employees, community leaders or professionals wrestling with the sensible challenges of constructing something in an unequal system, this can be a day designed for them.

The gospel has at all times been concerned with justice, with the sensible liberation of those the system has not reached. On 25 April, in Birmingham, we are trying to translate that conviction into motion. We hope you’ll join us.

Temitayo Fatunmishe is President of the Men’s Fellowship RCCG House of Praise and lead organiser of The Elevate Forum.