Evangelical development organisations and international development

This dissertation explores the role evangelical development organisations play in the field of international development. Specifically, the nature and scope of the organisations’ involvement in the field along with changes that have taken place, their approaches towards development, the role of ‘faith’, the skills and qualifications of the development agents, their partnerships, and funding and donors’ attitudes were investigated. The main ideas developed in this dissertation are that: (1) the main advantage that evangelical development organisations have over their secular peers lies in their partnership approach, and, through demonstrating the benefits that partnering with local churches and community-based organisations can bring, they have the potential to bring new perspectives to the development discourse, and that (2) by adopting a multi-dimensional ‘holistic’ approach different from mainstream conceptions of development, called transformational development, evangelical development actors may nurture the development discourse in the search for new and more adequate approaches to development which focus not merely on economic growth but on multiple aspects of development.