Training with no frontiers, no walls and no fees since 1985. 5000+ pages of free resources in 27 world languages.

Who Are We?

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The DCI Fellowship is an open and welcoming influential small group of friends, partners and their projects that began in England in 1985 after over a year of almost daily prayer and today can be found across the developing world on all five continents.

Click here to see our photo albums.

Fifteen years ago in East Africa

We provide a home, fellowship and support for men and women all over the world who have a heart to reach the lost, the last and least of their region or over their borders in obedience to the Great Commission of Christ.

We make God’s love known by training, equipping and sending out followers of Christ who make life better for the poor and neglected peoples of the world..

We encourage Saving and Banking for the Poor and work with people who like to say yes to helping poor of the world leave poverty behind forever. We particularly recommend and support the work of Five Talents. We bless the poor as our way of giving thanks to God.

Both we and DCI people have ongoing daily prayer and worship. We honour the word of God and welcome the Holy Spirit to help and guide us.

The DCI Fund is a storehouse for the giving of friends and supporters with many serving windows throughout the developing world. The fund is audited annually and is regulated by the Charity Commission, an arm of the UK Government.

By 2023 we had registered well over 100 million page visits or ‘hits’ from over 100 nations, on this website, and an incalculable number on our Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter pages which is one of the main ways that our partners and friends around the world talk to each other.

In our home city in the UK, DCI meets in small groups and we belong to different churches. We are not a sending mission, or an operational charity, agency or NGO. We are like-minded friends who enjoy working, serving and giving together, supporting each other in God’s call to different kinds of lifestyle and mission. We have no formal leaders, no elders and no written constitution other than the Bible. We do not charge for any of our materials, advice or support. We have no buildings, and pay no salaries, expenses or pensions.

The founders of DCI back in 1985 are Les and Pilar Norman who still provide the main pastoral and mentoring care for DCI partners, project leaders and our supporters. Here we are in 2017 with our first grandson.

Les, Pilar and grandson Jesse in 2017

Les Norman has spent 46 years following the call of God to the last, the lost and least of the world and these days is a writer, personal mentor and consultant, and very occasionally by invitation a guest speaker. Pilar does just as much, also teaches Spanish, and her Christian poetry is a very big favourite in the Hispanic world. Les and Pilar rarely travel or make visits these days because they and DCI would rather give funds to equip people in mission and social action instead of paying for expensive airfares and hotels, but before you ask, please understand that The DCI Fund never, ever, and we mean never, sends money to people we do not know.

Les is English, Pilar is Spanish and both are almost 74 years old with 3 children, James, 51, David 49 who is married to Morgane and they have a very pretty 3 year old girl, and Elisabeth who is 34, married to Zack and they have two fine boys, 6 and 3 years old.  Lizzie is a leader in her own right engaged in full-time Christian work, following her graduation from University with a 2:1 in Developing World Issues and some years of practical experience. Les is a qualified pastor and holds an earned Doctor’s and Masters degree, and Pilar is also qualified to degree level, has been a teacher and known the Lord for 54 years.

“We are very happily married, and these days we try to be a listener and a mentor, often a writer, sometimes a guest speaker. We have followed Jesus for 100 years between us and we enjoy solitude, walking, prayer, cars, gardening, camping, dogs, films, travel and we have spent the last 42 years together supporting people and projects in world mission.”

The DCI Small Groups at the heart of everyone and everything have been meeting for prayer for over 35 years and we still have some of the original members with us today. Like most other small groups we care for each other, we have prayer, communion, worship and we open the Bible. We enjoy being together and have lots to eat and drink on the table. We are open to Holy Spirit and to God’s word in the model of Acts 13.1, but we do have two unusual extras:

1. Our small groups and all the ones that have come from the original group are wide open to people from all the different churches, and we welcome men and women who don’t attend church at all.

2. Back in the 1930’s Pastor Oswald Smith of the People’s Church, Toronto, Canada famously said, “If you can’t go yourself then for Christ’s sake send someone else”. It is true that lots of our members can’t go for reasons of age, health, career, family or it is just not the will of God, so we ask the Lord to bring us men and women from anywhere in the world, of any age, any colour, any nationality and any background and we train, equip and send as many of them as we can into mission supported by their own local churches. To begin with, we only ask that they have the beginnings of the call of God, are in relationship with Christ, God’s people and us, and they have a realistic vision they can put into words and live for.

Over the past 45 years we have lost count of how many people we have helped to go to the lost, the last and least on all five continents. Some take the gospel to unreached peoples, some plant new churches in cities and villages, some open Schools of Mission to train new leaders and many others bless the poor of their land. Some have gone themselves either for short-term visits or for life. We know many outstanding men and women who from the smallest and weakest of beginnings now lead tens of thousands of their people or care for and educate thousands of their poor people. We equally honour the hidden workers and those of later years who quietly serve in the background offering the “loaves and fishes” of their lives to God and to the people where they live. You can read their stories on our news page every day.

All over the world DCI is six people here and twelve people there and ten somewhere else, and this is the way we like it because in small groups we get to know everyone personally by name but over the years these small groups have influenced or reached tens of thousands of others.

Come with us, join us in what we do, after a while you will believe what we believe.

Click on the link to see our Vision and Values statement. Click on the link to see an illustration of what we do, more or less.

Click on the link to see our statement of faith

Click on the link to see our hopes for Building Community in DCI.

Click here to see independent research on DCI on Wikipedia.

Click to see our Photos from around the world.

Choose one and then click Slideshow to see the display.

Click here for a pdf. of Schools of Mission around the world

Click here for Banking for the Poor projects in pdf.

Click here for projects to help orphans and the poor in pdf.

Click here to see some of the people in the DCI family in pdf.

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