Since September 1st 2021, 10% of the profit made on each purchase is donated to our partner Open Doors who support persecuted Christians across the world. In this short blog, I go deep into how God answered my prayer to help Hosea support a charitable organisation that was completely aligned with our own core values.
When starting this Christian Clothing Brand back in 2017, I had two main objectives:
1. Create Christian Apparel that empowered the Christian in their faith whilst spreading the gospel through "fashion/brand conversation."
2. Glorifying God in all things!
Of course, from a business perspective, sales and profit were also very important for the longevity of the brand. However, I'd always felt uneasy about taking all of the profit for ourselves. As a Christian brand, we serve to glorify God and although money is important for any business, our profit had to do more than help us grow. We had to find a cause that supported Christ's mission.
The Early Years
In the first few years of running Hosea we donated our 10% profit to different causes such as helping the homeless and supporting the youth. We were actioning the donations ourselves as we reached out to both communities. In the end, this proved to be very difficult to keep up with. It was hard to keep in contact with the same people and ultimately juggling the scheme with full-time jobs, Hosea and Church proved to be too much for our small team.
Finding Open Doors
Just before the pandemic, I wrote this blog on the Inconvenient truth of the persecution of Christians worldwide. Research for this piece was pulled from multiple different sources with Open Doors being the primary data source. Upon reading their research, I was not only shocked by the levels of persecution that Christians faced across the globe but also the different locations. I was completely ignorant to the fact that Christians existed in countries such as North Korea and India. After thinking deeply about it, I concluded that my ignorance was not completely self-inflicted. From all of my exposure to mainstream media, I'd never heard of Christians existing in these countries let alone the persecution that they were facing. Mainstream media just simply did not report it.
I immediately felt a connection with these persecuted Christians; albeit from my comfortable first world Christian perspective. I'd created this Christian Clothing Brand as I believe as Christians we are becoming increasingly scrutinised for our faith in the world we live in. But where we first world Christians are looked down upon for their faith in their community, Christians in other nations are persecuted by theirs.
I want our customers to feel the synergy between our mission as a brand and that of Open Doors in their support persecuted Christians.
In short:
We want Christians to buy our clothes so that they are emboldened in their faith in a world where we're becoming increasingly scrutinised and marginalised. By doing this, they:
Speak to others about Christ with our Christian Clothes working as a conversation starter. (Whether it be a Christian Hoodie or a Christian Tee)
Support a persecuted Christian across the globe through the great work of our partner Open Doors.
As of Friday 11th March 2022, we've donated £482.51 since September 2021 with 10% of the profit made on each purchase given to Open Doors. Thank you all for your amazing support!
Thanks for taking the time to read this. We hope you are having a blessed start to 2022.
Stay Blessed and God Bless!
Chris Stroud
Founder - Hosea Clothing
Resonate with our mission and Open Doors? We'd love to hear from you in the comments.
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