|PIC1|As the recession continues to bite and many across the UK are plunged into financial crisis, the charity today encouraged Christians to reaffirm God’s desire to reach the poor and disadvantaged.

The award-winning national charity, which offers free debt counselling through 102 local church-based centres, was inspired by the many Bible verses which speak of the need to help the poor as a core principle of the Christian faith.

It is launching the competition to underline its commitment to relieving poverty in a practical and effective way, and to inspire Christians from every corner of the nation to make their mark by joining them in declaring that helping the poor is a fundamental concern for every believer.

Once the winning verse has been chosen, CAP will encourage Christians to show their convictions to the world by using it as a design theme for its exciting new range of clothing and merchandise, which is being unveiled in the autumn. One winning voter will also be chosen to receive a selection of clothes from the range.

Matt Barlow, CAP’s Chief Executive, said: "We at CAP are committed to providing poverty relief for the poorest and most marginalised in our society, as the Bible commands us to give the very best to those who have the very least.

"We want to offer Christians the chance to reaffirm this message in the 21st century by choosing the Bible verse they believe best sums up God’s heart for the poor.

"We’re really excited to be launching our new range of merchandise which will bring the importance of poverty relief to the forefront of people’s minds, and give Christians the opportunity to nail their colours to the mast and make it clear to everyone that they care about the issue of poverty in this country."

Voting can be done via the charity’s website, www.capuk.org/vote Every vote will automatically be entered into the competition to win a selection of the merchandise. The competition is open until 31 July.