March 2024 | Volume 19 | Issue 3
What Is the Purpose of Our Partnership?
Second in a series of guidelines for healthy global relationships
After a church carefully considers their own readiness for a global partnership (see last month’s Postings, “Are We Ready to Partner?”), the next logical question is, “What would be the core purpose of our partnership?” Sometimes churches choose a partner church before they clarify their purpose, but that can result in mismatched visions, expectations, and resources. So in this issue we will address questions related to purpose and in our third installment consider how to identify a good partner.
This Postings outlines eight types of church-to-church partnerships based on their core purpose. Don’t miss the “real-life story” that follows as well as the answers to frequently asked questions that conclude this issue. A reminder: Our simple definition of a church partnership is a relationship of trust that connects local churches across cultures in mutual giving and receiving to achieve shared Kingdom-building goals.
CLARIFYING YOUR PARTNERSHIP’S CORE PURPOSE
Identifying the core purpose that initiates the relationship is essential even though many church-to-church partnerships grow over time to include additional goals. Defining the core purpose will help to identify some well-matched potential partner churches and the best facilitator/facilitating agency.
| Partnership Core Purpose | To Better Understand These Partnerships | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Missionary ministry expansion. Your church wants to serve alongside your missionary partner to help build and mature the local church(es) they are working to develop. One or more of the other goals listed below may be part of the partnership focus, but your engagement will center around multiplying your missionary’s impact, often by bringing talents or expertise they lack. | This type of partnership may be a great entry-level engagement for a church that wants to move beyond just caring for the Western missionary to becoming an extension of their ministry with one or more congregations they are planting or mentoring. Under your missionary’s guidance, a church-to-church partnership can fast forward the growth and maturity of one or more new bodies of believers. Are you already involved with a missionary who has a vision to start churches that exceeds their capacity? Explore whether a partnership could enlarge and accelerate their church-planting impact. |
| 2. | Missionary transition. As your missionary prepares to move out of their role as founder/leader/mentor of a local congregation, your church wants to come alongside and serve as a sister-church cheerleader and supporter (not primarily financial, but spiritual/emotional) to help ensure the fledgling church continues to flourish after the missionary leaves. | A church-planter’s goal is to start vibrant Christian bodies and then move on to work in a new location. Yet new churches can be fragile and surviving the departure of their founder, whether an expat missionary or a national worker, can be traumatic. A carefully designed partnership with a sister church can make a huge difference in whether the church survives and thrives. Is one of your current missionaries at such a transition point? Begin discussing whether your church could be a bridge as the worker moves on. |
| 3. | Church-based development projects (health care, food/agriculture, education, orphans, anti-trafficking, marketplace skills/expansion, etc.). You want to partner with a local church that has a vision to address one or more issues that negatively impact their church and community. | Many sister-church programs focus around some type of development project that makes the partner more sustainable and serves their surrounding community. Significant funding is usually provided by the Western congregation. This type of partnership should always be initiated and led by the onsite partner and never be solely an infusion of funds by an otherwise uninvolved partner. A vibrant relationship should precede the development of project plans. A wise facilitator will be essential to ensure the partnership does not create dependency. |
| 4. | Discipleship of believers and training of church leaders. You want to share a journey with a partner church to explore and develop ways both congregations can better disciple their people and equip leaders. We will come to partnership expecting to learn and receive because true partnership requires reciprocal giving and receiving. | This type of partnership usually contains an educational component but primarily centers around life-on-life discipling. It can be a natural fit for Western pastors who enjoy teaching and mentoring. Involving lay teachers/disciplers as well creates a healthy model of the role of godly elders, Sunday school teachers, etc. As many Western churches recognize the need to deepen their own discipling process, these partnerships offer reciprocal benefit because partners learn from each other and explore together how to better disciple their people. |
| 5. | Local church multiplication/church planting. You want to encourage a partner church in fulfilling the vision God has given them to plant churches in their geographic area while doing the same in your context. | If both churches share a vision to multiply congregations in their city, region, or beyond, then a shared journey to pursue this goal is an exciting opportunity to learn and grow together. |
| 6. | Encouragement under persecution. Your church wants to stand in solidarity with a body of believers who are suffering for their faith. | Many times in this type of partnership little or no direct contact between partners is possible, but limited information flows via a safe intermediary. Intercession is the primary avenue of service and a powerful encouragement, but it requires dedication and creativity to maintain the needed intensity of prayer. Sometimes face-to-face meetings are possible in a safe, neutral location. |
| 7. | Outreach to an unreached people group (UPG). You want to partner with a congregation that is interested in reaching peoples without access to the gospel. This would be a partnership with a church comprised of believers either from (1) a people group still considered unreached (these are usually tiny islands of Christians in a huge sea of unbelievers who desperately need encouragement) or (2) a “reached” people group who have near-neighbor UPG populations whom they are burdened to reach. | This type of partnership is a particularly good match for churches which feel called to focus on those without a gospel witness in their language and culture. It is exciting if immigrants/refugees from the same UPG or a similar-culture one live within reach of the Western church. |
| 8. | Missionary sending and care. Your church wants to partner with a global church that is sending, or wants to begin sending, their own members for cross-cultural ministry but which has little or no prior experience in sending or caring for workers. | As illustrated in the story of Hershey Free Church below, a growing number of churches around the globe are embracing the Great Commission and sending workers. Yet many are inexperienced and need a partner to help them prepare, send, and care for their workers well. This is a particularly good match if your church has a history of sending and caring for missionaries or you want to actively pursue such. |
A REAL-LIFE STORY
“Aren’t We Good Enough for the Great Commission?”
This “aren’t we good enough” question stabbed the heart of Missions Pastor Dave Hyatt. He and others from the Evangelical Free Church of Hershey, PA, were on a ministry trip to Haiti in an ongoing effort to assist after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The question, voiced by a seasoned Haitian leader, hung in the air. The answer developed over time and opened the door for a new type of partnership for Hershey Free.
The Haitian church was certainly dealing with huge problems of their own, but they also had a deep desire to obey Christ’s mandate to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth and felt called to West Africa. Hershey Free believed that every church was given the Great Commission, so of course they knew the Haitian church had their role to play. But how could Hershey Free partner with a Haitian initiative to send missionaries to Africa?
How could Hershey Free partner with a Haitian initiative to send missionaries to Africa?
Fast forward to today: Several Haitian workers are living and ministering in majority Muslim communities in rural areas of West Africa. Not surprisingly, they have found much in common with the struggling subsistence farmers who are their new neighbors. These missionaries live more simply than the typical American worker and are well acquainted with suffering. Their common use of French as a trade language is another clear advantage as is the fact that since they are from the Majority World, they do not carry the stigma of colonialist history nor are they automatically assumed to be wealthy.
So what is the role of their American partner church? Hershey Free, along with several Haitian diaspora churches in the US, has been providing some financial support for these workers. However, their main focus is on helping them to develop a better answer to the question that locals always ask, “Who pays you to live here?” The Haitian missionaries do not want to be viewed as proxies of “wealthy” North Americans. They are looking for ways to become self-supporting and also directly contribute to the welfare of their neighbors.
Hershey Free has been listening attentively and praying about how they can increase the capacity of these dedicated Haitian workers. Over the past several years, they have carefully selected members of the congregation to send on short-term trips. Some are teaching CHE (Community Health Evangelism) classes. Others contribute from their professional expertise. For instance, an executive with Hershey Foods is using his business experience to guide the development of a strategic plan for a farming enterprise the Haitians have envisioned.
Hershey has found other ways to serve their partners: They were asked to teach online missiology classes for the Haitian seminary that prepares future cross-cultural workers. Hershey also helped two Haitian missionaries come and take ESL courses at nearby Millersville University as preparation to work alongside English-speaking colleagues on the field. And if you drink a cup of coffee at the church, your brew will be made from beans from a Haitian company whose sales support their missions endeavors.
All members of this multi-continent partnership are painfully aware that many past missions efforts in Haiti have established models that resulted in dependency. Because Hershey is determined to do things differently, they take a back seat and let their Haitian partners lead in this new collaboration. So far, the partnership has achieved what none of the entities could have done alone, and churches on all three continents have been blessed. They eagerly anticipate what God will do next as they work together.
Like Hershey Free’s Haiti/West Africa partnership, church-to-church relationships often seem to happen by divine connections without proactive searches on the part of the church. However, as partnerships become more intentional, more thought should be invested up front into the type of partnership that the congregation is best prepared to pursue.
Other Important Types of Partnerships
Each of the following partnership options shares similarities with the individual church-to-church model that we focus on here, but all also have their own potential challenges and benefits. Churches pursuing these types of relationships will find principles that they can apply or adapt from the guidelines and suggestions for church-to-church partnerships.
- Partnership with a group of churches, usually in one geographic area
To avoid overwhelming a single partner congregation, a larger and well-resourced Western church can opt to partner with a cluster of indigenous congregations. Most of the one-to-one partnering principles described above apply to group partnerships too, although the job of the facilitator becomes more complex.
- Partnership with an individual, indigenous worker
Many churches have developed a partnership with individual evangelists, church planters, pastors, or other Christian workers serving in their own country or in an international ministry. In many, if not most, of these situations, the relationship is not a true partnership but rather a commitment to the financial support of a missionary from another country. Catalyst addressed the issues surrounding such support in a recent Postings, “Supporting Indigenous Workers.” If a church chooses to develop a relationship with an individual indigenous worker that is significantly more than mere funding, many of the church-to-church partnership principles outlined in this series will be helpful.
- Partnership with an indigenous organization
More and more Western churches are developing ongoing relationships with a locally-run entity in the Global South: a mission agency, an indigenous relief/development organization, an educational institution, a health-care provider, or some other type of entity that is independent of any Western counterpart. Again, the “Supporting Indigenous Workers” Postings along with the guidelines in this and subsequent articles provide some direction.
- Partnership with a network
The relative newcomers to the world of global partnerships for Western churches are affinity networks. These networks may be focused on a geographic country/region, people group, religious bloc, particular need (for example, vulnerable children or refugees) or type of ministry (for example, orality or media). Many of these networks are just beginning to explore the potential of church partnerships and are wrestling with how to engage them as more than just a source of financial support.
Begin with one focus and then allow the goals of the partnership to broaden as the capacity of both partners permits.
You May Be Asking...
- Could we include several of these partnership purposes as we collaborate with a global partner congregation?
Yes, many do. However, it is better to begin with one focus and then allow the goals of the partnership to broaden as the capacity of both partners permits. A caution is in order: Conversations between potential partners can identify all kinds of “Wouldn’t it be great if we could also…” and the blank is filled with ideas about exciting partnership possibilities. However, churches have learned the hard way that global partners can interpret these casual discussions as promises and assume unrealistic expectations about what their church partner is ready and able to do.
- We are a smaller church, and we don’t have experience in cross-cultural, sister-church partnering. Is one of these options a good place for us to begin?
Don’t think that church partnerships are primarily for megachurches. Small and medium-size churches can be the best partners because most global partners are also smaller congregations! Finding a partner in category #1, 3, or 4 might be a great place to begin.
- Once we identify the type of partnership we feel fits us best, where do we find potential partner churches in that category?
Our May 2024 Postings issue will address this and other questions about how to identify a great potential partner congregation. Don’t miss it!
Do you have other questions about choosing the purpose of your sister-church partnership? Or perhaps you have been wrestling with a different partnering issue. Please contact us. We would love to interact with you about developing a healthy, cross-cultural partnership.