Fish Stories or Missions Partnerships?

By Roger Charles

Missions partnerships are a lot like fishing trips. Most of us are better at casting our own lines than pulling together on one net. Americans are notorious for our individualism and lack of cooperation inside and outside our normal ministry teams. Look at most of our short term trips and evangelistic outreaches. We gather a few friends, buy bait, and then spread out and do our own thing. No wonder we catch one or two fish, fry them up, then go home and tell lies.
Ok, maybe not lies. But some fishy stories.

I am just not seeing a whole lot of fish on the table. When Jesus called to his disciples to “cast the net on the other side,” the nets were breaking and extra boats were needed to pull in all the fish. We are busier “working with nationals,” more often overseas and more “connected” than any previous generation, but something is going wrong.

We often describe what we do overseas as “missions partnerships.” We confuse some shared vision or a joint activity, or some networking with a real partnership. Effective missions partnerships accomplish limited, concrete goals with a high sense of ownership, marked by appreciation of and mutual benefit from the strengths of each partner. Effective partnerships are deep relationships. They are built on carefully laid foundations, and all partners gain and spend the coin of trust month by month as peers become friends, friends become learners, and learners dream dreams together. Eventually they decide to formally partner together to accomplish some greater things that they could not do alone.

ReachGlobal is helping churches develop long term relationships with each other in numerous areas of the world, including specific ministries in Indonesia. These may begin with a vision trip of key leaders to several ministry locations in the field. Three churches might decide to partner with a Bible school in South Sumatra, to provide two teachers once a quarter. They posture themselves as learners, let locals teach them a new topic about the ministry each time they send a team, and then take this lesson back home to other churches. Relationship deepens as meals together, joint prayer, and trust in the Spirit’s clear leading begin to be the norm. Deeper discussions eventually surface some bigger needs, and enough trust is present to tackle something larger, like developing a training center away from the main campus for bi-vocational church planters. But these large goals are built on the trust and mutual sharing of resources and gifted people by very different entities who are secure in being themselves while learning to work with others.

Let’s move beyond busyness and program and return to relationship based ministry, practicing real community across cultural and organizational boundaries. Growing effective missions partnerships takes time, but deep relationships honor God, model love, deepen cultural understanding and bring in whole boatloads of fish.

So how is that partnership thing working for you? Interact with your peers on this crucial issue by posting comments and questions to Roger’s article.