Taken from Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, Pg 174.
While operating in a closed country context, an organization had a fantastic problem – people were coming to Christ. In fact, one survey revealed that 59% of families served heard about Christ for the very first time from staff members serving their community. Many individuals made a profession of faith and desired to gather together to “do church.” Eager to help and thrilled at the impact, staff members began home churches.
These independent churches began growing and taking on church-planting responsibilities. But it didn’t take long for the problems to start. Questions of belief and practice came flooding in. With little training and no support, the staff members were unsure how to handle these challenges. They didn’t have the foundation to disciple others into mature, growing Christ-followers. These challenges impacted their service as their expertise was in community development, and they struggled to understand hoe to navigate key issues related to growing home churches. Clearly, they needed help.
After several years of frustration, the group changed the approach and partnered with a local group of churches eager to expand to these communities. It was a symbiotic relationship – the local church had a new outreach tool, and the ministry was able to focus on its programs. Truly a win/win partnership. The church as a church, and the parachurch at her side.
No entity is more expansive than the local church. Pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren illustrates this principle by laying out three maps of the western province of Rwanda. In the first map, three small dots mark the location of hospitals. The second map identifies the eighteen health clinics that serve 700,000 people. The third map identifies the churches – 82 OR 6 dots cover the map. This visual powerfully conveys that the church has a far greater scope and scale than virtually any other social entity in the region.
BOTTOM LINE:
Beyond these practical benefits, the underlying reason for partnership is that it binds organizations to their mission. The church grounds all good works in the grander vision of humanity’s fall and God’s redemption. It’s not easy, but for most organizations desiring to stay Mission True, the question with local church partnerships should be “How do we partner?” not “Should we partner?”
NEXT UP: Mission True org’s minimize confusion and work more effectively building churches by these 6 steps…