We really can do more together….

One of the keys to seeing the rapid impact of the Gospel spread across Africa is expressed in our second 10 Year Goal, which is to grow 100 missionally aligned and strategic partnerships.  The premise of this goal is that we really can do more things together than we could individually.  For far too many years church ministry in the States and missions ministry around the world have been characterized by a provincial mindset that was more concerned about guarding what we were trying to do than to seek genuine Kingdom of God results where it really doesn’t matter who gets the credit and whose name is put by the success stories. 

For over two decades I worked to connect pastors together in the communities where I served in the States so that we could genuinely demonstrate the unity of the Spirit and our commom mission to reach our city for Christ.  One of the things that led me to leave pastoral ministry to take this leadership role with ReachGlobal six years ago was the heart of genuine collaboration that I saw in ReachGlobal leadership.  As a mission we are committed to the fact that we don’t own, control, or count anything as ours in the places around the world where we minister.  We partner with indigenous church and mission movements as well as other international missions who share our Biblical and missional values.  (Check out the ReachGlobal Sandbox  http://www.efca.org/reachglobal/resources/reachglobal-sandbox and the EFCA Statement of Faith http://www.efca.org/about-efca/statement-faith to learn more about the missional and Biblical values that are at the core of our partnerships.)  Names and titles don’t matter to us, but rather alignment on these key values is what opens the door for genuine collaborative ministry that I believe blesses the heart of God and advances the cause of the Gospel.  We don’t partner with everyone who comes asking to develop a partnership with us.  Healthy partnerships take time to develop.  I believe that all ministry is based in relationship and all relationships are based on trust and trust grows as we collaboratively minister together with those who share like values.

That is why we are working to develop missionally aligned and strategic partnerships in close to 20 countries in Africa right now and our goal is to have over 100 partnerships in the next 10 years.  In many of these countries we have multiple partnerships in various geographical areas and in a variety of different types of ministries.  In addition, God has been using our staff and national partners to initiate connections between church movements in several countries to help them see how they can work together to be more effective in seeing ministry grow in areas where their missional values align.  In Liberia today 6 different church movements are working together to equip and send church planting missionaries to the unreached people in Liberia and surrounding countries.  They are doing training together, strategizing together about where each group will focus their church planting efforts and even raising money for each other to help expand ministry!

Missionally aligned and strategic partnerships are one of the keys to the rapid advance of the Gospel.  We are on the lookout for the 100 key partnerships that we believe God has for us in Africa so that we can see the Gospel rapidly and deeply impact the continent.