by Susan Buenger, Mission Practitioner + Former Frontier Fellowship Board Member
The meeting was composed of many people: our church team, the leadership team of the potential partner organization and a few guests. Seated around a large, round table, we began a meeting to discuss the formalization of our cross-cultural partnership.
This was not our first time together; we had worked toward this conversation for several years. Both organizations’ leaders had visited one another several times. Several of our teams had served together in a variety of ways. We had patiently communicated with one another over email, through liaisons representing both of our organizations, and had built relationships at several levels of each organization. We had suffered together, supporting one another through trying organizational and personal situations that included heartbreaking loss of life. Leaders from both sides engaged in formal learning together to better understand healthy, reciprocal and mutual cross-cultural partnerships. We had grown in our trust of one another… then came the comments addressed to me, “So, we are meeting to talk about our partnership, right? What are your [church’s] goals?” As everyone looked at me, my heart dropped. I thought, “After all we have done and learned together about partnership, you are asking me to tell you what our goals should be?”
That day I learned in a concrete and disappointing way that practicing healthy cross-cultural partnership is not easy. It is not our usual inclination. It requires sustained, intentional, informed connections. Healthy partnership requires serious prayer, a commitment to patience, mutual submission, the embrace of ambiguity and putting friendship first.
The world and societal culture often view partnerships as transactional agreements—centered on the exchange of financial resources or goods, sharing information or data, offering corporate social exposure or maintaining legal responsibilities. Many of these partnerships result in good, but from a Kingdom perspective, they might be incomplete. Transactional relationships can often reveal selfish desires: our mission, our strategy and the results we want to see. Kingdom partnerships rest on the direction given in Luke 22:24-27:
A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be the greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
Verse 26 stood out to me: “But you are not to be like that.” We are to resist the temptation to act as benefactors—exercising earthly power and authority over others. In the context of partnership, this can take a lot of differing forms, including requiring culturally inappropriate outcomes in exchange for our financial resources, or unknowingly imposing a one-sided definition of “successful outcomes” rather than patiently working to understand one another and agree upon a mutual definition of success and desired outcomes. Earthly power can also be expressed when we take away the dignity of others by inadvertently removing their decision-making agency. Or, when desiring expediency, we decide what others need from us and what we will do for them. Sometimes, our good intentions to serve others can even become a hindrance when we over-give or over-serve. This inadvertently causes our partners to be unintended objects—beneficiaries of our (conditional) generosity and (false) humility—rather than interacting with informed, mutual understanding of one another’s needs and joyfully giving and serving together as subjects in the Kingdom of a gracious and powerful King.
Joining God in His restoration, reconciliation and redemption focuses our partnership on Him and what He desires to do through it. I’ve heard it described as one side humbly bringing their two fish and the other freely offering their five loaves (Matthew 14:17-19) as they engage in healthy, mutually-edifying and intentional relationships. This posture allows God to bring to fruition the boundless results He desires. It reorients our cross-cultural partnerships to reflect the fullness and fruitfulness of God’s Kingdom, rather than the meager work of our own hands or perceived limited resources. When this happens, our interactions demonstrate love and respect and we become inspiring Light to the world around us. We demonstrate the Kingdom!
So, back to that round table, where the question came… “What are your [church’s] goals?”
I remained silent. I took a deep breath and said something to the effect of, “We have spent a lot of time becoming friends and establishing trust. We have suffered together, learned together and developed mutual respect. So, establishing goals for our partnership is something we need to do together.”
I learned anew that healthy partners and partnerships:
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First, develop healthy friendships in one another’s presence. Later, seek what the Lord would have them “do” together.
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Exercise patience. Resist the urge to think “it is just easier to do it myself.”
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Have the utmost respect for one another’s unique, God-given ministry.
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Hire a facilitator to help them learn intentionally about healthy partnership.
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Are willing to make mistakes, disappoint one another, introspect, evaluate and figure it out together.
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Make every effort to regard one another as equals, created in God’s image.
Our God is constantly teaching and transforming us; so it is with partnerships. Some are for a time and a season. Some for a purpose that changes over time. Some achieve a goal and are dissolved, while still others end through unresolved conflict or inappropriate expectations or a lack of reciprocity.
Whatever the reason, let it not be because of poor treatment of one another. We are not to be like that!
We believe the Gospel is Good News for every part of life. Our partnerships with ministries around the world share a vision of introducing people to Jesus and fostering development and transformation in places that lack adequate access to literacy and education, Biblical training, healthcare, economic opportunity and social welfare.
As we connect followers of Jesus with the world’s least-reached people and places, we cultivate long-term, collaborative relationships with indigenous partners working for the spiritual and physical flourishing of their communities. Learn more about our partners and the work we do together at frontierfellowship.com/partners
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