Steps to Help Your Church Do Partnership Well

Some of you are thinking about your own church and wondering what advice I might have for starting or managing a good partnership with an indigenous, local ministry organization somewhere in the world. This is for you.This posting is packed with stuff - most won’t be this long.

Something so complex shouldn’t be reduced to steps. But we like lists.

1. Start with prayerfully thinking about your church. Are there clues about what parts of the world they might feel a burden for? A place for which champions from the congregation are likely to emerge to help create some momentum? Maybe you have people from another culture in your church or nearby. Maybe you’ve been hearing about unreached places. But don’t just pick the easy ones; some places in the world have too much American mission involvement and others not nearly enough.
2. Network and learn about possible indigenous groups to consider. It’s best to personally visit the group on the field first and/or get the recommendation of someone who knows the area. And it’s good to know what other local Christian leaders in that part of the world think about the work you are considering before you jump in.
3. Once you're ready to give it a try, start with relationship building. Drink lots of tea. Meet the families of leaders. The whole first visit could be about this. Usually non-Western leaders are more concerned with getting to know you. After that, what you can do together will flow out of the relationship you've built. Westerners want to get something done, now. We need to restrain ourselves. Believe it or not, learning and getting to know people is doing something!
4. Discuss mutual expectations. It might help to write things down. But usually non-Western people rely more on the trust built in the relationship than what’s on paper. Try especially to help them understand the ravenous desire for information on the USA side and why that’s important in your culture.  
5. Be honest with yourselves about what you can offer. Many local ministry organizations around the world want to learn about running micro-enterprise projects. But what does a typical American church know about that? Your church and your people are good at some things. Out of the relationship, you’re looking for what the partner needs help with that matches something you have expertise in.
6. Don’t promise too much. Visiting teams in their eagerness usually sound like there is a lot they will do to follow up once they get home. Then local people wait for help that doesn’t come.
7. Work at increasing your “cultural intelligence.” There is a lot written about partnership, seminars to go to, experts around. If you work at it, your capacity to do partnership well can grow over time.
8. Be wary of trying to do it on your own. Usually it won’t be as effective as you think and it will be more time consuming than you think. There’s probably some agency or some experienced person around who can help guide your efforts.
9. Be careful about money. Project ideas should come from the local leaders, not from what you’ve seen while walking around that you feel compassionate about. They know what will work better than you do. And projects should mostly be things the local believers are already working on and raising money locally for so that you can partner with them and not have it depend on you from afar. On the other hand, sometimes we worry so much about causing dependency we don’t give anything. It’s good to give, just give wisely. Discuss also what financial reporting you will expect and why, remembering that reports on paper can help but relational trust that you have built first is even deeper.
10. When you start trying to do something on the ground, do it with them, not for them - there will be a better chance it will continue after you go home.
11. Learn to value all the resources of the partnership. You might have more financial resources available, but is that the most important thing toward success? The sacrifice and cultural knowledge of the local leaders are tremendous assets.
12. Try every way possible to help your church here feel a part of the partnership. Send teams. Bring the local leader over here. Feature it as your VBS project. Ask your small groups to adopt some aspect of the partnership. Emphasize not just what you are giving to the partnership, but what you are getting - a two-way flow where both sides benefit.
13. Be in it for the long haul. Making a difference takes time. You will see your effectiveness grow over the years as you get to know your partners better and as they get to know you better.
14. Keep focused on the main thing. We are called to be about “making disciples of all nations.” Is all the activity you are doing leading toward that?

That’s a lot of steps. The partnership will never flow neatly through these steps. But I think practicing some of these ideas could help your church a lot.