Church Partnerships

[Jeremy D. Scott]

Engage Magazine has a great article on the development of church partnerships
http://engagemagazine.com/content/mi...l-partnerships

Our church is diving into this kind of opportunity. We have a trip of five leaders (and a sixth person who is acting as our guide and Partnership Coordinator) headed to Guatemala to "scout" a possible partnership in May. It's something we prayed about during a period of discernment last year, and I'm very excited that several in our church have embraced it. Despite the fact that most precedence for this kind of thing involves churches with many more members than ours, I believe that we can do it. We have the resources, the experience, and certainly the call.

We've seen quite a bit of "discussion" on Naznet (and elsewhere) regarding the need for shifting resources, ideas, and paradigms in the CotN as it pertains to missions. While partnerships are tangentially related to missions in that it connects culture to culture, I'm not sure that it's exactly the "next generation" of missions as we've known it. For instance, in our own situation, we've been focusing on the hope that a partnership with a congregation outside our culture and life experience will help shape and form us by the Holy Spirit in unexpected ways that cannot be replicated by conferences, worship seminars, sermon series, and Bible Studies. Our understanding is that the Church is growing by the Spirit in other world areas. Part of my hope is that in interacting with them, we might be challenged and encouraged to a fearlessness in our own context in the States.

The fact may be that there is no next generation of NMI, and it needs to die. As much of the original intention of evangelical missions has been fulfilled in relation to "the ends of the earth" (though certainly not exhaustively), how and what the Church does throughout the world needs to be seen differently. I hope and believe that partnerships are one way to help us shift. It's certainly not for everyone, but I wonder if there are many more churches out there that might be candidates for a church partnership.

[Marg Shurtliff]

Don't know if this fits your description but all our Canada Central churches have a sister church in Cuba . We aim at the least to try to double the pastor's yearly salary of $ 150 . Varous churches have visited their sister church . And most recently a district group were there and brought a car in the cargo box as well as bicycles , towels , sheets , etc for all the pastors , among other things . Our church had a trip planned but found we weren't able to get to that church as its in Guantanomo Bay . We just took a special offering for them a couple week's ago .

[Jeremy D. Scott]

So our trip is coming up very soon. Would you be praying for us?

Marg, yes, that might be the beginnings of a partnership as it goes specifically to a known individual situation rather than a general fund. But for us, we are trying to think outside of simply being a channel of money. Part of my concern for the Church of the Nazarene is that we let money and numbers dictate Kingdom work too much. We might not escape the use of finance resources completely, but we sure don't need to let money be our master.

There is no doubt in my mind that if this partnership works out for our church, a major aspect of it will be the sharing of our financial resources with the church & ministry in Guatemala. However, if this is all we do, the partnership will have failed. I truly believe that the growing Church in Central America, South America, Africa, much of Asia has more to offer Westerners than fun and inspiring stories in books, magazines, and sermons from GSes. It's our hope that what the Spirit is doing in and through our partnership church will infiltrate and take hold of our own, fostering a boldness we don't know right now.

The book of Philippians is becoming a scriptural model for me in thinking about this. Paul has a partnership with the church in Philippi. He offers them much advice, theology, encouragement, and direction. They support him financially. They each need one another.

So our trip is coming up very soon. Would you be praying for us?

[Rich Schmidt]

So our trip is coming up very soon. Would you be praying for us?

Happy to.

Where in Guatemala? My wife and I spent nearly 6 weeks in Antigua relaxing and studying Spanish in the summer of 2008. The pastor of the storefront Nazarene church there was very nice, as was his American-born wife.

On the topic of partnerships... our district is finding ways to partner with the churches on the Western Mediterranean field. I was there for 2 weeks this past March along with 5-6 other pastors. Another group of 6 went in 2011. Specific partnerships are starting to happen.

BTW, this was all spearheaded by our district NMI president, Shawn Evans. He's a great guy. Sadly, he had to step aside from that post since he was elected our regional NYI president and couldn't do both (along with his job as Executive Pastor of Valparaiso Naz Church). NMI doesn't have to die. It just has to be reimagined.

[Jeremy D. Scott]

So we've been back for over two weeks now. The trip was a resounding success. A great foundation has been set for a relationship between our two churches. What it looks like will continue to be hammered out generally in the coming weeks and specifically for years to come. I continue to hear of the General Church having conversations along the lines of partnerships. I am hopeful. :-)

It was and is amazing how things have lined up for our two churches. What God is doing amongst us is certainly different, but some themes and specific directions of our ministries "make sense" together. God must be involved.

Just for one example:
As part of our own ministry, North Street Community Church established the "Ktizo Nook & Gallery" in a corner of our main fellowship room (The Newell Gathering Room). Our hope has been to - in a small way - encourage the arts among us and to be a place where artists can "practice their art." We recognize that as people of the Creator, we do well to reflect His creativity. Well we've recently begun work to set up a small part of this for gallery showings. To this point, we'd just hung some stuff from people in our own congregation, but we'd the idea to invite artists to display for a month or two at a time. As of two weeks ago, we hadn't secured anyone quite yet (still learning!).

Well the church & ministry with whom we're partnering in Guatemala has had a major impact on several children who are now teens. One of the teens (17 years old) took to the the visual arts early on and so the director of the children/teen center encouraged her down this path. The first night that we were there, they had a presentation for us demonstrating some of the various ways that these kids have "made it." This girl - now young woman - is now studying graphic arts in hopes to be an artist. Well at the end of her talk, she presented us with seven pieces of her work to take home with us.

You might guess what we did with her artwork:
Ktizo Gallery

[Gina Stevenson]

Thanks much for this short video re creativity, Jeremy. Just had to take that one on over to FB for more exposure!

http://vimeo.com/5740404

ETA: would like to see the whole thing re creativity from which this short was taken, if it can be found.

[Kevin Rector]

Jeremy, that's awesome. In 12 days I'm leaving with 27 others from my church for a Work & Witness trip to Guatemala. This is more of a "traditional" trip where we are funding and building a local church building alongside the locals. But my hope is that long term we will eventually end up with some sort of partnership with another church in another culture. Maybe not the church we're helping on this trip. Baby steps.

[Jeremy D. Scott]

Jeremy, that's awesome. In 12 days I'm leaving with 27 others from my church for a Work & Witness trip to Guatemala. This is more of a "traditional" trip where we are funding and building a local church building alongside the locals. But my hope is that long term we will eventually end up with some sort of partnership with another church in another culture. Maybe not the church we're helping on this trip. Baby steps.

Are you working out of the "chapel factory" out of the seminary in Guatemala City? We stayed there. Hope your trip goes well.

[Gina Stevenson]

But my hope is that long term we will eventually end up with some sort of partnership with another church in another culture. Maybe not the church we're helping on this trip. Baby steps.

Sounds great, you two. Just have to add, tho', that ever since we saw a certain movie in the mid 90's, cannot see anything re "baby steps" without What About Bob? coming to mind.

[Kevin Rector]

Are you working out of the "chapel factory" out of the seminary in Guatemala City? We stayed there. Hope your trip goes well.

We are spending a day or two at the seminary and working at the chapel factory. Our church was able to raise an abundance of funds beyond what the trip cost, so we are able to take some new tools to the factory.

My understanding is that we'll be assembly one of the chapels from the factory and then we'll spend some time bending rebar for the next team that will come down the road.

[Jeremy D. Scott]

Our partnership has continued to develop very well. Technology sure makes it easier than it would be without such things as Facebook and YouTube. Our partner church sent us a video greeting that has absolutely made my week. I value these people so much:



Our partnership has been all that we hoped and will be more. It's truly had God's "hand" at work. As a pastor, I am encouraged and inspired and spurred on knowing that Pastor Pedro and Pastora Vilma and many others there are praying for us. Pastor Pedro's superb leadership there is a challenge to me. I've learned from him already. And while we've only had the one trip so far, we have hopes for many more (and some of them coming here, too).