Well, we just finished our week-long, end-of-the-year team
retreat to look back over the year, evaluate what was done, and celebrate what
God did in our ministry before we head off to fundraise for next year. It was a great time of planning as well for
the year that lies ahead and between the trip to a hot springs, enjoying the
local cuisine, and dreaming really big about the years to come, I had an
interesting thought that is still bugging me a few days later.
One of the things that we talked about and celebrated was
the partnership that our team enjoys with a local church on the Palouse. It’s a relationship that truly benefits both
parties in incredible ways and without exaggerating or ignoring the inherent
flaws, I can say that the partnership embodies everything that I could imagine
in a “para-church / local church” partnership.
It’s a brilliant relationship.
There are many reasons why we enjoy the successful
partnership that we do as a team here.
One of those reasons is because our team leader has partnered with this
budding church-plant since day one. We
didn’t have to figure out how to “enter” the relationship without being seen as
a threat. The other reason is because we
work hard to help make the local church better and be a great asset to their
team, rather than simply maneuver into position to take – without giving.
The word I’ve always used for this relationship is
“symbiotic”. It immediately conjures up
images from high school biology class with the birds that live atop the
rhino. They coexist within the same
world, each benefiting from the other.
The birds eat the insects that they find on the rhino and the rhino
enjoys the free, cleansing presence of the birds.
However, I also remember more of the info that I received
that day in biology class. There is
mutualistic symbiosis (like the one I described above; both parties benefit
from each other). Then there is
commensalistic symbiosis, where the one party lives with and benefits from the
presences of the other, while neither hurting nor benefiting the host (sea
cucumbers are the typical example). And,
of course, there is the parasite, which harms the host by surviving at the
host’s expense.
My mind drifted this last week from the local church
partnership to my own team that I work with in campus ministry. I have, one of those “type-A”, driver-like
personalities that plows ahead into the “vision that God gave me for the
ministry”. I work hard to not harm my
team in any way, but I became convicted that my relationship with my team is
much more commensalistic than it is mutualistic. I don’t want it to be like that.
Now, my team leader did a great job trying to convince me
that I add more to the team than I give myself credit for, which may be true, but
I was still convicted that I wanted to be a more beneficial presence to those
around me.
What about you? What
kind of partnerships – if any – do you have with your ministry?
One of the hard truths I’ve noticed about those who raise
their own support to be in the ministry (both as a full-time staff member of a
church and as a support-based missionary myself), is that many of us get into
the ministry we’re in because we’re just fed up with “working in the
church”. We pronounce the church broken
and march off into the sunset to restore the Kingdom of God.
God will use this willingness to prophetically pursue His
Project in the world. He will. And it will be good.
But while that’s happening, I fear that many times we may
lose a golden opportunity to help bring healing and “rightness” back to the
church we left – wounded, broken, and in need of repair. If we’re not careful, we can easily become a
commensalistic partner at best – or a parasite at worst.
I’m not here to suggest that the church is the hope of the
world. It most certainly is not. God, as seen through Jesus, always has been
and always will be that great Hope.
But something tells me He’s probably not planning on working
through a spiritual tapeworm.
