Partnership is the spice of life for nonprofit organizations, churches, and ministries. It's a messy and challenging process, full of unmet expectations, overtime, and sleepless nights. It's also the only way forward. If the task were completely isolated and predictable, we would have no need of partnerships. We could all blissfully manage our own selves toward our simple goals. However, God's mission is far from isolated, simple, or predictable. Matthew 24:14 - the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached to the entire world! With the population growing by some 200,000 every day, that's a tall order since the Joshua Project reports that 42% of the 7 billion people on earth are unreached.
God's mission is unattainable without unity of mission. This doesn't mean that everyone has to join to form one supermission, or that we should just forget about all our differences. It may mean that we need to think more openly about with whom we will partner. It definitely means that we have to collaborate. It's too big for us to be competing with each other, starting our own replica ministries of other successful ones. And it's too big for us to hold tightly to our own successes and not share them. Successful collaboration requires broadening our scope from ourselves to God. It's about God's mission, not our own. We have to listen to Him, to what He is doing, and then relentlessly pursue it. Then we partner with others who are headed the same direction.
At LINC NT, nearly everything we do is through collaboration. We partner with many churches at a variety of levels. We also partner with secular organizations such as local schools, school districts, and a national school program. These partnerships allow us to do our ministry. Plus, we are currently pursuing a partnership with a national Christian ministry to do one of their programs here in our city. Just like the Body of Christ, everybody has their own function and own strengths. Nobody is great at everything. Recognizing that, we can transform communities. People are surprised when they hear how small our staff is because we do so much. On our own, we would accomplish very little. Through collaboration, we can change the world, starting right here in North Texas.
