By Gregg Boll, Director of Missions
Many of our BR-KC Churches have ongoing partnerships with churches and mission agencies in other states and overseas. My observation is that these churches are healthier and produce more fully rounded disciples, future pastors, and missionaries than those churches that don’t. So, why should it be unthinkable for a church of any size not to engage in mission partnerships both at home and abroad?
1. Because our Lord’s great commission was and is given to the local church and to every believer. The great commission to go and make disciples and establish churches in all the world is recorded in every gospel and The Acts of the Apostles. The proof that those Apostles were obedient to this commission are the epistles to the churches they started. Churches, not mission-sending agencies such as the I.M.B or N.A.M.B., plant churches. Churches, not denominational agencies, make disciples. The IMB and NAMB are wonderful, necessary agencies established by the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. They do a phenomenal job of helping churches prepare and equip people for the mission field or church plant. Yet, current and future missionaries, planters, and pastors come from only one place: the local church; your church.
Forming mission partnerships with churches or missionaries in another state or country is biblical and one of the most tangible ways your church demonstrates obedience to the Lord. Oh, and I’ve heard all the naysayers and negative nellies who point out the problems and mistakes churches make in attempting to forge partnerships and send mission teams. Yes, certainly, there is a wrong and a right way to do mission partnerships, and we should be wise in how we engage. I’m aware of the faux pas that Nate Saint and other career missionaries experienced with visiting mission teams: mission teams who created dependency rather than partnership and groups who came with an unhealthy priority of “getting decisions” in order to have something exceptional to report back to their sending church. Years ago, as a young church planter hosting a visiting mission team, I experienced first-hand the damage that can be done when a team comes in with their own agenda rather than asking the resident missionary what needs to be done to advance the gospel. Yes, there are bad ways of doing missions, but saying you don’t want to lead your church to obey the Great Commission is like saying you’ll never have surgery, because a surgeon botched a surgery once. Sending people and groups out to strategic Kingdom partnerships is still the biblical, right thing to do.
