Matt Whitacre

Short-term Mission, Long-term Relationships

I love the idea of church partnerships. In my context that means American churches supporting churches and missionaries in other parts of the world. It’s a vision we promote at OMF — a beautiful picture of the global body of Christ working together for the same mission.

The blessing and challenge with real partnerships is they are relationships. They are not programs. They are not projects. It takes (a long) time to build trust and mutual understanding.

As Americans this is a really difficult practice for us. We value efficiency and programs and to-do lists. We don’t have time for relationships. We want to see results.

In the first chapter of Reimagining Short-term Missions Robert Katende quips that “You westerners have the watch, but we Ugandans have the time.” Later he writes “Relationships are intrinsically important in a way that no project can be. They are sacred.” This observation is hugely important for us Westerners to hear and accept.

In my role as the director of Serve Asia, OMF’s short-term mission program, what I usually tell churches who are interested in partnerships is let’s set up one trip. It may be a vision trip, a prayer trip, or serving missionary children at an annual field conference. I encourage them to send their leaders and start building the relationships with the missionaries and the local church leaders. Then we can see how God moves and develops the relationships into friendships and partnerships.

That said, I haven’t seen too many of these types of partnerships develop in real life. I keep thinking there’s still work to do to bridge the values of relationships and programs. What is the “hook” to get American churches to bite into this kind of commitment? And on the other side, what is the hook to convince a church or mission team to give time and energy to develop a co-powering* relationship with a Western church?

Right now I’m inclined to think that it starts small with one-one relationships that blossom to friendships that spread to the rest of the churches and eventually turn into partnerships.

If anyone has experience or ideas, let’s talk!

*Co-powerment is a term coined by the authors of Reimagining STM to promote equal status in relationships. i.e. “empower” can imply that one party has power and the other does not. Co-powerment suggests that both parties have something valuable to give and receive from the other.