They're Ours, No They're Yours, No We're Partnering

One of the buzzwords in missions these days is “partnering with the local church”. Mostly, this means letting the church take more responsibility for the people that are on the field that came from that church. It used to be that the agencies told the churches to just give them their best people and a bunch of money, and they'd take care of evangelizing the world. This isn't true anymore. This is a good thing. As I read through the accounts of Paul heading out to reach the Gentiles with the gospel, I don't get the impression that a missions agency played much of a role in the process.

Actually, it seems like Paul had a much easier time getting underway, but found things much rougher on the field than they are for most people today.

This post on partnering is related to the missions and marketing post I made earlier. Since the idea of partnering with the local church is the new black in missions, agencies are doing all they can to figure it out and let people know that they get it. However, there are a few challenges with this idea of partnership that need to be thought through. They are:

• Who decides what the missionary should be doing and where they ought to locate?
• To whom is the missionary accountable?
• How will finances be handled?
• Who's responsible for setting and keeping the vision for the field?
  

The question that comes to mind when conversations about partnering with local churches comes up is what's left for the missions agency to do when these partnerships are in place? If the church determines their particular focus for missions, screens and sends their own people, and takes responsibility for what they are doing on the field, what is left for the agency to do?

Some people will say that the agencies are where the expertise in how to do missions lies. However, as the churches take more responsibility for missions, this will surely change. So what is an agency to do? It can point out areas of the world that are yet unreached, provide suggestions about how to get people into these places, trains churches in how to set up missions programs, run the finances for the people going to the field, and serve as a travel service for the churches.

This is bad news for agencies that are dependent on the process of sending out missionaries in order to raise the money they need to keep their office running. Here's a suggestion. What if a missions agency were to become a missions consulting agency that provided a number of services to the churches sending missionaries for a fee?

By assigning a dollar value to the different services offered – training, travel arrangements, some sort of application and screening process, etc. – missions agencies could do more than partner with the church, they could help push the church to actually do missions itself, but could still supply services in which they have expertise.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if this took place. I think several things would occur. First, I think that churches would begin to take more ownership of the missionaries they sent out. Second, I think the missions agencies would be able to focus more on improving the services they provide to the churches and missionaries on the field, without wasting time on recruiting for missions. This would now be the church's job. Third, I think there would be some consolidation and specialization among agencies as different groups with similar focus would choose to work together, and those with particular expertise would begin to work themselves into a niche.

There would also be some exceptions. Agencies which already maintain their home office without taking a percentage of a missionary's support would be relatively untouched by these changes. Perhaps, they are already functioning in the way I have described. Denominational missions would also be affected, but the changes there would be different than in “standalone” missions agencies.

Proposing this model isn't to say it's the best or only way to do missions. However, if I were starting a missions (consulting) agency today, it's certainly the way I'd set it up.