Another Partnership Resource

Shared Strength is the name of a new book that is being offered by Compassion International and AERDO. Edited by Beth Birmingham from Eastern University and Scott Todd from Compassion, it is a compendium of ten papers that were given at an event held last summer in Colorado Springs. I had the privilege of being one of those invited to present a paper at that event, so my contribution shows up as Chapter 5: Servant Partnership—The Key to Success in Cross-Cultural Ministry Relationships.

Other chapters include one by my friend and former Partners staff member, Dan Rickett (Sisters in Service) on What’s In it for You and Stephan Bauman (World Relief) on Power Differentials in Partnerships: A Confession and a Call.

I’m excited to see more and more of this type of book emerge onto the marketplace which seems to be an indication that the mission world is truly grappling with some of the key, contemporary issues facing the dynamics of cross-cultural partnerships in our world today.

Shared Strength will be available from Amazon sometime towards the end of July.

No More Superheroes?

A few evenings ago, I had an interesting conversation with my 21 year old son, Nathaniel. He was sharing about a discussion he had with some friends about why many of his generation seems so disconnected and uninterested in church or other ministry endeavors.

“Every since we were little,” he said, “we’ve been surrounded by fantastic stories, cartoons, video games, and movies where young heroes take on the challenge of some amazing quest—a quest that ultimately defines their life purpose and inner character. And despite incredible odds, those superheroes are able to vanquish their threat and win the day, usually in 90 minutes or less!” By the time they hit college age, the dividing line in their minds between fact and fantasy has actually become somewhat blurred to the point where they too feel their own lives should be about striving for some great quest. But instead, he explains, when his peers measure real life experience (including church) against these imaginary heroes and situations, the excitement of reality pales in comparison. “It seems they end up with one of two different reactions,” he continued. They either become frustrated, un-enamored, and disengaged adopting a “what’s the use of trying?” attitude. Or else they adopt a radical spirit and charge into some cause or another in order to “fix” as many wrongs of the world as possible. In either case, Nathaniel noted, they are not finding many existing Christian institutions able to satisfy the seeds of “super-heroism” planted for years in their subconscious minds and be meaningfully involved in a quest where they can make a difference in the world—especially one that can be accomplished quickly.

So, what do we say to a generation that has been raised believing that Star Wars, Iron Man or Lord of the Rings are more real than real? Do we simply tell them to “grow up” and put away their childish fantasies? Or is it possible that there is a new type of “hero” we could introduce them to, one involved in equally meaningful quests in our world today?

Here at Partners International, we have the unique privilege of creating partnerships with national ministries led by incredibly visionary men and women. These folks are tackling some of the toughest challenges imaginable right within their own communities. From rescuing young women in Bangalore brothels to caring for the distressed of Darfur to creating sustainable business opportunities on the Tibet plateau, these ministries are demonstrating the Good News of Christ in realistic, practical and sustainable ways. True, their solutions are not always quick and easy, but they are certainly effective in changing their corners of the world.

I’m convinced the more we have a chance to connect my son’s generation to these real-live “superheroes” of today’s mission world, the more Nathaniel and his friends will find plenty of opportunity to find personal fulfillment and life purpose by participating in God’s ultimate quest: proclaiming Real Hope to a lost world.

New Thoughts on Real Hope

Our byline at Partners International is: Real Hope. Real Change. Real Partnership.

To me, these words grab the essence of what we want our organization to be known for. But words like hope, change, and partnership can be easily get overused, and lose their significance.

Yesterday at breakfast, my wife and I were reading in a devotional book by J.I Packer and came across this outstanding quote on the concept of hope:

While there’s life, there’s hope, we say, but the deeper truth is that only while there’s hope there is life. Take away hope, and life, with all its fascinating variety of opportunities and experiences, reduces to mere existence—uninteresting, ungratifying, bleak, drab and repellent, a burden and a pain. Hope generates energy, enthusiasm and excitement; lack of hope breeds only apathy and inertia.

I believe what Partners International has to offer brings hope at several different levels. First, it’s positioned as an organization that is ready to seek out and enable national, indigenous leaders, especially emerging leaders, and come along side them with resources and training that specifically gives them hope of fulfilling their God-given visions. Second, when those visions take on substance as mature, national ministry organizations they, in turn, bring hope to so many other people struggling both physically and spiritually in the hard places of the world. Finally, the bottom line of all this partnership and ministry effort is that many more people would come to see and know Jesus Christ as the ultimate Real Hope both today and for all Eternity.

As Packer says above, where there’s hope, there’s life. What a privilege it has been to see people, leaders and ministries alike take on new life as they experience renewed hope that has resulted from caring partner relationships.

Million Milestone

Yesterday, I ordered this cake made and brought it up to the Spokane Airport with the following letter.  Thought it would be fun to share it with all of you:

Dear United Staff, Spokane Base,

Last Friday, June 4, 2010, coming home to Spokane on UA 0583, I passed the one million milestone on United Airlines!

I’m sure you have a lot of customers who have flown much more than that on United, but for me this is a significant milestone because it represents God’s graciousness to me for an incredible number of hours in the air that have all happened safely and without a single significant mishap.

Actually, these one million miles on United are only a fraction of the total amount of flying I have been involved ever since 1977. When we moved to Spokane in 2003, I decided to start keeping track of and logging every single leg of a flight I have made here in the US and around the world. (Perhaps it’s part of a habit I developed years ago as a missionary bush pilot in Africa.) As of last Friday, I’ve flown 776,697 miles and spent 1,733 hours in the air on 614 individual flights just during these past seven years.

Because of my role in leading an international non-profit Christian mission organization, my role takes me to many unusual and remote places around the world. My guess is that for every mile on United, I spend another two miles on other airlines—particularly those in Third World countries. As a result, there are a lot of stories I could tell. And, although I am so thankful that I’ve never been on any flight that has had a major incident, there certainly have been plenty of “interesting” moments, such as:

• An Ethiopian Airlines 727 that ingested a large bird over the Nairobi, Kenya game park that totally demolished the center engine. The pilot had to dump fuel to make it back for a safe landing!
• An Air Mongolia landing at Beijing, that was so hot and fast the pilot had breaks screeching down the entire length of the runway and only got stopped at the VERY end!
• An Air France 747 with one of the very first auto-landing systems that made it on the ground at Charles DeGaul, Paris in zero-zero visibility only to have to shut down right in the middle of the runway and be guided by a “follow-me” truck because it was impossible to see even the edge of the taxiway.
• An Air Afrique Airbus out of Mauritania for Marseille with a furloughed Pan Am crew who finally invited me to sit up front with them so I could translate from French to English in order to understand what the cabin crew and the tower were trying to tell them!
• An Air Zaire 737 where the pilot also invited me up front only to discover he was using a portable GPS unit on the dashboard as his main navigation gear!
• A charter flight in Congo on a Shorts 360 with so many passengers, the pilot just decided to have me STAND right behind his seat for the entire flight!
• The coldest flight ever in a Tupolev 134 in Kazakhstan where I was literally scraping the ice off the INSIDE wall and window next to my seat.

As you can probably imagine, I could go on and on.

What I would like to say to all of you, however, is how much I have appreciated the service I have received over the years on United. I know that circumstances always arise to make air travel difficult, especially during the present time we live in. I’m sure you all deal with plenty of passenger complaints of one type or another. I’ve probably heard as many of them as you have. But, from my experience over all these years of flying commercial airlines is that United has provided me with a solid consistency that I have grown to appreciate.

So, although the food may be better on South African Airlines, the flight attendants younger and cuter on Air Asia and the entertainment system a lot more entertaining on Singapore Airlines, I, for one, am quite satisfied and grateful for the safe and dependable service I have received in traveling all of those one million miles on United Airlines!

Thanks for all you do in keeping up the “friendly skies!”

Jon Lewis

And now. . . some good news from Iraq

At Partners International, we strive to help our national partners not only be successful in accomplishing their own local ministry objectives, but to also find ways to benefit other national organizations around the world. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen two great examples of this.

The first one is from northern Iraq where three schools our national partner has built were celebrating their first graduating class of high school seniors. Having grown from just a dream in the mind of Yousif and Alia Matty ten years ago, the schools now boast 1800 students, 450 teachers and an annual budget of $3 million totally self supported from within that country! If that isn’t amazing enough, to further celebrate their success, the schools dedicated a $5000 gift towards the construction of a new school being built by our AIC partner in southern Sudan. How cool is that?! To think that these Iraqi friends are ready and willing to share their bounty of God’s blessing with another ministry in a “hard place” of the world is truly inspiring!

The second example comes from Brazil. Years ago, Partners International invested heavily in building up national ministries in Brazil. But as that country became more and more self-sufficient in supporting their own mission work, we backed away and put most of our focus on more unreached areas of the world. Recently, however, some of those original Brazil connections also have wanted to share their resources with others. A few months ago, we received over $20,000 from them designated for believers in Iran who are struggling under increased pressure and persecution. Now, another check is on its way from Brazil for $40,000 also to help with this same school in southern Sudan. Coupling the Iraq and Brazil gifst with a few others coming from US foundations, we should soon have enough for the Sudan school to begin construction. PTL!

These two examples are a great snapshot of the increasing global context of world missions. What an exciting day to be involved in connecting and networking together partnerships like these all around the world!

Ambassadors of Real Hope

The message of Easter is the ultimate message of real hope!

As I woke up this Good Friday morning and brushed away the fogginess of sleep, I was immediately impressed with how many parallels there are between what Easter is all about and what I dream for Partners International. Jesus came to live in our world as an ambassador of real hope. That is exactly what everyone one of us in PI has an opportunity to be as well.

We are ambassadors of real hope in the hard places of the world. Jesus knew what that meant. After all, he came from heaven to earth. Earth was a hard enough place compared to heaven, but he also choose to be born in the backwater country of Palestine, to a no-name, no-status, blue-collar couple in the manger of a smelly animal stable! Jesus’ personal ministry had specific focus on people in hard places—people in out-of-the-way villages of Galilee, people sidelined by religious elite, people rejected because of their moral mistakes and ethnic identity, even people living in leper colonies and among tombs! There was a definite WHERE aspect to the hope Jesus represented because he brought hope to those hard places. That is my dream for Partners as well. I want us to bring hope to the most hopeless places of our world. I want the least reached and least resourced areas of the world to be precisely where we build our partnering relationships.

There also was a WHEN aspect to the hope Jesus represented. Hope by nature is about waiting for something in expectancy that is still in the future. For three years Jesus shared his message of hope with friends and disciples, but they had to wait for the Easter weekend before they saw the true power of what he was talking about. Even more, on Good Friday, the moment Jesus breathed his last breath on a Roman cross was simultaneously the moment when those believers’ hope actually died. The next couple of days had to be the darkest and most hopeless they had ever experienced. But that experience made the hope that was resurrected on Easter morning more meaningful and real than ever.

We too have this WHEN aspect in our Partners' experience. Invariably we and our national partners have situations that simply take time before fulfillment can happen. Those can be dark and discouraging days. Like wondering when we’ll ever get enough help to complete our project. Like waiting and waiting for the promised funds to be raised. Like facing incredible frustration as new systems, new processes, and new changes take place. Just like Jesus’ disciples, we can lose hope at times like that. That was certainly a temptation for me last year as we grappled with organizational downsizing due to our loss of income. But how much more meaningful it is after a dark time like that to find that hope remains alive and real. That is why the story of Easter morning is so powerful. It’s a great reminder for us not to lose heart during our dark days as well. My dream is that being ambassadors of hope at Partners means we are ready to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” with friends and partners, constantly reminding them and ourselves that, after the crucifixion of Friday, the resurrection will come on Sunday.

It struck me this morning that Jesus’ hope had a HOW aspect as well. It was always directed at people—specific, individual people. He really didn’t focus on bringing transformation to institutions or programs or systems. He touched real people with real hope. Like the woman with a hemorrhage. Like a man paralyzed for more than thirty years. Like some fishermen who wanted more meaning out of life. Those people did eventually bring transformation to institutions, but the HOW aspect of Jesus’ hope was ultimately to touch one person at a time. For them, it was a moment of personal renewal of life, of vision, of relationship. My dream is that being ambassadors of real hope in Partners is also about touching individual people in a similar way. Sure, we want to see churches planted and organizational development happen within national ministries; but day to day, the working out of our ministry needs to be expressed in how we bring real hope in real ways to real people.

And it’s happening! It happens when Linda Jo signs up another child for sponsorship. It happens when Rene Mbongo has a cup of coffee with a ministry leader in the deserts of Mali. It happens when Steve Delph lets a donor know what impact his gift will mean to the Dalits of India. It certainly happens when Amir reboots my computer after a hard-drive crash! Every day, in every aspect of our ministry, every one of us can be an ambassador of real hope for someone. That’s how I want us to be remembered most—that our global ministry got accomplished by each of us making a difference in the lives of people. . . one at a time.

Easter is the ultimate reminder that real hope exists. May this season renew our sense of privilege to be ambassadors of that same real hope to a world that so desperately needs it.

The Magic of Forgiveness

She was only four years old! But her daddy loved her and when he heard that some boy knocked her down at school resulting in a scratch over her eye, he went ballistic. The school happened to be one of three Classical Schools of the Meads in northern Iraq that Partners International has helped to fund during the last several years. But for this Muslim background father, that just made it all the more reason to rant and curse everyone associated with a school that could allow such a thing to happen to his little girl.

Until, she came to her father and asked, “Why are you cursing, Daddy? When the boy helped me back up again, he said he was sorry. So I forgave him. Everything is OK now. There’s no reason to be angry.”

It was Yousif and Alia Matty, our ministry partner leaders from Iraq that told me this story last Sunday at the dinner table. They said that they have been stressing the Biblical principle of asking forgiveness with the children in their schools precisely because it is so absent in typical Islamic and therefore Iraqi culture.

They went on to explain that when the girl’s dad, a local magazine writer, heard her say this, he was stunned—not expecting to learn such a lesson from his daughter. In fact, he was so impacted, he decided to write an entire article in the Kurdish magazine about the concept saying you're sorry. He entitled it: The Magic of Forgiveness.

This was just one of several similar stories from the Mattys telling how the values on which their Christian schools are based are touching the lives of their 1800 students. Even though 96% of them are from Muslim homes, the ripple effect is reaching many other family members as well, several of which have come to the Mattys for spiritual counsel.

Reflections on the Sailboat—Powerboat Metaphor

After a recent visit by Alex Araujo here at our Partners International office, and a subsequent stimulating discussion about the famous Sailboat-Powerboat metaphor, I came away with a troubled feeling about how this illustration is being understood. My sense was that different people are interpreting the metaphor from different contexts leading to misunderstanding of each other’s points of view.

This became clear to me when Alex was arguing that the Sailboat paradigm was clearly the “right” perspective and the Powerboat paradigm the “wrong” one. I had always maintained that there were good and bad qualities on each side.  Upon further discussion, however, I realized that Alex was thinking of the metaphor primarily in terms of a spiritual context relating to how we should work out our dependence vs. independence in our personal relationship with God. I, on the other hand, had been viewing the metaphor purely from a cultural context and attributed the two different paradigms as relating to the contrasting worldviews of the Global North (the West) and the Global South (non-West.)

In looking back over the various blogs and discussions on this metaphor, it appears to me that many others have been mixing these two different contexts in the discussion. The result is that there has been an overall “muddiness” to the metaphor discussion that has even led some to question if the metaphor is useful at all.

I would like to propose a new way of thinking about both of these two contexts with the metaphor by adding them BOTH to a two-dimensional chart.  My proposition is that both the spiritual and the cultural aspects of the metaphor have validity, but they must somehow be separated out in order to gain pragmatic value to any application that might be attempted.

This two-dimensional chart would look like this:

Having defined two different continuums according to the X and Y axis, it now allows us to discuss some practical implications. Here is my attempt at that—with the caveat that these are extremely broad generalizations.

Assumptions:

1.      The Global North has a tendency toward a worldview that is somewhere in Quadrant II. Not only does our “rugged individualism” keep us from living in dependence on God’s Spirit day-by-day, but our industrial/technology heritage pushes us toward a “goal-oriented” approach of problem solving. I will label this typical starting position on the chart for the Global North = N1.

2.      The Global South has much more of a relational worldview and understands flexibility due to dependence on circumstances and situations usually out of a person’s control. Therefore, their relational approach to life and problem solving puts them in the lower half of the chart. However, Global South people can also tend toward independence from God too, though probably differently and not to the same extent as those of us in the Global North. I’ll call this starting point in Quadrant IV for the Global South = S1.

3.      The Global North has a need to learn greater dependence on God’s Spirit as opposed to using self or secular management approaches to determining Truth. Therefore, in general, it has a need of moving leftwards on the chart. It also has a need to be much more sensitive to relationships and not always so intensely goal oriented in worldview. So it also could use moving downward on the chart as well. However, the Global North has a huge and rich heritage of learning how to get things done, so I think it would be wrong for it to totally give up its understanding of strategic planning, etc., and demand that it live only in a Quadrant III worldview. I suggest a good ending point for the Global North would be the lower part of Quadrant I = N2.

4.      The Global South also has need of learning greater dependence on God’s Spirit as a primary guiding force. it too, can use movement to the left on the chart. It could also benefit greatly from learning something about the Global North’s experience in management practices and goal orientation.  Therefore some upward movement is also appropriate. Its ending point could then be in the upper part of Quadrant III = S2.

My conclusion is that the new positions of N2 and S2 now give a place for truly healthy partnership to work well.  By both being sensitive to God’s Spirit (the same Spirit for each!) and both bringing to the table the value of their heritage worldviews (goal and relational orientation), there is the potential for new synergy that can produce great effectiveness. It is my hope that though real partnership, Partners International continues to move toward position N2 and that our ministry partners from the Global South continue to move toward position S2.

Hopefully by combining these two different interpretations of the Sailboat—Powerboat metaphor in this manner, we not only clarify the dialog about its interpretation, but also have the potential of extracting an even deeper and richer understanding from it and thus inform and configure our global partnership endeavors for even greater impact for God’s Kingdom.

New Dimensions in Sailboating!

For the past year or two, we have been kicking around a really neat metaphor offered by one of our Partners' veteran staff, Alex Araujo called the Sailboat--Powerboat illustration. It was originally offered as a creative way to think about the different worldviews involved in working cross-culturally between the Global North (West) and Global South (non-West). You can read Alex's paper here: To Catch The Wind. There also is a whole blogsite Alex and others have set up called Sailing Friends.

In my own thinking about this metaphor, however, I've seen that it can be taken in both a cultural and a spiritual context. With that in mind, I've written a short paper today (also a blog post) that presents these contexts on a two dimensional graph. Let me know what you think--I'd love to hear some feedback.

What I'm excited about is that by thinking of both the spiritual and cultural dimensions in this way, we can actually begin to think about how to more effectively position the Resource Rich from the West with the Opportunity Rich from the non-Western part of the world for even greater ministry impact for God's Kingdom!

Haiti - Now an Opportunity for Partnership

As the first wave of emergency relief activity in Haiti begins to wane, the even bigger job of helping an entire nation rebuild itself from this incredible disaster now becomes the critical need for the months and even years ahead. And, just like other world-class crises such as this one, it also offers a great opportunity for God's people to demonstrate partnership and a deep and meaningful level.

That is what we here at Partners International US are already engaged in doing as we connect and coordinate our efforts with our affiliate colleagues around the world. As I write this blog post, my counterpart, John Rose, the CEO of World Share UK is meeting with Luckner Simphil, leader of the Haitian Calvary International Ministries (HCIM.) After surveying the devastation that impacted his ministry including the destruction of three churches and the total flattening of one school, brother Luckner made it back to Florida to begin marshaling resources needed in responding to the needs of his people.  We hope to have a full report from him a another day or two.

Thanks to a generous response from many Partner's friends here in the US, we have been able to gather a sizeable fund that we are ready to mobilize in response to HCIM's needs. The same is true of our affiliates in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the UK.

What makes partnership particularly important at a time like this is the ability to laser our resources right to where they can make the best and longest impact for individual people in Haiti. Obviously, our funds do not have the impressive million-dollar size of other global relief organizations. But sometimes they can do things those huge funds cannot. That is because we work directly with a proven national, indigenous ministry like HCIM where we can know what each dollar is going to do and hear first hand reports from the men, women and children who are assisted by our help. And, because our partnership with these national brothers and sisters is not a short term, flash-in-the-pan kind of help, we can continue providing assistance in ways that will truly help them rebuild their homes, churches and lives for long-term sustainability.

Stay tuned over the next few days as we hope to have much more to share on just how that help can make a difference.

Once again. . . a devastating disaster!

Once again the world has been rocked with the news of another devastating disaster. As the reports come rolling in this morning from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we all hold our breath in anticipation of horrendous statistics cataloging the injuries and loss of life from this massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

And once again, so many of us stand by on the sidelines listening and watching and wondering what we could possibly do to help. It is at times like this that I wonder just how we can live out Paul's commendation to the Philippians for sharing the "same struggles" he was experiencing.

As I write this, we are awaiting more news of a local church-planting organization called Haitian Calvary International Ministries (HCIM) that has been a Ministry Partner of our UK affiliate, World Share.  Telephone contact was possible this morning with Luckner Simphil, the director of HCIM, who happened to be in Tampa, FL, and already he has reported "a lot of church people are dead."  Unfortunately, the main phone lines are down with La Gonave island where much of the ministry work is located. We do know that all of HCIM's ministry work is within a close radius of the epicenter of the earthquake and its aftershocks (see map.) We will try to have more updates about HCIM on our Partners International website as they become available.

One thing is for sure, this will be another disaster that will leave thousands of people in desperate need. For that reason, we have already initiated a relief fund for those who want to begin contibuting toward relieving that need. (Click here for more information.) We will coordinate our relief efforts with our World Share colleagues and do all that is possible to help HCIM and our devastated brothers and sisters in Haiti.

A Blessing for Nightwatchmen

Yesterday, in my personal time of worship, I read Psalm 134 and was impressed with focus on the night watchmen of the temple.  This is the last of the "songs of ascent" that begin with Psalm 120 and end with 134. Apparently, they were songs sung by pilgrims who traveled from afar on their way to Jerusalem and the temple. But unlike the rest of the psalms in the series, this little, three-verse psalm is a special encouragement to those who are probably least remembered: the night watchmen. They had to be the ones who had the most boring job, who missed out on all the excitement of worship and celebration during the day, who most people didn't even remeber they were working there at the temple.

Yet, this special group of Levites get their own special "song of ascent" just for them. The psalmist says: Oh bless the Lord...you who serve as night watchmen in the house of the Lord. Lift your hands in holiness and bless the Lord.

What a great reminder that no matter how insignficant we might think our job is, it is still important to God. In fact, our work should be done with a sense of reverence toward the One we serve, so that when we lift our hands in accomplishing that job, it is done with holiness, as an act of worship to Him.

This made me think of all the "night watchmen" that are a part of our Ministry Partners around the world. These are brothers and sisters that are "out of sight" to most of us, whose jobs may seem mundane and commonplace.  But ultimately they are just as much a part of the Body of Christ as the rest of us. And their labor is also a means of praising and blessing our God.

Ps 134 ends with this thought: May the LORD, who made heaven and earth bless you from Jerusalem. Even the night watchmen deserve a blessing from the ultimate Creator of the universe. So do all those who labor unseen in the advancement of God's Kingdom around the world!