Doing Something Right

In his famous little book, The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard encourages leaders to “catch people doing something right.”  I think the same principle should apply to the mission world--which is just what this blog post is about.

Orphan children from the Seeds Children's Home in
Kitale, Kenya (courtesy of The Gathering, CO)

Recently, I was asked to provide some consulting advice to an elder from a Colorado church that has had an emerging relationship with a national ministry in Kenya.  Richard Makani and his wife, Hellen, both native Kenyans, were so moved by the plight of the poor in the slums of their city that they dropped everything to start Seeds, a group of outreach ministries responding to the needs of those slum dwellers. As I listened to my new friend describe both the local Kenyan ministry and the subsequent response from a group of caring US supporters, I was impressed by how much seemed to be right about what I was hearing.  Here are some examples:

• The vision for responding to this need came from a local, national couple, not one imposed by an outside foreign mission.
• Seeds has developed a balanced ministry approach of preaching/teaching/healing—just what Jesus modeled for us in Matthew 9:35.
• The US donors have been very careful to develop a relationship with Seeds that would not lead to an indefinite dependence on foreign funds.
• My friend has already read the book, When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, one of the best publications available on how not to ruin national ministries by overwhelming them with too many “good intentions” from the West.
• The US donors are ready and willing to create a unified advisory group so as to provide more consistent and helpful input to Seeds as well as streamline and simplify Richard’s need to provide project reports.

So what more advice could I offer someone who is already doing so much right?  Here’s what I shared:

• Encouraged to create a partnership agreement with Seeds that is based on the new Lausanne Standards recently created to help set accountability guidelines for missions (www.lausannestandards.org)
• Explained how to build a cross-cultural relationship based on Servant Partnership as opposed to the typical business model of partnership based on mutual benefit. (See my chapter on Servant Partnership in Shared Strength, Exploring Cross-cultural Christian Partnerships, Birmingham and Todd, p.55)
• Suggested that the US stakeholders help Seeds develop stronger organizational capacity using something like my Organizational Capacity Assessment Matrix tool to determine where and how they should improve different ministry areas, especially their board governance function.
• Recommended checking out the website on Cultural Intelligence (http://culturalq.com/) and learning more about the differences between American and Kenyan cultural values.
• Advised developing an agreed-upon annual partnership strategy based on the model that Partners International uses with their PDPs—Partnership Development Plans.

What a pleasure to be able to “catch” so many things going right in a single mission relationship.  Now, if more cross-cultural ministry endeavors could follow suit, I believe we would see significant acceleration in the advancement of God’s Kingdom around the world.