Give Up. Challenge yourself – are you ready for real mission partnership?

WHAT ARE YOUR MINISTRY VALUES?
Here are some ideas to reflect on:

Kingdom-focused
We seek God’s kingdom. The one that Jesus pointed to and taught (see especially Matthew chapters 5-7). We acknowledge that together we are part of one body under Christ, being and belonging to one church, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 .In partnership we acknowledge our interdependence by learning from one another. Here we encounter unity, building up the whole body, not our individual organisations, and here we experience God’s blessing, like the precious oil we read about in Psalm 133.We also reflect the reality that ultimately we are ‘jars of clay’ (2 Corinthians 4) each with a shared ‘treasure within’.

Free and Open
Working in partnership will involve many small and simple paradigm shifts. One of these is the commitment to making the best ministry materials freely available to all who need them. Here are 2 principles you might like to explore.

  • Open Access – this is about making resources freely available and accessible by whatever means possible. Free cost is one aspect and copyright free or copyright released is another.
  • Open Source – this takes open access another step by releasing the source principles, documents and concepts for other to take and build on. It allows for each culture to add, subtract, refine, improve and copy towards the goal of even better, local and contextualized resources to be developed.

Diverse
Our mission vision comes from Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go and make disciples of all nations”.  The method of achieving it is found in Jesus’ prayer:  “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17: 23 NIV)We need to believe that Jesus’ commission cannot be done in exclusive or separate ways alone.

Nor does one context or culture have all the answers necessary for the mission. The diversity in our cultures, churches, ministries and individuals should not be a threat, handicap or obstacle in achieving our mission; rather it can be a stimulant that adds effectiveness and richness to our common mission.