Embrace Partnerships
1 Corinthians 3:1-11
Introduction
Do you like sports? Even if you are not a sports fan, I think you will get the point of the scenario that I’m going to offer. If you were given the opportunity to be world class athlete, would you prefer to participate in an individual sport or a team sport? Would you like to be a runner, excluding something like a relay race, where the victory would depend solely on yourself? Or would you like to be on a baseball team where different members are skilled in different areas of the game? There are pros and cons to each. In a team sport, you can have the best day of your career but lose the game because of the performance of another person. But in an individual sport, if you are having an off day, there is no help to make up for your deficiencies.
This is not limited to just sports. In school, I always preferred individual projects to group projects. With individual projects, I always had full control and it was much less stressful. With group projects, there could be interpersonal conflict or lazy members but there also could be motivated and talented people who could help you get a much better mark than if you did it alone. That’s the problem when you work with teams, you never know what you will get—for good or for bad.
How does this work with churches? First of all, it does assume some teamwork in that a congregation is a group of people who congregate together. Even in situations where the pastor is tempted to do as much as possible themselves, you will find some participation from others. But how does this work when churches have the opportunity to work with other churches or other organizations? Years ago, I was able to participate in the March for Jesus. It was an event where members of many different churches, including a wide variety of denominations, walked through our city, singing songs about Jesus. One of the purposes of this event was to witness to our unity. I thought it was great. But I was talking to a lady that I worked with and she was quite upset about it. She was not an atheist who was offended by all this Jesus talk but rather she was a Baptist who believed it was wrong for churches to work together. Where would she get that? One of our Baptist beliefs is an emphasis on the local church. This is important for all Baptists but how that is lived out is different from tradition to tradition. For some, like my co-worker, that meant all ministry had to be done by one local church with no cooperation, even among fellow Baptists. For us, it means that we believe that we can determine our understanding of the Scriptures as a congregation without interference from another. For example, if another Baptist congregation concluded women shouldn’t be in leadership, they could do that but could not impose that view on us, nor could we impose ours on them.
So the concept of the local church does not prevent partnerships, but is there any good reason for partnerships? That’s worth exploring.
Partnerships in the Church at Corinth
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church because there were some issues, and one of those issues was division. We have to remember that at this time, there were no professional clergy. There were elders who did their best to provide leadership, but especially in the beginning, they relied on travelling apostles and other leaders. Some of the biggest names in the early church had done some work in the Corinthian church. This should have been a good thing but people took what was for good and turned it into something for bad. Some of the Corinthians put their allegiance into one of these leaders and they divided up accordingly.
Paul responded by reminding them that this was not a competition, nor were any of these leaders fighting to earn their own faction. Rather each one was in partnership. They each had different gifts, callings, and backgrounds. In partnership, they were able to build something beautiful because what they brought complemented each other. What was important was not who did what but that they were building on the foundation of Christ. Peter would do his part, Apollos would do his part, and Paul would do his part. They were working as a team and it was in the midst of this team work that God’s kingdom was being built in that area of Greece. While this is not necessarily the same situation as churches working together today, but it does illustrate the principle that we are better together.
Partnerships in the Church at Brookfield
If we accept Paul’s argument that the kingdom is being built by people with different gifts and callings and that these diverse efforts are things to celebrate rather than divide over, what does that mean for us? One of the markers of a mission edge church is to embrace partnerships. What might that look like? What I am going to do is to not suggest that we start actively partnering with all of these organizations all at once but rather offer some possibilities. We can then look at who we are already partnering with and what might be a potential future partner.
Let’s start local and look at our village, Knox United Church. There is only one other church in our village. We already partner with them in the summer with two combined services and we partner with them for Remembrance Day. You might respond with the fact that we have some theological differences. Well, we have some theological differences even with other Baptist churches. Partnership never means that we give up our convictions, it means that we cooperate in the areas we can cooperate with integrity. There are also two schools here in the village. We already partner somewhat with our KD Lunch but there may be more opportunities.
Spreading out a bit more, we have a historical relationship with Wittenburg Baptist Church and Lifepoint Church. We partner for Good Friday service, is there more we can do? Along the Baptist context, we also have Northeast Nova Baptist Association, the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada, and Canadian Baptist Ministries. There is also Camp Pagweak, Crandall University, and Acadia Divinity College. Of course we do not have to stay within Baptist circles, or even Christian circles. There is good kingdom work that glorifies God in some of the most surprising places.
Here is perhaps the hardest part of partnerships. We have been taught that our goal as a church is build this particular congregation. Success if found when more people join our congregation. But what if our goal is not to build our church but Christ’s Church? What if changed lives are more important than filled pews? These are hard habits to break. Interestingly, we talk about the church of Corinth and not the churches of Corinth. And yet it is very unlikely that they all met together in one place since the only buildings that were available were individual homes. But they were one church. This idea of embracing partnerships means rejecting the idea that we are in competition with one another, trying to fight other congregations for the people interested in God. Many people expect this of us and when we partner with one another, not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of our partners, we are being a better witness.
Conclusion
I am going to be honest with you, it would be much simpler to focus on ourselves. We can just do our own thing as a church and ignore what other people and other groups are doing. It avoids confusion, avoids messiness, and puts things in our control. But it also misses out on the opportunity to join in with something bigger than ourselves. Some of my greatest memories from time in ministry were when we partnered with other groups and organizations. Something special happened and we were able toe achieve things we could not by ourselves.
Brookfield Baptist Church is already doing this. We are embracing partnerships. We see that there are people already working in the areas that we are interested in and we are coming along side them in that. Let’s keep working together for the glory of God.
