Partnership in Missions on the Field — George Verwer

It's the 3rd of October, 1999, and I'm thinking of sharing my heart on the whole subject of partnerships. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the opportunity of communicating in this way. We thank you for the privilege of being involved in your work.

Our hearts ache as we look out across the world with so much suffering and so much pain, but we also stand amazed as we see so many opportunities to go forth and minister in your name and build your kingdom and reach people with your glorious gospel.

Lord, help us as we deal with this very challenging and difficult subject of partnership in missions and enable us to be filled with faith on one side, but at the same time have that discernment and wisdom and understanding to know your way forward.

Help us to be big-hearted, God, about the many different ways that you work in the mission fields of the world. We commit to you now this time together, in Jesus' name, amen. It's a privilege to be able to share with you on this subject that's been on my heart for a long, long time.

The Origins and Purpose of Partnership in Missions

Many years ago, due to our burden for Afghanistan, that we allowed Gordon Magney to establish a partnership agency. This agency was called CERV. It was established outside of OAM with a separate board of directors, and the focus, of course, was on serving, loving, helping, and reaching the people of Afghanistan, whether they were in Afghanistan or refugees.

And I think initially the bigger thrust was among those refugees. Through that partnership, which allowed people to join from many different agencies, and through other partnerships that we've been involved in, and, of course, through studying various materials on this subject, we have come to be committed to partnership in world missions.

Because this is a broad subject, I'm specifically speaking about partnership generally on the field, though some of these principles would apply, I'm sure, in other kinds of partnerships. We had a partnership, somewhat different, in a Central Asian country that we also were able to observe and learn many precious lessons from.

And I'm hoping this tape is especially going to get into the hands of mission leaders, into the hands of missionaries, new recruits, tentmakers, so that you can perhaps have a more discerning and balanced view of this very important approach to missionary work.

Counting the Cost of Missionary Partnership

There's a number of scriptures on my heart, but I especially wanted to read Luke chapter 14, as when we look at some of the areas of the world, especially in the 1040 window where we are attempting to work, and when we think of some of the things we're attempting to do, especially launching new and fresh partnerships, then I think these words from Luke 14 are very, very important.

It talks about counting the cost, picking it up at verse 25, after it says, a great multitudes went with him, he turned on them, this is the Lord Jesus, any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple, and whosoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient, he has sufficient to finish it, lest it may happen, after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish it, all who behold it begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish, or what king going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand, or else while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an envoy and asketh conditions of peace.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple, salt is good, but if the salt hath lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned, it is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill, but men cast it out, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

By the way, that was what, from what's called the 21st century King James version, authorized version, over on this side of the Atlantic. I was wrestling with different titles for this message, and was reminded of a tape I did some time ago, The Minefields, in the Ministry of Counseling, and so I thought of sort of making this a sequel, The Minefields of Partnership.

The title, however, isn't so important, and we may want to think of this tape just as something that will help people count the cost as they go into partnerships, and I believe it will help mission agencies make that decision as to whether they should move ahead in their own agency, with their own team, to do the work that God has put on their hearts, or whether they should attempt to be in partnership with something that's already existing, or something new.

And I believe if we count the cost, and if we think through these things in advance, and by the way, there are whole courses you can take, we've had some of our people go on these courses, to learn how to be involved in these partnerships, I think they also deal with how to lead these partnerships, I've been saying for many, many years, that this partnership concept, especially on the field, it's wonderful, in some ways it's ideal, but it takes a much more gifted, grace-awakened, qualified person to lead it, than to lead just sort of a homogeneous unit, by that I mean a team of people who are all from the same mission, that have gone through the same training, and the same preparation.

Of course, often, people going into a partnership have various kinds of preparation. In my experience, never really enough, and if we're honest, quite a few people arrive to a particular country because they love that country, they want to work in that country, and they've chosen to work in a particular partnership without really a lot of knowledge of what is actually happening on the field, and there are cases of people being broken, being bittered, even casualties, because often, what's said maybe in the training before they go, and in the recruiting before they go, is not in line with what they experience when they're actually there.

Doctrinal Differences and Strategic Disagreement

The first minefield, or the first mine we can find ourselves stepping on and exploding, where we need to have a lot of understanding, is the minefield of doctrinal differences. I think it's a great mistake to say that doctrine isn't important, especially if we incorporate into doctrine the whole controversial area of strategy, how we go about the work.

There must be at least 50 different controversies going on on the mission field today. There are actually many more. Some of them are not so relevant. I think, for example, of some people in North Africa who listened to some tapes presenting a particular doctrinal view.

They were so sort of moved by these particular tapes, even though I think they had learned the language and were beginning to fit in, they decided to leave the field and somehow get this experience and this blessing they had just heard about, rather than press on in the task.

In my view, the Church of Jesus Christ around the world is as divided as ever, with 25 ,000 different denominations, with more and more books presenting more and more different viewpoints. We are not living in the day of great Church unity.

Now, there are often tremendous pockets of unity, and there are often some beautiful times of a lot of people coming together and experiencing some degree of unity and reality. But my viewpoint is that generally the divisions in the body of Christ, some of which are doctrinal, are as real as ever.

Some of them have actually grown worse. Some groups of people that we thought would never divide have now divided and gone in their different directions. We've seen an enormous number of churches go into serious splits.

How we think we can have a great split in a church back in our country at home or anywhere and not have splits in these partnerships that we attempt to establish on the field is to be rather naive. Now, of course, with this can be the pressure to compromise even major doctrines.

There's a lot of controversy today concerning the lostness of people, and we're hearing more about annihilation than we perhaps did a couple of decades ago. And yet there are large numbers of biblical Christians who feel that the teaching about hell and eternal punishment is still a biblical mandate that cannot be compromised.

I use that as an example. In our own experience, we've seen how division can come easily among those who are very similar doctrinally or they're at least all committed to an interdenominational position and have been trained to some degree to live in an interdenominational situation and an international situation in which they've learned how to prioritize.

And we've seen quite a few of those kinds of teams be very effective over the years. And I believe those kinds of teams, together with partnership teams, will continue to be part of God's plan for the future.

You will soon realize that I'm not an either-or person when it comes to the various ways that God works, especially out on the field. It's one of the reasons I'm in the process of putting the finishing touches on a book on the subject of grace and missions and leadership.

Personality Conflicts and Relational Breakdown

The next minefield is the minefield of what I call personality earthquakes. We've been having a number of earthquakes in the world today, and when we see the suffering, it breaks our hearts. But when we see disunity, when we see personality clashes, when we see relational breakdown on the field, that also is very grievous.

And sometimes people are permanently hurt. I think of that old scripture exhorting us and asking the question, can two work together if they are not agreed? And so in my view, one of the minefields of this approach is that people move quickly into it with great goals, with a big push of pragmatism on them, and they really are not like-minded with the people that they are called to work in partnership with.

Relationship takes time. Certain kinds of partnership put tremendous pressure on people to take shortcuts. Under the initial pressure, they may even talk some of these things through and think they're not a problem.

The fact is, when it comes to personality, they do not often know these people that they are about to work with, often in high-stress situations. A person, when he shares a vision and you first hear him speak in public, he may be very attractive.

It all may be very appealing. Later, when you are working on a team with that person and that person's weaknesses begin to come out, and failures, and yes, sin, if there is not a bonding, if there is not a real grace-awakened, big-heartedness, which usually takes time to establish, though some people certainly gain this quicker than others, then we can often see disaster.

Even though we may sort of train people in advance, we have to face the reality that training can only take a person so far. We have seen in all these years in mission work, for me over 40 years, that people often have personality and character blemishes and weaknesses that do not disappear even with very good training programs.

Even the great on-the-field training, which we so believe in, does not always resolve these character difficulties, struggles, erroneous zones, whatever you want to call them. Therefore, there needs to be a deliverance from naiveness in this area and a willingness to really count the cost of what it will take to put a partnership together on the field, add into that partnership the nationals from that country with all of their complexities, and you're talking about a Mount Everest challenge.

Unrealistic Expectations and the Limits of New Methods

So when we go into this, we need to at least go into it with our eyes wide open. The third area where I believe we need to count the cost and where we will find many minds is in this whole area of unrealistic expectation.

Even after training, which is so important, and many people find it difficult to get through these training courses, and they're often quite expensive, demanding you to fly tremendous distances, but even after that, we still can go into this kind of partnership with unrealistic expectation.

In fact, from some of the things I've seen and some of the things I've read, people who are promoting this kind of ministry are often creating unrealistic expectation. In their effort to convince us of how important this is, they tend to criticize or badmouth other approaches that may look denominational or they may look too narrow, and it's easy for people who are in the academic world to speak critically about different things, but if we've been out in these countries for many years and we examine the big picture, we see that despite the weakness and problems, this particular team or this particular way of doing things, even with its denominational label, is often bringing results.

People are coming to Christ. New churches are being planted. We cannot throw away the concept of a homogeneous unit. I remember a group of people who, in a Muslim country, believed only in interdenominational, international, cosmopolitan kind of churches in the cities, in which we stood against racism, we stood against all forms of prejudice.

A number of people have seen that this is great on paper, but it doesn't always work, though in certain cosmopolitan centers, in certain situations, especially with the right leadership, it will work.

But on the average across the world, so much of church growth has been the homogeneous unit, Koreans around the world planting Korean churches, seeing breakthroughs, seeing blessing, seeing people go on for God, and then seeing missionaries sent out.

This can be said of the Indian community around the world. It can be said also of different people's groups within particular countries. So in the midst of our new ideas, in our idealism, let us not throw away what the Holy Spirit has been doing through the homogeneous unit, or even through denominational missionaries who prefer to work together with people of their own denomination and plant churches that are in line with their own denomination.

As much as that may not appeal to you and even me in certain ways, we have seen the hand of God upon that aspect of church growth. In all of this, we know the problem of unrealistic expectation, and young missionaries who rush to the field and think that if they do it in this new way, with their new formula, that there's just going to be so much more blessing, and this is going to bring so much more glory to God.

Let's count the cost, let's be realistic, let's have high expectation, but let's realize there's a price to be paid, it's going to take time, there will be so-called casualties in the midst, and God, the Lord Jesus, never promised us an easy road.

Finding and Forming Partnership Leaders

Another area where we need to count the cost is to realize what it is to find people who can lead these kinds of partnerships. Our experience across the world is we do not find it easy to find and to train, number one, leaders that will even work in some of these difficult places.

Often the dynamic, visionary, strong-minded person who's willing to work in some of these places is not always the kind of person that has the big heartedness, the grace, the patience, all that it takes to be the leader of a partnership field or a partnership team.

And sometimes we can lose outstanding people through intimidation, through very high-level, goal-oriented training that makes a lot of people feel, that's certainly not for me, I could never do that.

Sometimes leadership only evolves on the field with a group of people working together, maybe not doing so well, maybe even the initial first leader realizes that he doesn't have the gifting to handle this, begins to work in more of a partnership leadership, or even turns his leadership over to others, praise God.

Often plan B and plan C ends up being God's great sovereign plan more than plan A, but we need to count the cost, we need to understand how hard it is often to find the right leader or leaders and the necessary, the need at times for us to compromise and learn to work together and learn to submit to a leader who may not have all the credentials we think he or she should have, for the sake of the kingdom, because we see Paul and Barnabas having difficulty sending John Mark back home, later when Barnabas wanted John Mark on the team, Paul said, you know, no way Jose, and you can follow the rest of the story in the New Testament.

Like-Mindedness in Prayer, Lifestyle, and Team Commitments

We need to face the reality also that many people on the mission field today have very strong convictions on some very basic areas. For example, there are those that really feel there need to be good, extensive times of corporate prayer.

There are other people quite proud that they don't believe this is so important, that prayer is more a personal thing. You will even find people on the field today that by their very practice do not really believe that much in prayer.

Others are just discouraged in this area and they want to stay out in the work because that's their profession or because they have some degree of love and burden for the people, but they don't have this practice of prayer in their lives.

We've seen considerable tension in our own movement, a movement filled with people who are all basically committed to personal prayer as well as corporate prayer, and some of the tensions when one feels an hour is surely long enough to pray and another brother or sister feels we need a number of hours and we should have this in the evening, not during our work time.

Someone else says, no, I think we should really have this during our work time. I want my evenings free. Now, if you have this in a movement that is semi-homogeneous, if I can use the term, what are you going to have when you have one of these partnerships?

You will have people, I can assure you, who will refuse to go to such prayer meetings. In some situations, it has been difficult to get people even to agree on some basic time for short prayer devotions and the Word as a team.

And so, we need to count the cost of what it is to bring people together to work on a team who are not really that like-minded. What about the whole area of lifestyle? What about the whole area of legalism versus grace?

What about people who have worked with a mission to have some basic social policies together with people who don't believe in these kind of social policies? To them, that's a legalism. And if they want to date someone, whether it's a national or an international, during their first few months on the field, in their way of thinking, that's nobody's business but theirs.

Judgmentalism Across Missions and Organizations

Can you imagine the complexity of holding people together in that kind of situation? Another minefield is the minefield of judgmentalism. That can be a huge problem. It can be experienced in any situation.

But I believe as we go into partnership, it often increases because of what I just shared, a wider range of opinion, a greater cross-section of people. Some partnerships, even for various reasons, end up bringing people who are not particularly evangelical or not particularly, in some cases, especially when you're bringing in nationals to do the work, not even converted, or at least some people feel they're not yet converted.

This is no small mountain. And when things get really into high stress, you will then have people judging the sending organizations. And soon you'll have, I am of YWAM, I am of OM, I am of Tear Fund, I am of World Vision.

You may find someone that puts down their own organization, maybe in a moment of struggle, and then someone who was never happy about that organization in the first place, grabs hold of that material in order to badmouth the organization.

Pretty soon these things are being discussed by the various missions and their boards back home. And the chaos that comes, I don't think anyone has written a book about it yet. Pulling people together from different mission agencies that have different ways of working and thinking is not easy.

Different mission agencies have different ways of handling money. And so the whole financial thing becomes often complex. With some people having a tremendous amount of freedom with credit cards and quite a large amount of money, and other people who are operating on a different basis, maybe with very little money, judgmentalism can come in.

Priorities Between Evangelism and Physical Needs

And people get hurt. And hearts get broken. Another area of potential minefield is in connection with a controversy concerning what is priority? People's spiritual needs, winning them to Christ, seeing them discipled, seeing live churches planted, or the physical needs.

It's very easy to say this goes together. But history has shown that it doesn't go together very easily. And unless people are like-minded about the priorities, great difficulties often result. Again, if a leader has the gift of being able to persuade people, if he's got some basic priorities and goals and aims that people have agreed upon before coming, then that leader is often able to lead the team, especially if it's the right people, and they know something about grace and brokenness, the crucified life, the spirit-filled life, esteeming others better than themselves.

These are basic principles that everybody should know when they go to the mission field today. But surveys show that a lot of people are arriving on the field who do not know these principles. Some may not even agree with these principles.

Because we're dealing with a huge range of different ideas concerning basic spirituality, spiritual development in the day and age in which we live. A lot of people who go to the field are more free-spirited people.

And to a degree, we praise God for that. But there are often people who don't know the spirit-controlled life. And so the sins of the tongue and gossip and backbiting have become a plague in missionary work today.

No wonder we have people, often after a couple of years or even a couple of months, returning. Now we have people writing articles and even books, like Too Valuable to Lose, that sort of indicate quite a few of these people should have never gone in the first place.

We have people who end up in some of these partnerships who have had years of experience. That doesn't mean they don't have any false ideas or that they're perfect. But for those people to work together with new recruits who have understood very little about prayer, brokenness, personal revival, the crucified and the spirit-filled life, I believe is often asking too much.

Grace, Discernment, and the Reality of Mission-Field Messes

Is it wrong to want people to have at least some basics before they get on the field, especially into challenging partnership situations? Yes, we need a lot of wisdom. And my prayer is that as I've shared my heart here, and probably everything I've said here could be brought more into balance, and there are many different viewpoints on the things that I've shared, we need to understand that only proves even more that my heart cry concerning this is legitimate.

Let us count the cost. Let us not put partnership and partnership teams on some kind of pedestal and put down other ways of getting the job done. Sometimes there's even an individual who arrives on the field, not even being with a mission agency.

He may be sent out from his own church, bypassing all mission agencies. We can easily write a story about some of those who don't work out. But some of those do work out. And I believe we must have a grace-awakened, discerning, First Corinthians approach to all those who arrive on the field.

With the right approach, we may be able to win them over to working together with some group, or at least submitting to some local congregation. The smallest mission fields in the world with a small number of churches still generally have tensions between those churches.

Beware of anyone who arrives on the scene and gives the idea that somehow through this formula or this way of doing things, you're going to sort of pull all those churches together. It's not happened in our home countries.

And it's not going to happen on the mission field. When there's just a tiny number of churches, maybe it will happen for a while. My plea is a plea for reality. Every mission field in the world today has the mess factor.

Let's not be intimidated by those messes. Every mission field has some degree of immorality. Let's not be intimidated by that, even though we will work hard to stand against it, preach against it, and help people live lives of moral reality and purity.

I believe even some of the mega-conferences that we've had in the world today, through some of the messages given with various cocktails of reconstructionism and extremism, have produced unrealistic expectations.

You can often hear that in the prayers of some of the young people, giving the idea that if we pray this and we pray that and we engage in this spiritual warfare, we're going to knock out the enemy and then everything is going to be fine in this particular city or this particular town where we are working.

We have now many, many years of proving that it doesn't quite work that way. And those who are committed to missions, who should know spiritual warfare, who should know what it is to pray and walk by faith and see the strongholds of the enemy broken down, also need lots of down-to-earth biblical balance and discernment.

It often takes years. And even after the breakthroughs, we sometimes have more problems and more difficulties than before the breakthroughs. There's phenomenal pressure for many people to adopt to a new culture, to a new language.

And if we don't have a grace-awakened, realistic, biblical environment, where there's lots of love, together with lots of dialogue, but also willingness to forgive, especially the mistakes and the sins that come into leadership, then often we will short-circuit what God is attempting to do.

Sometimes people fly in from the home church who have certain skills that have been used in the home church. But when they're overseas, in a different situation and a different language, and often short of time, sometimes their pastoral visits and their counseling only make the situation worse.

That doesn't mean we should never have those visits from overseas. Because a grace-awakened, big-hearted, godly person, especially when they've had cross-cultural experiences, can often help situations to be resolved.

And I know in a number of mission fields of the world, where there have been tensions and difficulties, godly, grace-awakened, spirit-controlled, patient people, yes, they're still ragamuffins, and we will not necessarily agree with everything they say as they attempt to bring peace into a situation.

Accountability and Difficult Leadership Decisions

But my view is those kind of people are being greatly used in the work of God today. We have to, at times, be willing, in partnership situations, to ask someone to lead the team. That is one of the toughest jobs.

Seldom can that be done by the leader on his own. He will need his board, or his accountability group. And different partnerships have different boards. And praise God for people, committed to world missions, and the unreached people, who are even willing to serve in accountability groups, or in partnerships.

And praise God for grace-awakened pastors, and mission leaders back home, who, when people arrive, hurt, and may be angry, and may be speaking against people. They have the discernment to get the different sides of the story before they make their final decision.

Love as the Foundation of Mission Strategy

Yes, the way ahead in world missions, in this new millennium, will not be easy. And I believe that's why God gave us Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace. I believe that's why God gave us so much in His Word, about love, and about grace.

Even to the point in 1 Corinthians 13, where it makes it clear, whatever else you may have, this great strategy, this great new way of doing things, this great spiritual warfare emphasis, this big vision, these proofs from case histories, that this works, or that works.

Whatever you have, if you don't have love, according to 1 Corinthians 13, you don't have much. And it's my prayer that some, who will listen to this tape, this heart plea, which I've actually worked on for many years, and finally only today got the grace and the strength, coming back from a Sunday morning service, on a Sunday afternoon here in my own house, to stand before this microphone and just open my heart.

Let's continue to read on this subject. Let's continue to pray more together. Let's continue our dialogue. But let's be delivered of some of the things that I've referred to in this particular tape, that we may go forward together in a bigger hearted way.

God is using all kinds of strategy on the mission field today. God is using the ragamuffin missionary, once and all. God is using local churches sometimes that don't have anything to do with missionaries.

They may even have a wrong attitude toward missionaries, and they will have to deal with that. But if God is using them, if they are seeing people saved, let's try to be proactive. Let's guard our tongue.

What church is perfect? What board of deacons or elders is perfect? What pastor has no ragamuffin-ness to him, or has never sinned? He who is without sin, let them throw the first stone. And if you have a broken relationship, anywhere in the world, because of some of the things I've talked about here, I pray that you may try to put that right.

It doesn't mean you'll necessarily become bosom buddies and work together, but you'll have forgiveness toward that person. You'll lay down your vendetta, or your vengeance, if you are, even in a subtle way, still in some kind of campaign, to hurt that person, or to put that person down, or to put that mission agency down, which is often linked with our own ego, and our own human tendency to defend ourselves.

May God forgive me, I believe He already has, for the times I've done that. Yes, I praise God that into my life as a teenager, came a strong message about revival, and brokenness, and going the extra mile, and esteeming others better than yourself.

I praise God, as I can name 30 Christian leaders who influenced my life through their teaching, and their tapes, and their books. Let's keep our L-plates on, as we have here in the UK. Let's be aware of the most overt, or the most subtle forms of arrogance that can come in.

Maybe we're gifted in the language, and so we look down on a brother stumbling along in his language studies. Maybe we feel we have a more holistic view on life, and we look down on some brother who seems to be using old-fashioned methods of just trying to win someone to Christ through an old gospel tract.

Yes, there are many areas where we can disagree. But as Swindoll brings out in his brilliant book, Grace Awakening, grace teaches us how to agree, to disagree. We can't work together with everyone. Some people need to work within the confines of their own denomination, or their own little stream, because they will never, because of their background and other reasons, be able to work very well with others.

But 10 years from now, if you discover God has used them, maybe even more than you, then you might become more committed to the Grace Awakened approach, to partnership, to strategy, to church planting, to world evangelism.

Closing Prayer for Grace and Perseverance

Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you've given me this privilege to share this message with a few people through this simple cassette tape. Lord, for 43 years, I've been learning these lessons, and I still fail.

But God, I thank you. Your grace is sufficient to pick weak, broken Christian leaders up again and thrust them into the battle, and to take the newest recruit, who may be frightened or intimidated by their present situation, and enable them on a day-by-day basis to live in biblical grace and reality in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so, Lord, we pray for the gospel for every person, and for the church for every people. And Lord, though we can so easily see our failures, those of us in the AD2000 movement, those of us in WEF, those who may be in Lausanne, those who may be quite proud they're in none of these things, for they're in something better.

May we humble ourselves as we go into a new millennium, and may we decide to have a closer walk with you, and develop a more biblical spirituality that will cause us to become more like you, Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we pray.

Lord, I pray your blessing upon each one who listens to this tape, or reads this, if it ever goes into a manuscript, that they may be encouraged, and that they may go forward with their eyes upon you in this great marathon, Hebrews chapter 12 race, looking unto you, and laying aside every weight, and we're trusting you that churches will be planted in every people's group.

We know it seems that's going to take many more years, but Lord, we're committed to that, and we're going forward together through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Thank you for listening to this. I welcome feedback at Box 17, Bromley, Kent, Great Britain.

There are many, many other tapes that are available about missions, mission strategy, mission mobilization, through OM, or also through our Mission Mobilization Network, based at 39 Honor Oak Road in Forest Hill, under the leadership of Chaco Thomas and myself.

You can feel free to make copies of this tape. If you decide to produce a manuscript, especially in some other language, we would just like to know about that so it can be coordinated. We look forward to feedback, though it's difficult to keep up with all the emails and all the correspondence that's coming our way.

God bless you, and I hope we meet up along this great highway of holiness that God has called us to. This is George Verwer, here on the 3rd of October, 1999, in West Wickham, Kent, thanking you for your partnership in God's work, and for taking the time to listen to this message.