Strategic, God-Led Partnerships (SGPL)

Several years ago I was asked to speak to a group of about fifty people about missions and becoming a missionary.  Many of the people in the room were young professionals, in their late 20s and early 30s.  They had a heart for the Great Commission but didn’t know where they would fit in the grand scheme of things.  I asked them this question,

“What is the one thing that keeps you from committing yourself to career missions?”

 

“Raising support,” was their overwhelming response.

 

It’s true, our Lord did say that we are to “pray that to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers” (Matt. 9:38), but, like my old professor, Noel Smith, used to say, “People can’t eat a ‘God bless you’, they need filthy lucre to buy bread.”  A bended knee is worthless if there is a latch on the pocketbook,

 

The graph below is my adaptation of The God Ask by Steve Shadrack (2013) and it highlights the key components of how the students of that mission class could overcome their hesitancy for missions. 

Missionaries have a two-way God ask.  First, they need to have confidence that it is God who is their provider for all their financial needs.  Of course, this is true for every follower of Christ, but sometimes cross-cultural workers get anxious and try to find slick and unusual methods to raise funds.  Methods are not wrong until we start depending on our marketing schemes.  Secondly, the God ask is that He would bring people into our lives in partnership for the work He has called us to.

 

Donors have a two-way ask as well.  To God, that He would lead us to know who and what Great Commission work we should invest in.  Secondly, when we encounter cross-cultural workers, their vision for ministry is compatible with our understanding of global needs.

 

Strategic God-led partnerships are easier through sodalities (associations) than modalities (organizations). The purpose of (sodality) para-church groups is to focus on specific tasks (feeding programs, medical work, targeting unreached people groups, etc.).  Denomination modalities many times is a grab-bag approach to global work where donors depend on the organizations to send out missionaries rather than have a strategic plan.  The strength of modalities is the financial and accountability structure, which is lacking with some independent clearinghouse or sodality missions.

 

The key to Strategic God Led partnership is intentionality.  Missions cannot, or should not be, merely a program or driven by emotion.  When a missionary, church, organization, or individual donor intentionally understands the global need and asks God for direction and provision, the Lord of the Harvest will send laborers to the 3.6 billion people who have never met a follower of Christ.