The ministry horizon is filled with struggling and marginally-productive solo ventures trying to hold on and win attention. With all their commitment, who can fault these ministries' entrepreneurial dedication and energy, scraping together a ministry often on a shoestring and carving out a role they work on all by themselves?

The eventual superiority of a networked ministry
Most Christian groups are shaped by the clarity of a founder's vision and their own home-grown approach to tackling some aspect of ministry. These strengths can bring a ministry into being where there wasn't one before—an impressive feat! But it doesn't take long to notice that it is no virtue for a ministry to go it alone for long—not when finances mount, innovation costs escalate, duplication ensues, and efforts pale compared to the immensity of the task at hand.

More importantly, a ministry may not be fully faithful to the call of Christ if it does not pursue its cause by partnering with other organizations to do greater things together for Christ. Jesus presented his followers with an unparalleled partnership vision captured in John 17:21: "…that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me." Plainly speaking, this grand Jesus-prayer seems oddly ill-served by the vast majority of ministry organizations that continue to act independently—often oblivious to one another if not competing against each other. And so we observe that while most affirm partnership as a core value for their organization, in practice things often work out quite differently. The difference has to do with the gap between idealized values and realized values.

Idealized and realized values
Idealized values are overarching values that are fairly easy to support in principle, such as the statement that "Since we are one in Christ, Christians work together across organizations to accomplish the Lord’s work." Who would question that this is how Christians should unite in ministry?

Yet tempered by experience, realized values often stand in stark contrast to idealized values. These realized values are what we actually hold to; they are what we conclude is practical and accomplishable. Wikipedia, on this topic, notes that the "difference between these two types of systems can be seen when people state that they hold one value system yet in practice deviate from it, thus holding a different value system."¹

A wise counselor once remarked, "We fully live out what we actually believe." Our actions belie our true beliefs. If we say we believe in partnership yet continually choose to act independently, think independently, and minister independently, we engage in a sort of self-denial. (We also miss out on the joy and effective witness that Jesus meant for his followers to have as we co-labor as one.) 

THE WILL/SKILL DIVIDE

The challenge, then, is in turning the idealized value of partnership into a present-day lived-out value. How can we embed the practice of partnership in our organizational culture so that we live it out naturally at every level? A natural divide exists between what we want to do and what we know how to do. This can be called "The Will/Skill Divide."² People may have the will to collaborate; we may want to work together. So far, so good! But if we don’t have at least some basic collaboration skills in order to partner in ministry successfully, then we will very likely run into the common roadblocks to partnership that stymie so many attempts.³

Organizations that do embed partnership in their culture gain a platform for accomplishing new levels of impact that makes them stand out from the crowd.

A good first approach to embedding the practice of partnership into a ministry culture is to fall in love again with the idealized value of partnership. View partnership first as a value the organization truly wants to actually live by. Any other view of partnership, as in using it as a strategy to win funding, will misdirect efforts.

Gaining collaboration skills
Those experienced with successful partnerships and networks recognize a fairly large set of collaboration skills that make all the difference in implementing partnership. These include how to approach the exploration, formation and operation phases of partnership, the role of the facilitator, establishing a level ground despite varying organizational strengths, ensuring sovereignty of organizations during collaboration, and more. Elaboration on these, along with practical help on collaboration, is available in the resource collection on the PowerofConnecting Web site. A helpful starting place is visionSynergy Director Phill Butler's succinct article, "Eight Key Principles to Effective Kingdom Collaboration."

Casting an outward gaze and linking for common cause
Organizations that do embed partnership in their culture gain a platform for accomplishing new levels of impact that makes them stand out from the crowd. Nonprofits and ministry groups casting their gaze externally are so committed to realizing their goal that they pursue it through actively connecting with partner organizations where that partnership advances their common cause. They see their cause as more important to them than their organization.

Stanford University, in a recent publication,⁴ noted these findings from its studies of nonprofits: Networked nonprofits are some of the most effective nonprofits in the world. They are different from traditional nonprofits in that they cast their gazes externally rather than internally. They put their mission first and their organization second. They govern through trust rather than control. And they cooperate as equal nodes in a constellation of actors rather than relying on a central hub to command with top-down tactics.

The Stanford University publication notes that "[a]lthough the social problems that nonprofits are tackling are growing in both magnitude and complexity, funding is failing to keep pace. Networks do not require more resources, but rather a better use of existing resources. And so networked nonprofits are uniquely poised to face the perennial challenge of the nonprofit sector: achieving lofty missions with decidedly humble means."⁵

THE FOUR KEY QUESTIONS OF COLLABORATION

A culture of partnership is created and sustained by realizing that neighborhood or wider world-partnership can power our vision and scale up the objectives our ministry can accomplish.

The goal is no less than reexamining everything we do through the lens of partnership. This is the choice for those who want to make collaboration the default setting under which we operate because it is who we are, not just what we do in certain isolated situations.

Those with this commitment will at some point—and again and again!—ask these four key questions of collaboration:

1. "I have a ministry vision that God is calling me to do! Do you suppose God has given this vision to others as well?"
2. "Would it make sense to find them and see how we could work together to accomplish this ministry vision better than by
   working apart?"
3. "Is there a set of skills that we might need to successfully meet and collaborate?"
4. "How and where might I gain those skills?"

Building on these basic questions will release the power of partnership and fulfill the prayer Jesus had for his followers.

NOTES

¹"Value system," Wikipedia, 8 August 2009, 1 June 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_system>.

²David Hackett, "Crossing the Will/Skill Divide," PowerofConnecting <http://powerofconnecting.net/content/crossing-willskill-divide>.

³Phill Butler, "Most Common Roadblocks," PowerofConnecting, 1 June 2009 <http://powerofconnecting.net/content/most-common-roadblocks>.

⁴Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano, "The Networked Nonprofit," Stanford University Social Innovation Review, Spring 2008, 1 June 2009 <http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_networked_nonprofit/>. 

⁵Ibid.