The Art of Networking

South Africa has the highest number of HIV infections in the world. In response, SAHAC (Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Collaboration) has been mobilizing and equipping existing community resources to reduce new HIV/AIDS infections 30-50% within five years in participating communities. Its mission targets teens and preteens by catalyzing community sectors—church, school, health care, government, business—to work together to change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors among youth that contribute to HIV infection.

In collaboration, partner and facilitator, Partners Worldwide, recently launched a two-year pilot project, which will use job creation to support the HIV/AIDS vulnerable and affected populations.

Jobs skills assessment, coaching, and internships are key components of the project. Already, three companies have committed to helping the young people. “Youth need skills to stand up to the relentless pressure from peers and the culture itself to have sex prematurely,” says Angie Diale, SAHAC executive director for youth empowerment.

Partners Worldwide believes economic means is an effective strategy for tackling the HIV/AIDS problem. In Mozambique, Partners Worldwide has partnered with AfricaWorks Mozambique on projects to help people build small businesses in farming, animal husbandry, microfinance and coconut oil production. Profits from these projects are used to pay caregivers and families that are dealing with a person affected by HIV/AIDS.

In Zambia, PW is working with Village of Hope, which offers residential homes for orphans and has a farm that produces several important food crops. In addition, workers have built a block-making plant that supplies construction material for its farm and commercial use. The village also employs and trains more than 50 local people and provides care, instruction, and entrepreneurial skills for 40 AIDS orphans.

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Filed under: Africa on January 14th, 2010 | No Comments »

The presbyteries of Western North Carolina began a relationship-driven partnership 15 years ago with the Guatemalan presbyteries of Suchitepequez and Sur Occidente. During those years, the three presbyteries worked hard to build and deepen their relationship by visiting, communicating and sharing their needs and concerns with each other. In time, the partnership formulated five priorities:

1. Establish church-to-church pairings–North Carolina congregations working directly with Guatemalan congregations.
2. Focus on public health issues in Guatemala, such as water projects and low-smoke stoves.
3. Expand Christian education and theological scholarships for Guatemalan pastors.
4. Establish and expand Hispanic ministry in North Carolina. 
5. Involve youth ministry.

Currently, the partnership also supports the work of Dr. Barbara Nagy, a PC(USA) mission coworker in Nkhoma, Malawi. For example, the children and churches in Guatemala have been collecting aluminum cans to raise money for Nagy, who works at Nkhoma Hospital, an institution of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.

The partnership of these three presbyteries, recently renewed for another five years, has been beneficial, with apparent growth and confidence on both sides. The NC churches have learned that doing mission work abroad not only increases understanding of other parts of the world but also promotes growth much closer to home. Before, “[o]ur church here…[was] mostly white. The Hispanic population here was more or less invisible to us….Guatemalan pastors came to North Carolina to help…and reach out to the local Hispanic population, and this help… was vital,” said Rev. Randall Boggs of Mill River Church and chair of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina’s Guatemala Task Force. 

In turn, the Guatemalans have learned to be more assertive, becoming  more involved in decision-making, rather than letting “outsiders” determine their needs and action plans. They have also realized that other places, such as Malawi, which also has great needs, can offer them opportunities to serve outside their homeland. Indeed, the partnership’s connection to Malawi, through Nagy’s mission work, has been a tangible way for both the Guatemalans and the Presbytery of Western North Carolina to sense their participation in the worldwide church.

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Filed under: churches, partnerships on January 13th, 2010 | No Comments »

(A teenager experiences firsthand the power and wonder of collaboration.)

For 14-year-old Michael Hartman, the idea or need for “collaboration” and “partnering” began with a piece of paper.

Last July, Michael Hartman of Little Cincinnati, Indiana, attended a Christ in Youth (CIY) Conference. At the end of the conference, all the students received a sealed envelope containing a specific mission project. If the students chose to open their envelopes, they were strongly encouraged to commit and follow through on the given project. Michael opened his envelope: “Collect 500 coats and give them away to area schools and missions.”

Michael began his faith challenge in August. He put the word out to some churches and began collecting coats. As the collection of gently used coats grew at his house, he contacted five school districts, local schools, a family life center, and a mission, asking if they would like to receive the coats as donations for their needy students. “The response was amazing,” said his mother.

Now Michael had to figure out how to prepare and distribute the coats. 

The senior high youth group at his church offered to pack the boxes for delivery. Michael’s basketball team volunteered to help him deliver the coats to the community. Last week, Michael and 25 of his team members delivered 300 of the coats to the schools and organizations that responded to his earlier calls.

The remaining 200+ coats will be given away during Operation Outreach, a partnered ministry of several churches that distribute food to families during the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter holidays. 

With his mission project nearly finished, what is Michael’s reaction?

“”I never expected it to get this big. It just shows how amazing God is and how he works.” He learned how “simple a ministry can be. It doesn’t have to be anything huge; it can be just collecting coats to pass out to kids in need.”

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Filed under: collaboration on November 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

Latin missionaries who need bivocational and personal skills to serve more effectively can now look to Corrientes, a new ministry launched by HCJB Global to mentor and equip missionaries from South and Central America. Corrientes (or “Currents”)–a partnership of missionaries and church leaders from Latin America Mission, IMB, SIM, Paraclete Mission Group, the International Christian Mentoring Network and numerous Ecuadorian churches and agencies–will help the missionaries learn specific skills, build cross-cultural relationships, learn languages, and deepen their relationship with God.

According to Les Hirst, who coordinates the Quito program, many Latinos enter missionary service without any university education. With no profession or college education, these young missionaries struggle, lose hope, and soon leave. Corrientes, with HCJB’s long-established expertise in healthcare, radio and community development, hopes to reverse this trend. “We design customized educational experiences that will fill holes in their training to increase longevity and effectiveness of the Latin American missionary force,” Hirst said. “The life-transfer of mentors is the key to the effectiveness of the training.”
 
Currently, the Latin missionary movement numbers 12,000 missionaries serving worldwide, with 40 percent of them in unreached areas. Support and training of these missionaries will produce significant results, believes HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson. A new generation of well-trained, well-equipped missionaries from Latin America will be able to reach new generations around the globe. “By God’s power, Corrientes will bring the church together in a practical, collaborative effort to reach more people for Jesus.”

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Filed under: education, mentoring on October 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

(Roger and Gloria Marriot, PCUSA mission workers who have served in Guatemala almost continuously since 2002, recently shared their thoughts about cross-cultural partnerships in a letter. We share some of their insights in these extended excerpts.) 

“It is good to be back in Guatemala….The fact that we are pleased to be here and have been here for eight years does not prevent frustration and the constant collision of cultures. We recognize that we respond as North American, white, middle-class, suburban, Christians, to all events….

Inherent in that description is also the germ of misunderstanding when working cross-culturally. North Americans believe their systems and values are the correct ones and are the standards by which they measure the rest of the world. And why wouldn’t they? This has been part of the North American educational process from the earliest. “The melting pot,” “land of the free,” “you can be anything you want to be,” and many similar phrases speak of the strengths and the pride we have in our system.

North Americans take as a matter of course that what we value is what all people value, that what we have is what all people want….

When North Americans visit a place like Guatemala as short-term missioners, they bring with them all the influences that have shaped them. As U.S. missioners, the overriding influences have been Christian faith and the belief in upward economic mobility. There is the need to help those who have so little in comparison to North American standards. Missioners have been taught to share not only their faith but their material wealth as well….

Rarely do visitors consider that the things they think are important are learned, they’re conditioned by culture, and that looking at things in another culture through our cultural lens may be incorrect. These factors affect every North American in Guatemala. If people don’t respond according to our experiences and beliefs, we immediately try to explain it to ourselves because that is our culture: There is always a reason. And that’s the way we cope. We answer for others if they act in ways contrary to what we know as correct behavior….

We talk of being in partnership with our Kekchi friends, but we would expect anyone else with whom we may be partners to be equal to us in all ways; we would expect something substantial from them. Too often we see our Kekchi friends, or any indigenous group, as in need of our largesse, our wisdom, our knowledge, and our help—-not as partners….

Frequently, actions by North Americans in any foreign setting serve to underscore differences rather than similarities. We assess and determine unilaterally what it is they must need and what has led to the formation of hundreds or thousands of NGOs that deal with specific needs, e.g., clean water, wells, food, education, books, shoes, health, agriculture, houses, and more. Marginalized people become objects of our worry and pity. That act dehumanizes them or makes them less than we would hope to feel or believe even about ourselves. Visitors only want to help, but they have little time to spare. Given the value we place on doing something about the situation, we begin our activities immediately. Time is a luxury unavailable to the short-term missioner….

All people were created in the image of God. We are called upon to love all people, our neighbors. Loving them would require some level of understanding them. 

The more we know of one another, and the more we understand one another in each other’s cultural context, the better able we will be to build real partnerships and true relationships based on mutual understanding, not upon what one can do for the other. Once we do that, then our mutual abilities to communicate the truth of God will be enhanced and we can celebrate together what God has done and is doing in the world in the lives of people, wherever they are, who are so different from us. Mutual understanding will help us to see God more clearly and to become beacons of hope, love, and understanding that promote unity in Christ, peace in our lives, and ultimately peace in the world….”

Read the entire letter

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Filed under: partnerships on October 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

For the past eight years, work teams from local churches of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, and volunteers from nearby Ohio and New Jersey join together for one week each summer to provide free home repairs for city residents. This Carpenter’s Project, which started as one church’s outreach, now includes 29 churches and hundreds of volunteers. Teenagers and seniors from a variety of church backgrounds–Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, American Baptist, and Roman Catholic–work alongside each other to clean out brush, fix gutters and sidewalks, caulk windows, build handicap-accessible ramps, repair plumbing, glaze windows, and paint houses. This summer, volunteers worked on 90 projects in 48 homes.

“It’s a very community-affirming, ecumenical effort,” says Rev. David Dawson, executive presbyter of Presbytery of Shenango.

As the project has grown through the years, so has its reputation in the community. This positive word-of-mouth has helped the Carpenter’s Project, because it relies largely on donations to operate. Local businesses generously give materials and tools, and churches hold fundraising dinners throughout the year and apply for grants.

This kind of community is important to the mission, believes Connie MacDonald, chairman of the Carpenter’s Project and the city’s fire chief. “Whether it’s between denominations, generations, or businesses, interaction and teamwork are key.”

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Filed under: churches, collaboration on September 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

(In an e-mail sent to our office last month, a reader from India challenges Christians around the world to work together to reach India’s ever-growing “Unreached.” Here are excerpts from that letter.)

“The population clock in the Union Health Ministry, Nirman Bhavan, New Delhi, now ticks at the rate of 31 persons per minute. The clock shows that about 44,640 babies are born in India every day. Hence the population of India increases by 16.29 million every year, which is equivalent to the total population of Australia….

The birth rate in India (31 per thousand people) is greater than that of China (20 per thousand people). If this trend continues, India will beat…China by 2025 A.D., making India the most populous nation in the world….

[Yet it] has been reported that less than 2% of the evangelical effort is directed towards reaching these needy souls….”

In India there are about 1,942 language groups without God’s written Word. There are also 1,658 different mother tongues and 16 major languages—classified as official languages, spoken by about 90% of the India population….

At present, translation work is in progress in more than 82 new languages in India….

[Still] India urgently needs young men and women who will give their talent and life to translating the Scriptures into 210 languages….

[And how] can we ever reach the more than 70% of India who are illiterate? We can reach them with video, audio cassettes, Christian films, and personal evangelism through native missionaries. Doesn’t your heart break when you read and learn all these facts, realizing that the work is still undone?

….The death rate in India is 8.39 million per year. This means that 23,000 people everyday, 958 people every hour, or 16 people every minute, pass into a Christless eternity. Are we “moved with compassion for them because they are weary and scattered” like Jesus Christ…(Matthew 9:36)?

…[O]f [India’s] 1028 million population…[only] 24 million (2.3 per cent) [are] Christians.

Are you willing to stand in the gap?”

Filed under: evangelism, humanitarian outreach on September 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

The Philippine Children’s Ministries Network (PCMN) began in 1998 with this vision: become an instrument to unify, support, inform, and uplift Christian childcare and development agencies and churches that work with children at risk.

Following its conception, the initial partners—leaders of 39 Christian children’s ministries—worked together to strengthen the PCMN’s foundation by establishing and nurturing relationships among its members, sharing information and resources, while they explored possible areas of collaboration. Their ensuing friendship, developed through meetings, retreats, consultations, conferences and training activities, led to the creation of many successful collaborative projects. (Listed here are a few notable examples.)

• Project Rhoda – 10 churches (currently) helping more than 300 child domestic laborers and other children at risk.
• Holistic Multi-Sectoral Response to Children Trafficking – churches and other organizations using PCMN-designed capacity building activities to prepare their staffs in helping victims of child trafficking and preventing child trafficking in their communities. 
• Step-UP (Stop Trafficking and Exploitation of People through Unlimited Potential) – a partnership of PCMN, Visayan Forum Foundation, and Microsoft serving 250 youth at risk through the establishment and operation of a computer literacy learning center.

Although PCMN has greatly expanded its reach and service since 1998, it still remains heavily reliant on its volunteers, from its Board of Trustees to its working groups that manage the several network activities and the coordination groups of its local networks. These volunteers, however, do not report to a centralized “boss.” Instead, these volunteer groups work cooperatively with each other, contributing their own particular expertise to get the task completed.

Through the years, PCMN has also received support from the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC), Tearfund Nederland, UNICEF, Viva Network, World Vision, International Justice Mission, Servants, and others.

A recent impact study of PCMN powerfully validates its claim that it is making a positive difference and highlights several important accomplishments:

• More engaged, mobilized networks of churches promoting the well-being and welfare of children
• Improved quality of materials, resources, and training for children-at-risk ministries
• Increased visibility of PCMN’s child protection work and initiatives outside the body of Christ
• Greater synergism and unity among the established and emerging groups within its network and affiliates

PCMN credits its amazing growth and solidarity in just ten years to several important factors:

• Its God-given vision
• God’s timing
• Strategic, respected, and influential networkers
• Vision-filled, like-minded, participatory members
• Local—not outside—development of initiatives and fundraising
• Shared leadership rather than domination by one group
• Mutually designated and endorsed network facilitator

To build upon this momentum, PCMN’s discussions about its future include the development of a long-range plan, reclarification of roles and relationships of its partners and its organizational structure, and greater inclusion of children as major PCMN stakeholders in all matters that directly concern them.

(Click link for larger image of PCMN network map.)

Read the full article by Josefina C. Gutierrez.

Filed under: Southeast Asia, collaboration, networking on July 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

About 700 church volunteers from nine churches in the Longmont, Colorado area participated in their fourth ShareFest, an annual event to help transform their community by fixing up area schools. This year’s volunteers worked at ten schools, cleaning, painting, gardening, and completing minor repairs. “This is an amazing partnership,” said Rick Ring, assistant superintendent of auxiliary services.

“Where schools have made budget cuts and can’t afford some of the repair work they need, we come alongside them and help out,” said volunteer Marie Zwart. “We provide the labor. They provide the materials. It works out pretty well.”

The original ShareFest, an annual worship and service event uniting local churches for strategic and visible demonstration of Christ’s love in their communities, was started in 1999 in central Arkansas. ShareFest now has participating churches throughout the country and around the world.

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Filed under: churches, collaboration on June 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

Partners Words of Hope and the Middle East Reformed Fellowship have been spreading Christianity through radio broadcasting, now reaching 340 million residents of 22 countries in the Arab League–and growing. With WOH’s help, MERF produces Gospel programs, which are presented in three major Ethiopian languages–Amharic, Oromo, and Somali. MERF also supports indigenous evangelists and pastors with training and leadership.

Now, a new series is being added to MERF’s Arabic programming and will air for four minutes every Saturday. It will address problems relevant to young people, such as finding housing and jobs, choosing a spouse, and reconciling broken families.

Despite the region’s instability and political tension, MERF and Words of Hope see progress of God’s Kingdom in the Middle East.

“The number of Muslims positively responding to the invitation to follow Christ…continues to grow in response to [these]…media ministries,” MERF said.

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Filed under: Unreached People Groups, evangelism, media outreach on June 11th, 2009 | No Comments »