Editorial: Partnership

By Donna Messenger, Editor

Western culture applauds individualism these days. Advertisements promote self-gratification. Reality TV offers regular people the chance to be stars, and thousands are standing in line to fulfill their dreams to be famous.

If you want to be part of God's work, however, you have to lay aside selfish ambitions and commit yourself to teamwork. It's the only way to get the job done, and more importantly, it's God's plan for His work in this world. Partnership in a world that promotes individual success is no easy task. Christians involved in ministry find Satan's opposition to their success on every side. His strongest weapon in tearing down partnerships is the conflict that divides people and keeps them from effective ministry together.

Most Christian workers in North America know the challenge of keeping a team relationship vibrant and functioning. Add the complexities of another culture to the equation and you now have the picture of missionary life and ministry. So, when you pray for missionaries and their adjustment to new cultures, you can understand that the success of their whole ministry is dependent on the quality of the partnerships that are nurtured in their ministry context.

God is working through successful partnerships around the world, in almost every area of missionary ministry. In these pages, you will see partnerships in church planting, leadership training, medical evangelism, ladies' ministries, translation work, and Christian education.

As North Americans, we certainly don't have a corner on all the right ministry methods, especially in other cultural contexts. But there is no greater privilege in the life of a missionary than to work alongside a national partner, to share a burden for reaching their people for Christ, and to learn as well as to teach.

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