Partnering with our Brothers and Sisters among the Nations

By Dr. Michael G. Loftis, President of ABWE

Biblical partnership is not a business contract. It is instead a relationship between men and women who are willing to sacrifice and die for one another in the cause of world evangelization. As Paul the missionary used it in the New Testament, the word partnership described a person who was involved in sharing and companionship; a fellow partaker, a co-laborer.

In 1861, following the deaths of his wife and son and all his Scottish coworkers, missionary John Paton was left alone on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), South Pacific. Only his faithful partner Abraham, a convert from a neighboring island, remained at his side. In his journal, John described the relationship they shared:

Groups of Natives assembled suspiciously near us and sat whispering together. They urged old Abraham to return to Aneityum by the very first opportunity, as our lives were certain to be taken, but he replied, “I will not leave Missi.” Abraham and I were thrown much into each other's company, and he stood by me in every danger.

One evening he prayed, “O Lord, our Heavenly Father, they have murdered Thy servants…. and now they want to kill Missi Paton and me!...Our Lord, our hearts are pained just now, and we weep over the death of Thy dear servants; but make our hearts good and strong for Thy cause, and take Thou away all our fears. Make us two and all Thy servants strong…and if they kill us two, let us die together in Thy good work….”

In this manner his great simple soul poured itself out to God; and my heart melted within me as it had never done under any prayer poured from the lips of cultured Christian men!*

Every missionary who has had the privilege to serve alongside a faithful national partner knows exactly what Paul meant. The faces of some of the dearest friends I have known flash before my eyes as I write these words. If I told you their names you would have difficulty pronouncing them. These are not merely people I exchanged business cards with at a seminar. These are people I have wept with, prayed with, traveled with, and endured with through the long night hours of life and ministry. These are people who fasted so that I might eat, skipped baths so that I might be clean, walked so that I might ride, risked arrest so that I might teach the Bible, though poorly in a language I barely knew, shared their own medicine so that I might recover, and prayed for me that God might deliver me from myself and use me for His glory in spite of myself. Such people are closer than flesh and blood. I feel immensely blessed and privileged to say I have known these saints.

The most insensitive and demeaning way that I could ever describe such relationships would be to say that it all came down to money. Yet that is precisely how many view the concept of partnership in missions today. Partnership is not important because it is a source of cheaper laborers for the harvest. (How like a fallen, consumer-oriented society that we would even be able to think that way.) Partnership is important because it forges a bond that no business contract could ever produce, it forces all who are saved by grace to humbly acknowledge that we need one another in the body of Christ, and it shows a broken world how nations who hated each other can now demonstrate respect, mutual service, and love. Such a task could never be accomplished by politics, education, or business, but this kind of character, commitment, and compassion are found commonly among followers of Jesus Christ in his true church. Missions is an exploration of relationships that go deeper and farther than any you have ever known before.

“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace” (Philippians 1:3-7).

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