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Won’tYouBeMyNeighbor?

As the world of international missions rapidly changes, Avant Ministries and CrossWorld benefit from a cost-effective strategic alliance that allows for cooperation while maintaining culture.

Innovative, strategic practices have always been a value at Avant Ministries. Recently, we’ve innovated with Short-Cycle Church Planting, the church growth metrics system, and our Joint Venture church partnership pro-gram. Continually finding new ways to adapt and change is ingrained in Avant culture.

It may come as no surprise that Avant is in-novating once again, forming a shared services alliance with CrossWorld, another interna-tional church planting mission organization with a long history. Avant will welcome Cross-World as a new neighbor at the Kansas City International Service Center, sharing selected services with their staff as well as campus and

office facilities. “I think of all of our recent in-novations, this is just as significant as or almost more significant than any of the other ones that we’ve engaged in,” said Dave Rathbun, vice president of personnel development. “I think it’s the right thing to do and the right time to do it.”

It all started in September of 2007 at a Cross-Global Link meeting, when CrossWorld’s for-mer chief financial officer and Scott Holbrook, Avant’s chief financial officer, started a discussion about the future of accounting and budgeting for the two missions. The discussions between the two organizations that followed eventually led to an exciting discovery: by sharing back of-fice functions like accounting, the two ministries would jointly save $1 million a year. After much discussion, consultation and prayer, it was de-cided that both organizations wanted to pursue sharing those back-office functions in a shared services alliance.

Won’tYouBe

“If it was just about money, we wouldn’t do it. Although it’s a lot of money per year we think we can save, we also agreed that if the missionar-ies don’t benefit, it’s not worth doing. There are many things besides financial benefits that we believe will help each organization and the mis-sionaries,” Holbrook said.

With the money that is saved by, new budgets free up more money for overseas ministries in-stead of administration cost. The shared service alliance will allow Avant to run a leaner home operation while continuing to focus on building the kingdom.

When Avant President Paul Nyquist initially heard about the proposed alliance, his reaction was that Avant wasn’t interested. “I didn’t want anything to change who we were or where we’re going. When I saw that it won’t change who we are, I thought this could really help us. If we could go from being in a solid financial situation to a very advantageous situation and not change

anything outside of having to share our campus, maybe that’s a good thing to do. As we continued to consider it, our whole executive team came to that same conclusion.”

Breaking Ground and Moving In

To make this shared services alliance a reality, the two missions have to have neighboring of-fices. CrossWorld’s offices are in a beautiful, historic neighborhood in Philadelphia, but there is no option to add to their buildings and cost of living and operating in Philadel-phia is high. It was decided they would move next door to Avant in Kansas City, where an-other wing will be built onto the current ISC office building. An architect was chosen to complete the task, and the ground breaking is scheduled for Fall 2009. When the new office space is finished, CrossWorld staff with move their operations to Kansas City, becoming Avant’s new neighbors.

MyNeighbor?by Hallie Hocker

As for the transition into the shared services agreement, Avant’s accounting staff and those responsible for data entry and information technology will be responsible for both Avant and CrossWorld starting in September 2009.

“The transition won’t affect a good portion of the staff, because they’ll focus entirely on Avant and they’ll only be responsible to Avant. Their only interaction [with CrossWorld staff] will be over a lunch table where they’re eating with somebody that they don’t work with on a close basis,” Holbrook said. “But about half of the people here are going to have responsibili-ties to both organizations.”

As the CrossWorld staff makes the transi-tion to Kansas City, Holbrook said he thinks having new neighbors on Avant’s campus will be an opportunity for conversations between strangers and learning from one another.

Paul Nyquist agrees. “God’s given us a tremen-dous gift here in North Kansas City that most other agencies don’t get to enjoy: a beautiful cam-pus in a low-cost setting with attractive facilities. We’re going to be sharing that gift with someone else,” he said. “That means we’ll adjust to having someone else here, using our training center and office building. We can do that, but it will change the feel on our campus slightly. But it won’t change, it can’t change, our

culture, values, and mis-sion. We’re still Avant.”

An Alliance, not a Merger

In considering a shared services alliance with CrossWorld, one thing that was important was that the two organizations would retain their own identities. Nyquist said a shared services alliance will not dictate how Avant does minis-try or its values or purpose. It is strictly a way to manage accounting and information tech-nology functions.

He said some organizations are afraid of losing their unique identities when they partner with other organizations. Traditional mergers mesh two separate cultures and attempt to blend them into one entity. However, in a shared ser-vices alliance the individual cultures, identities, and missions of the two organizations remain the same, each independent of the other.

“I think until two organizations do it and do it successfully, people may have those kinds of fears and hesitations [of a loss of culture or vision],” Nyquist said. “Those of us in the lead-ership of both organizations don’t see that as a problem. We think we can do this in a way where both organizations can stay with what they’re about—their own culture, their own identities, their own mission—and yet share services that will cut down operating costs.”

He said a shared services alliance provides “a lot of the benefits without a lot of the other baggage that comes with a merger.”

One of the reasons that mergers often fail is because of cultural differences

between the two organizations, noting that the cultural differ-ences between Avant and Cross-World are stark in contrast. “So of all the choices, if you were to

make a continuum with merger on one side and don’t do anything

on the other side, this is a really nice middle ground between those two,”

Rathbun said.

How is this shared services alliance different from a merger?

When two organizations merge, the operations, culture, finances and functions of both are fully combined. Avant Ministries and CrossWorld are not merging. Instead, they will share certain operational functions and support services, such as accounting, as well as an office building, but will re-tain separate cultures, strategies and organizational ethos.

Is the shared services alliance a reaction to the current economic situation?

Our shared services alliance isn’t a reaction to the current economic situation, but it comes at a fortuitous time. The shared services alliance is a forward-thinking move from two organizations passionate about church planting who want to see God’s kingdom advance. The shared services alliance talks began in September of 2007 due to the trend of regularly increasing accounting regulations, and were finalized in March 2009.

When will the shared services alliance take effect?

The change is happening now. An architect for the build-ing expansion has been hired, and plans are being devel-oped for permits and design. Already, accounting func-tions shared services have begun, with a goal of having the building expansion complete around in 2010.

What is the driving factor behind this alliance?

Continued increasing accounting regulations for non-profit organizations were the initial spark which ignited the fire behind the alliance. Since Avant and CrossWorld will now be sharing accounting functions, among other services, the shared services alliance allows both organi-zations to become more efficient. Good stewardship de-mands we continually look for ways to do more with less. Our hope is to free more funds, provide more services for our members, and strengthen both organizations.

What about cooperation?

While there are no plans to change either organization’s ethos, there is a spirit of cooperation between the agen-cies. Both agencies have a long history focused on church planting in areas of the world where there is little to no evangelical witness. This alliance will not dictate how min-istry is accomplished, but there will be opportunities to learn and share with other professionals passionate about seeing lives come to Jesus. We are always happy to collab-orate with other agencies, churches and groups in order to continue the advancement of the kingdom.

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Leading the Way Together

While sharing services happens all the time in the business world, and even the nonprofit in-dustry, it is yet to hit in the world of North American missions.

“I don’t know of any other mission orga-nizations that are doing this that are the size of Avant and CrossWorld,” Rathbun said. “It’s pretty significant. But sharing services, it happens all the time. People recognize the value of it.”

The CrossWorld leadership also recognizes the value of sharing services.

“‘Better together’ may sound trite, but in today’s world of high-tech communication, globalization, political and economic stress, we simply need each other,” said Dr. Larry Sharp, CrossWorld’s vice president for research and strategy. “And we in Christian missions should lead the way – this partnership does just that by creating synergy, saving kingdom dollars, and serving missionaries better.”

It is growing increasingly difficult for non-profit organizations to keep up with the in-creasing number of rules and regulations governing accounting and human resource functions, and continually updated regulations can consume precious time and resources. Ny-quist was convinced both Avant and Cross-World would benefit by cooperating on those

regulations and functions, and he thinks other organizations will be interested to learn about those benefits as well. “Other organizations have indicated they’d be interested in a similar arrangement,” he said.

“The shared services alliance between Avant and Crossworld is both innovative and cutting edge, said Marv Nuell, president of CrossGlob-al Link. “CrossGlobal Link applauds these two missions for conceiving and implementing this forward-thinking initiative that conserves pre-cious mission resources. It is a model that is worthy of other missions’ consideration.”

Nyquist is enthusiastic about how this mod-el will not only show other missions organiza-tions how they can conserve resources, but also how they can cooperate with other missions.

“I think we can show the mission world a brand new model of missionary agency coop-eration,” Nyquist said. “In the past, tradi-tionally agencies would completely merge. So two agencies became an entirely new and the history, values and ethos of those two organizations would be lost. Here you get many of those benefits without losing your identity.”

Talking to the Neighbors

Scott Harris, vice president of field ministries, is excited about the money that will be freed up to spend on new initiatives and projects on the field. “It says we’re not selfish, we’re not com-petitive; we’re kingdom thinkers. And those are big growing themes in North America today, as well as maximizing the use of resources,” he said. “It truly is an exhibition of kingdom thinking and kingdom action. I think God will bless that. We just don’t know how.”

Dean Callison, vice president of develop-ment, agreed. “It’s not just about the cost sav-ings. The cost savings is a means to a greater end and the greater end is the transformed life. In the case of Avant, it’s that those transformed lives are assembled in local churches, in the planting of churches.”

In addition to allocating the freed funds to the field, Harris said there is also another perhaps less-measurable, but equally intriguing, benefit of the shared services alliance with CrossWorld.

“By working in close proximity, there’s going to be a cross-pollination of ideas,” Harris said.

Avant and Crossworld are alike doctrinally and both are heavily invested in church plant-ing ministries. However their strengths and philosophies of ministry are very different, making for intriguing lunchtime conversations among staff “Our thought is, if we’re in the lunch room and that kind of thing, we’re going to be talking to each other.” Harris said. “And some of those good things are going to rub off and we’re going to learn from each other.”

By learning from each other’s strengths, both organizations are going to get better at what they do. “The finance was driving all of it,” Harris said. “In the end, the cross-pollination could be the most powerful [benefit of the two].”

“I believe this spirit of collaboration will flow beyond the hardware, systems, and bricks

and mortar,” said John Berger, CrossWorld’s vice president of US operations. “I’m counting on Avant’s strengths to positive-

ly affect CrossWorld, just as I think our strengths will influence them to greater impact.”Several members of Avant’s execu-

tive team are very enthusiastic about partner-ing with CrossWorld. They agreed that there are a lot more benefits to becoming next-door neighbors than just the obvious monetary sav-ings by sharing services. They’re excited about stewardship, freeing up funds for work on the field and throwing ideas back and forth across the lunch table with CrossWorld.

“From a personal standpoint, other than our old shift back to our roots at Avant, and our development of Short-Cycle, this is one of the top three exciting things I’ve seen happen in the kingdom,” Harris said. “I’ve been in missions for more than two decades and I’ve seen lots of talk about cooperation and partnership but it’s been largely empty. This is real. I think it harkens to a new age in missions where we really work to-gether, we don’t just talk about it and then say, ‘Well, you know, we can’t change that much, we can’t adapt that much to be a part of something with you. We’re too different.’ We’re saying we have to do this. It’s imperative that we do this so we can have the best effect in the kingdom. It’s massively exciting.” ❉

Paul Nyquist signs the Shared Services Alliance documents. The alliance will provide Avant and CrossWorld with cheaper back-office functions, the driving force behind the neighborly agreement.