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T R A N S F O R M A T IO N A L

P A R T N ER S H IP S : C h u rc h To C h u rc h

ROB WEGNER + JACK MAGRUDER

MISSIONAL/

MOVES // Supplemental Ebook #2



Transformational Partnerships: Church to Church

Copyright © 2012 by Rob Wegner and Jack Magruder Distributed via ExponentialResources

Exponential is a growing movement of leaders committed to the spread of healthy new

churches. Exponential Resources spotlights and spreads actionable principles, ideas andsolutions for the accelerated multiplication of healthy, reproducing faith communities. For more information, visit exponential.org

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher, except where noted in the text and inthe case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is manufactured in the United States.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, NewInternational Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

CreditsCover Design & Layout: Brittany RibletEditor: The Incredible Michelle Wegner (You saved the day!)Graphics: Jack Magruder



This eBook is brought to you for free by the generosity of the following partners,who are radically committed to equipping and encouraging church leaderslike you.



INTRODUCTION: NOT JUST YOUR AVERAGE BUZZ WORD

Back in 2008, three pastor friends in Kansas City came together around coffeeto wrestle with a powerful question, “What if? What if the Church in Kansas Citybegan to pray together, worship together, and serve together?” That question led

to a local movement of over 100 churches in Kansas City doing just that. A few years back, Brian Wright, pastor at Cedar Ridge Christian Church, hadbeen sent a challenging article from a young woman in his church, reporting thata few churches of different denominations in another part of the country had beenintentionally praying for each other and nding ways to serve together. The ideastarted working on Brian. He encouraged the staff and church members to visitother churches in the area during the week and ask their permission to prayer walk their building and property. Brian and his staff were prayer walking around

Heartland Community Church’s facility, when Heartland’s lead Pastor, DanDeeble, heard that they were there and came out to thank them. They did whatpastors do and set up an appointment for coffee. Brian and Dan contacted their friend Schaun Colin, a Pastor at Westside Family Church. Together they beganasking a powerful question, “What if?” What if we served together? What if weprayed together? What if we worshipped together? What if we stood together not

just individual congregation but as the Church of Kanas City?

What started with three churches has now snowballed into a movement of

over 100 plus churches in the Kansas City area. Through mutual respectand friendship the church in Kanas City is now worshipping together, prayingtogether, and serving together. Last year, more than ve thousand people fromthose congregations served side by side the entire Kanas City urban core.

“Partnership” is one of those buzzwords that everyone seems to want to usethese days. We’ve learned the hard way that it means different things to differentpeople. Here are some of the different de nitions we’ve experienced:

• “I tell you what to do, you do it, and you pay for it.”• “I tell you what to do, you do it, you pay for it and I take the credit.”• “You tell me what to do, you pay for it and then you take the credit.”• “I don’t tell you what I’m going to do, where or with whom, but you just

give me money and trust by faith that I’m going to do good thingswith it.”

• “We each bring our strengths, resources and budgets to bear on asingle mission, vision and objective that will be bigger than either of uscould accomplish on our own.”

For us, the last de nition is the only feasible de nition on which we can build astrategic alliance. The “What If” movement in Kansas City is a great snapshot of what it looks like in action. Getting at both the “how” and the “what” of that kind of transformational partnership is the purpose of this eBook.



We will expand on elements described in chapter eight of Missional Moves(Zondervan, Exponential Series) , From Transactional to TransformationalPartnerships and also chapter nine, From Relief to Development . While thiseBook can stand alone, it is most meaningful when read as expansion of thematerial covered in Missional Moves . Within the book, we describe 15 tectonicshifts that unleash missional energy and have the power within them to transformchurches, communities and the world. The heart of the speci c Missional Movethat this eBook expands on can best be summarized with these words fromthe book:

“Every local church and every follower of Jesus is called to the frontlineof mission. Your local church is intended to be engaged in hand-to-handcombat at the very gates of Hell. Jesus hasn’t called the local church tosimply be nancial donors, but dangerous revolutionaries.”

If you’re reading this eBook, we’re betting that you agree. Intellectual assentis the easy part. That’s what the book Missional Moves is all about. Morespeci cally, we’re going to explore how to leverage our collective horsepower with other likeminded local churches in the process to amplify our impact withoutdestroying each other. Here’s where we’re headed.

Part One: A Picture of Transformational Church-to-Church PartnershipsPart Two: A Process for Transformational Church-to-Church PartnershipsPart Three: Conclusion – Church-to-Church Partnerships that Work

Here we go!

A PICTURE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIP: CHURCH-TO-CHURCH PARTNERSHIPThe greatest development in the spiritual scene globally is the rise of God’sglobal church. God’s church has been global for a long time, but in recent yearsit’s capacity to live out its global identity has increased dramatically. That’s anunderstatement.

The church is the greatest distribution network in the entire world. We could visita million remote villages and run-down neighborhoods. They might not have “anything” in terms of resources or infrastructure, but they do have a local church.

Everyone has been talking about globalization as if it is a new idea. The churchwas going global centuries before globalization became a buzzword. In other words, it’s a new word for an old idea.

God’s globalization looks something like this: There are 2.3 billion people whoclaim to be followers of Christ. That means the church is bigger than China. Thatmeans the church is bigger than India. That means the church is bigger thanChina and India combined.

Nothing on this planet is bigger than the Church. The church is the largest



mobilization force in the world. No government or organization or agency hasa volunteer force that even comes close to the Church. Every church is lledwith intrinsically motivated people led by a Savior who is bent on healing andredeeming this sin sick world.

In addition, local churches are beginning to work together like never before, bothlocally globally. Every time churches put their hands together around the purposeof community transformation, they become the answer to Jesus’ prayer inJohn 17.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe inme through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as youare in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world maybelieve that you have sent me. John 17:20-12 (NIV)

When a single local church tries to transform an entire community, usually only asmall part of the community is actually lifted.

When a network of churches work together, transformation of a community canbecome a reality as more of the community is actually lifted. 1

Church to Church - Local Networks Another great example of a network of churches lifting together is an annualinitiative we at Granger call The Food Drop. In 2002, 300 people from Granger Community Church gathered at the local Food Bank in sub-zero temperatures

around a semi of food and personal care items to distribute to at-risk and low-income neighborhoods around the South Bend community.

The next Food Drop, we decided to move what the stage area to our own parkinglot at GCC, which instantly bumped our attendance to over 1,000 people. Thisincreased the distribution to several semis of food and personal care items.The organization that helped source the supplies moved their new distributioncenter in our backyard. This ensured that even beyond the Drop itself, we hadthe opportunity to begin actually packing boxes full of food and necessities

beyond the event. Over the course of a couple of years, and the developmentof our own community center in downtown South Bend, we moved from event-based distribution to ongoing distribution of food and other supplies through our food pantry. The number of people involved and impacted through Granger hadmoved into the thousands.

1 Developed by Warren Beach, Director of Global Connections, shared in EnterMission Coaching February 2010



Then, things started to multiply.

Through relationships cultivated with other local church leaders, other localchurches started joining us in our Food Drops, purchasing and distributing their own semis. We continued to distribute them on the same dates to demonstrateto our entire community the unity of the people of God around the mission of God. Eventually, many of those churches also began to pack boxes at our partner organizations and then join us in tandem 2 nd Saturday events, a monthlycommunity service event. At that point, the phones started ringing and emailsstarted coming in from churches from all over the country. We’ve been able to notonly connect them to our partner organizations, but to share the nuts and boltsabout mobilization events like Food Drop and 2 nd Saturday.

Back at home, in 2011; our Food Drop distributed more than 225,000 lbs. of food and supplies to more than 4,400 families across four local cities throughpartnership with other churches. No doubt, we are better together. Networks of churches can lift entire communities in ways that no single church ever could.

Church to Church - Global NetworksGlobally, we have entire networks of churches we have partnered with in four different nations. The results have been astounding. In Missional Move #15:From Great Commission to Great Completion, we explore the unique dynamicsand massive opportunities to be seized by networking networks of local churchesfor Kingdom advancement.

Right now, we’ll bring the focus in a little tighter by looking at a snapshot of twolocal churches, separated by thousands of miles, partnering together for thetransformation of an entire village.

Church to Church – One on OneThe transformation we talk about throughout Missional Moves in the small, ruralcommunity of Kalavai in Tamilnadu, India, has been built upon the foundation of a church to church partnership between Granger Community Church, Showersof Blessings Church (a church we helped plant in that community) and a small,additional church plant within the community itself. We won’t approach acommunity transformation project unless there is an indigenous local church thatcan become the hub for the project.

Here’s the great news: Wherever God calls your local to church to go on mission,His church is either already there or nearby.

150 years ago, if you wanted to impact the Malayali people group in SouthernIndia, here’s how it worked: The western missionaries would buy one-way ticketson a boat to India. Many times, they would pack their belongings in a 7ft by 2ftpine wood box. A box commonly called a cof n. Why pack your belongings ina cof n? Because with the average eld longevity in these tropical third worldenvironments being about 24 months, the missionary planned on dying there.They would have 24 months to try to make a dent for the Kingdom of God in



a remote, unreached people group who otherwise would have no hope for theGospel of Jesus Christ. They would hammer as deep as they could go, and whenthe box came back to their home sending church somewhere in the West, their home church would send another missionary equipped with another box.

But it’s a new day.

We are called to discern this changing global season and join God in seizing theglobalization moment. Due to the effectiveness of past missionary movements,we now have an indigenous church in every geographic and geopolitical nation.This expression of local church may not be healthy, but if there is one, it isstanding there offering a foothold from which to move forward. As a result, it isnow also possible to begin working with pastors and planters who are either operating in or at least adjacent to unreached people groups.

That reality is ushering in a paradigm shift that has yet to be comprehended bythe vast majority of local churches in the West. Honestly, up to this point, manyof the rst forays into church-to-church partnerships around the world have beenless than successful, even damaging in their effect.

Church to Church - The Danger of Pipeline RelationshipsMany local churches in the West have carried the old transactional model of partnership into new church-to-church partnerships. All over the world, in secondand third world countries, there are pastors and churches that desperatelywant what we call a “pipeline” relationship with a western church. They want topartner with a Western church that will establish a direct and unending streamof resources to/for them, just like a pipeline for water, oil or other resources. Inaddition, many western churches, because of the traditional and transactionalmindset, which characterizes most partnerships, are actually looking for this typeof relationship as well.

If you’re a pastor reading this, we bet you’ve already received an email from apastor in another country asking for this type of partnership. They will gladly hostteams for you. They will suddenly be interested in any type of project that youfancy and speak any lingo that is required. The reports of their overwhelmingneed will be heart breaking. The accounts of their success will be astounding.They want an exclusive relationship with you. They will court you.

It will look like the right thing to do. But, we can tell you that 99% of the time it isthe wrong thing to do. That relationship will diminish and denigrate both parties.Furthermore, pipeline relationships are not only denigrating, but dangerous.

A few years back, another report of persecution reached our ears. One of our church planters reported that a pastor in his region had been hospitalized after being beaten by local radical Hindus. The radicals ransacked the church, stealingall the sound equipment and everything of value. Afterward, they burned downthe church’s building.



This type of persecution is not unusual. Simply because of their faith in Christ,we estimate conservatively that 60% of our church planters in India have facedsome form of severe persecution: beatings, vandalism of property, threats,excommunication from their families, or the loss of a job. However, this attackhas less to do with faith and more to do with nances. When our pastor wentto investigate, he discovered that some local thugs noticed a pattern: when thelocal pastor hosted teams from an American church, it was apparent afterwardthat the pastor was suddenly ush with money. Sure enough, a pipeline had beenestablished and the money was following. These thugs just decided to tap into it.

The pastor fully recovered from his physical repercussions of the pipelinerelationship, but we wonder about the other more costly and lastingrepercussions: co-dependency, paternalism, and dysfunction that will handicapthat pastor and his church for decades. We’re sure the folks back home at the

American church were devastated by the news, and we’re likewise sure that theycare for that pastor and that church, but we wonder if they have been re ectiveenough to see that the thugs aren’t the ultimate source of the problem. This well-meaning local church was unintentionally hurting the church they were tryingto help.

Why and how does this happen? We think that there are some key reasons:

• Lack of Meaningful Relationships – Authors Steve Corbett and BrianFikkert note in their incredibly helpful little book When Helping Hurts that the monster of dependency and pipeline relationships proliferatesthroughout the developing world because often, those of us in theWest simply misunderstand the nature of poverty and brokenness. Wethink that poverty is fundamentally a material issue, so we counter it byproviding material relief and believe our job to be done when a givencommunity has access to the same material bene ts that we take asboth given and representative of the kind of life that all people shouldbe allowed to have. But to the authors, poverty is not just a materialissue. Rather, it is an issue of relationships. It is an issue where if people fully understand and embrace their right relationships with oneanother, with God, with themselves and with the world around them,they will begin to champion the kind of wholeness that their Shalomreally intends.

• The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world intomiddle-to-upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by highrates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse and mental illness.Nor is the goal to make sure that the materially poor have enoughmoney…Rather, the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be, people who glorifyGod by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, andwith the rest of creation.” 2

2 When Helping Hurts, Corbett & Fikkert, p.78



The problem too often with us in the West is that we assume thatgoods and materials are our greatest assets as we engage the worldaround us, when really; the creation of long-term relationships is our greatest strength. This is because when we have the ability to deeplyunderstand someone’s world (i.e. by being in it with them over time),we learn the difference between what might be perceived as helpful tothem versus what might actually be truly helpful. One-shot short-termprojects disconnected from longer term strategies and the intelligenceprovided by long-term relationships creates a Santa Clause mentality.Why? “Because they’re not coming back, of course, We’ll get what wecan while the gettin’ is good!”

• Saved Souls Methodologies – Second, and pursuant to our rstMissional Move: Saved Souls to Saved Wholes, the “Saved Souls”mentality of so many of us has actually accelerated much of thedependency monster’s strength. A quick story will illustrate.

When our friends Sandra, Jodi and Dan rst started working toward amissional expression in our local community (they were the founders of what is now called Son City Kids), they approached the local Housing

Authority of South Bend to ask a few strategic questions about buildinga long-term initiative to reach children in the Monroe Circle Community.Without much hesitation, the people we are now long-time friends within that organization said, “No, you can’t work here.” When our teamasked why, the response was as follows. “We are all Christians here inthis of ce. We all attend church and have relationships with Jesus. Butwe have watched far too many church groups come into our communityhere and leave a trail of destruction that we have to pick up or explain.t usually looks something like this: They come in and do a VacationBible School for some of our kids--maybe in the summer or when theycan guarantee the highest attendance. They spend a week here andget the kids really attached to them. Then, at the end of the week, theyhave the kids all memorize a Bible verse on salvation, ask them howmany of them would like to pray to accept Jesus, count the number of hands that are raised and then lead all the kids in a prayer. Then, theypromise to come back later to meet again and continue the friendshipsthat have begun to blossom over the week. But they never do. Theynever come back. They go back to their churches and report how manyof the poor children across town accepted Jesus because of their valiant efforts over the past week, and then they forget about them.Then we watch what happens. At rst, the kids are hurt that their friendsnever return. Then, their hurt turns to confusion and, eventually, anger and resentment. This doesn’t help the Kingdom of God to advance inthis community. Our people have enough issues with abandonmentwithout the church adding to it. So, no, you can’t work here.”

In this instance, our friends at the Housing Authority had seen in actionthe devastation that occurs when a church believes that once people



“pray the prayer”, their job is accomplished and they can just ride off into the sunset with all being well in the world. But that’s not how itworks. True transformation comes at a very high cost for everyoneinvolved. It takes long-term commitments from local churches, partner agencies and the community in which you are working. It requires allage-levels and representatives of the community to participate, and itrequires that all parties understand that transformation is, will and mustaffect every area of their lives. But when you have a “Saved Souls”mentality you feed the dependency monster…and he gets stronger.

• Botched Brotherhood – Doing any sort of ministry cross-culturally,whether local or international, requires humility between all players,recognition of the complexities involved for each, and a willingnessto be aggressive learners of one another along the way. Indigenous

people and churches have their own culture and customs, andultimately need to understand that the Kingdom of God will have aunique expression in their midst that will require them to championtheir own transformation. Churches partnering together must realizethat doing true development and transformation comes at the cost of immense education, relationship, blood, sweat, tears and long-termcommitment. If any of those players enters the relationships without anunderstanding of the complex and fragile nature of the ecosystem inwhich they are seeking to enter, the can literally damage all the other

partners in play. Again, taking the above example of how the dependency monster hasbeen at work in the world, authors Corbett and Fikkert add:

“When North American Christians do attempt to alleviate poverty,the methods used often do considerable harm to both thematerially poor and the materially non-poor. Our concern isnot just that these methods are wasting human, spiritual,

nancial, and organizational resources but that these methodsare actually exacerbating the very problems they are tryingto solve.” 3

The above is a ridiculously concise explanation of how the monster of dependency was made and continues to thrive. But make no mistake, themonster is loose, and is wreaking havoc in our world. We see him when NGO’sand non-pro ts really don’t want the local church involved because often, thelocal church destroys years of carefully laid infrastructure in a given context. He

is loose when “rich” churches only feel valued for their nancial contributions.He is loose when our brothers and sisters in impoverished settings feel that theyare pets, projects or poor people with no resources of their own. So, whether from centuries of colonialism or even very well intentioned, good old fashionedbut poorly implemented charity, the monster is at work, and he is crippling theadvancement of the Kingdom of God.3 When Helping Hurts, Corbett & Fikkert, p.28



THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIP: CHURCH-TO-CHURCHIf you’re going to try to engineer partnerships between churches in a fashionthat are truly transformational and not transactional, where do you start? Wenotice that often, when it comes to partnering with a church, whether locally inan under-resourced neighborhood, or globally in remote village, the rst questionmost American local churches ask is, “What can we go do?” That’s a directministry question. That’s not a bad question. As pastors and church leaders, weunderstand the context and essential nature of that question. It actually comesfrom a very pragmatic, positive, “can do” place in our hearts.

But, it is a very dangerous question to start with.

Our needs-based approach causes us to focus on poverty rst. The rst time wewalk through the village in a developing country or an inner city neighborhood,we only see the need -- lthy water sources or the run-down buildings. We onlysee the hunger. We only see the lack of education. When we start with needsand jump to direct ministry, we end up damaging the development of the localpeople and the local church. We do for them what we could have done with them.Even worse, we do for them what they could have done for themselves.

In Missional Move nine: Relief to Development , we dive much deeper into howto break out of a needs-based approach. We ask you to consider the possibilitythat our attempts to serve others through direct ministry, particularly when doneof out sequence, are actually self-serving. Sure, we had our amazing missionexperience, but by inadvertently dismissing the contribution of the local people,we ended up using them as means to our end--a great experience for us.

Over the last 40 years, with the rise of the short-term mission trip movement,millions have been mobilized here at home and around the world. These tripshave been amazing in terms of awakening millions of hearts and in movingthem toward God’s heart for the poor and unreached. We are both among thosepeople who were awakened on the eld. However, a clear-eyed evaluation of theshort term mission movement will reveal that we’ve done very little in terms of adding real and sustained value in terms of building capacity in the local peopleand the local churches we have served.

In many cases, we have done damage. Talk to anyone who works long term inthose environments and I bet they’ll have a story to tell you. Our friends, whoseorganization runs church-based health clinics all over the world, told us such astory. A short-term team from a leading church whose name you would recognizesent a “trained” team to work in one of the clinics. After the team left, they had toshut down the on-going work to focus on damage control. What happened? The

Americans came in ready to do stuff. Their attitudes were paternalistic, “We’rehere to help you poor people. Get ready to have your life changed!” They’remethods were ashy, “We’ve got candy for the kids, free t-shirts for everyone,ashy technology, and so much more!” They made promises to local leaders, “I



see you need a motorcycle. I promise we’ll get that for you.”

Our friends had built a fragile web of relationships that had culminated intoa network of local churches serving together through the health clinic. The

American team came in and shattered that web in the timespan of ten days.Our friend’s hearts had extended a sacred trust to the American team who didnot know how to handle that trust. Some of the local leaders felt marginalized,“These people think that we are stupid. They treat us like children. We thoughtyou respected us. Now, we aren’t sure.”Other’s enjoyed the bells and whistlesand said, “We like the gravy train. Can we have more free stuff?”

Finally, the promises of the American team created a sense of viscouscompetition between the local church leaders. Whereas before they had workedtogether with a shared concern for the community, now they were competing tosee who could secure the pipeline rst.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story. This story has been repeated invarious forms thousands of times all over the world. That’s what happens whenour rst questions is “What can we do?”

In Missional Move eight: From Transactional to Transformational Partnerships ,we outline three key models that create an overarching theory for approachinghealthy church to church partnerships. Here’s a brief summary of each (MissionalMoves provides much more detail):

• Car Model – In order for partner churches, local churches, NGO’s,agencies, governments and businesses to operate in conjunction withone another around a common mission and vision, all partners mustrecognize that the functioning indigenous local church is the closestelement to the ground of the community. If the partnership assemblywere a car, the local indigenous church would be the wheels andchassis. If it’s not in place, the vehicle may generate power or lookreally cool or even have really nice roads, but it’s not actually going tomove.Local church pastors will be in the community after all the other programs leave, care the most about the people in their community.They also have the most authentic and deeply trusted relationships.

• Mission to Mud – Any partnership strategy must follow throughsequences of mission building and capacity building in the localcommunity. They must start by utilizing the relational credibility,currency, and continuity of the local indigenous church beforeattempting to move to any type of direct ministry.

• Bore Well Model – The most effective church-to-church partnershipsoperate in ever-deepening layers of impact, commitment andexecution. Just like a deep drill bore well in a developing nation’svillage, deep transformational partnerships drill in. Their ministry isalways deepening commitment and coaching, mentoring and mutualsupport into indigenous people and church leaders.



All of these models provide long-term ltering for the question, “What do we do?”and keep us from falling into the following common traps:

• “We’ll getcha fxed right up!” – I (Jack) grew up in the southernpart of the United States. I can tell you we Southerners, known for our Southern hospitality, have created polite ways of saying thingsthat might otherwise be offensive. I heard a comedian say, “Blesstheir heart,”is really a covert way of saying, “They’re an idiot!” One of the other terms I used to hear a lot was, “We’ll getcha xed right up!”(Usually, the right was sort of strung out as “riiiiiiiiiight”). Usually, this isuttered by someone who a) doesn’t really know what they’re doing, b)is probably going to make things worse than they were to begin withand c) is going to charge you an arm and a leg for a less than stellar end result. If you ever hear this phrase uttered by a surgeon or anauto-mechanic…you’re in trouble.

When engaging local communities, in your own back yard or acrossthe world, there is a tendency to overestimate our expertise. We comeinto a context largely ignorant of the social and cultural nuances andsay something like the following: “Well, looks to me like you need “ ll-inthe blank.” We’ll getcha xed right up!” Then we start mobilizing teamsand people to do that. Often the community in which we’re working,because it is either too polite or simply gures that those things can’tor won’t hurt, never tells us that as soon as we leave, the initiatives willeither go away or lack long term sticking power.

• “Tell us what you want!” – Parents will see the aw in thisimmediately. The problem with want is that there are all sorts of thingsthat I want. I want a Ferrari. Yes, a black one. I’d prefer the new Ferrari458 Italia V8 twin seat Berlinetta if anyone’s asking. I really want one(never mind that I couldn’t even afford the insurance to have one, muchless the premium gas to drive it). Do I need one? No, of course not. Infact, no one needs a Ferrari (honestly!), but that’s not what you asked.You asked what I wanted. When a group of people from outside thecommunity walks in and says, “Tell us what you want”, well…we oftenget very Ferrari sounding answer.

• “Tell us what you need!” – But that’s not as easy as it sounds either.When we re ect on our own lives, we’ll realize much of the time wehonestly don’t know what we need the most. It’s dif cult for us todistinguish the difference between what I want and what I need. On topof that, what I say about what I need is largely dependent upon whoI’m talking to. If my mom asks me what I need, I usually say “Nothing.”I have what I need when I’m talking to my mom. But if my nearestfriendly neighborhood billionaire asks me what I need, well…maybethe Ferrari is back on the table! Besides, I may actually think that if Ihad a Ferrari, the other problems in my life might disappear. I might besingle, so the Ferrari might help me nd a girlfriend. I might not have



much money, so the Ferrari might make me seem more important andimprove my standing at work, especially if I offer to give the boss a rideto work each morning. I don’t have many friends, and everyone wantsto be friends with a guy who owns a Ferrari, right? You get the idea.Needs and wants, when asked directly, often gather very differentresponses from the actual needs at the root of any community, andoften depend greatly on who is doing the asking.

How do you get at the “what” you’re going to do in a partnership?

While many of these processes will be outlined in other places in Missional Moves , here are a few that will give you an idea of how we got started. Firstof all, we asked a lot of questions on the front end. We stole (borrowed andgave credit) from our friends at World Relief and other NGO’s we respect. Weread books on assessment processes. We hired consultants to teach us. Welearned about various assessment methods from universities who are doing itwell in training their students (such as Northwestern University’s Asset BasedCommunity Development Program – or “ABCD” Method). We gathered businessand non-pro t leaders from within our church who already work in the communityor have expertise on particular issues to tell us what they already knew. We hadnumerous conversations with people in the communities in which we were hopingto work on a one-on-one basis to determine what they thought. Then we beganthe process of determining what we really wanted to know before we ever askedthe communities in which we were working about their perspectives on whatwould be the most helpful from a Development point of view.

While our process with Monroe Circle was nearly identical to the processwe used in India, for the sake of space, we’re only going to highlight themethodology we used in India to give an idea of how we have proceeded alongour way.

ConsultationFirst, we gathered members from seven churches. These churches had pastorswho had been all the way through our Bore Well training (which we unpackin Missional Moves). Each had successfully started churches with a vision for community transformation. They then supplied three members who would bepassionate and willing to be trained in community assessment and development.

Once we had the twenty-one total members (about three leaders from each of seven churches), we brought them together to learn about a series of basicsthat we developed through a partnership with World Relief. The following wascovered:

• How to acquire basic demographics and psychographics for eachcommunity.

• How to use some basic skills/tools to look for common threads betweeneach person surveyed with the end result of understanding the “big



issues/problems” in the community (see Community Mapping) below.• How to identify the difference between perceived wants and actual

needs in each community.• How to prioritize the needs in each community across the three strata

outlined below in Community Prioritization.• How to present a development survey back for compilation and

analysis.• We then asked them to take the next 3 months gathering the

information requested and putting it together into a potentialdevelopment plan for the community.

Community MappingInterestingly, one of the easiest and most effective tools for gathering thecommunity assessment data is basic community mapping. In most of theplaces where our church planters were working, the people in the communitieswere largely illiterate. To try to do large scale surveys or even verbally aidedquestionnaires would probably have been dif cult, especially when seeking to getat the real hearts, thoughts, beliefs, values and behaviors of the people within thecommunity. Rabindran Shelley (an Indian national then on staff with World Relief whom we hired as a consultant) pointed out, “Everyone can draw, even if not verywell.” Rabi showed our survey teams how to do the following:

• The Village As It Is – Sitting down rst with a cross-section of thecommunity, including both men and women, village elders and commonpeople, adults and children. Survey teams asked various individualsto draw the community as it currently exists from their perspective. Anintroductory question like “if a bird were ying overhead, how wouldthey see your village?” introduced the topic. As the community member began to draw, the survey team members were looking for the followingsorts of features:

• Orientation – What does the person draw rst? In most instances,whatever they draw rst will be their point of orientation for the lifeof the community--often the most important thing in the communityas well. Perhaps they draw the local temple rst, or a particular village elder’s house, or maybe their house. Whatever is rst willmost likely be the thing that they perceive to be the most importantcentral structure in their community. As such, survey teams canoften extrapolate a great deal about the person. As they gain moreand more data from other people in the same fashion, they candetermine cohesive threads throughout the community. If oneperson draws the temple rst, the survey member might determinethat the village member’s spiritual life may be important to them.If 75% of the people in the community draw the temple rst, theycan make the reasonable determination that spiritual life is veryimportant to the bulk of the community.

• Sequencing – What does the person draw next? Watching whatthe village members draw after their point of orientation maycontinue to provide clues as to what they perceive to be important



operation. Because of the danger of the street on one side andthe lake on the other, village parents quite literally often tie their children to trees with twine ropes to prevent them from either wandering into traf c or falling into the water.

• Sequencing – Next, our friend from the village drew the variouslanes that branched off from the main road into their village andprovided small boxes for the houses in the community. Notice thathe did not draw all the houses the same. The houses with thelittle wavy lines on top are thatched roof houses since some of thehouses in the community have concrete roofs while other (i.e. thepoorer families) do not. Why is that important? Because the villagemember thought it was. He actually commented on this fact as hedrew, and told us that many of the thatched homes were in seriousdanger of falling down. Later, as we walked the village, we alsonoticed that things we expected to be prominent features were notrepresented on the map at all. A well or water source was one of the biggest things that I didn’t see, for example, as more remotevillage almost always list that in their initial map. In this particular village, water availability is virtually a non-existent issue since thenearby city has actually done a good job providing clean, runningwater into the little village. At the top of each lane, a PVC spigotcan be seen providing as much water as any family can carry atany time they want it. Water is important, but is considered moreof a given in this community, and is therefore not particularlyworthy of highlighting. (Note: The women of the village mostcertainly consider the water source to be worthy of note since theyare responsible for washing, cooking, cleaning and making surethere is enough drinking water on hand).

• Proximity and Perspective – Want to know what else isinteresting? When we asked our friend to draw his community,he did so. However, if you had been to the community, you wouldnote that there is a rather large “community within a community”(i.e. a group of wealthier outsider, higher caste people whomoved into their midst and created a walled compound around



themselves so that they wouldn’t have to interact with our low-caste friends) that didn’t make it into the drawing at all. Why?Because our friend doesn’t consider them to be part of hiscommunity. They may be a proverbial elephant in his room, but it’snot his elephant, so who cares about them?

This exercise is not the de nitive way to gain all data for a community. Our survey teams also did various other exercises, including some person-to-personquestionnaires. We just found that mapping provided helpful insights which, whenincluded with other survey tools, helped our teams to get a better handle on whatthe community thought about itself as well as the various values that alreadyexisted within it.

• The Village As It Could Be – Beyond seeing the village “As it is”; our next mapping exercise seeks to delve deeper into what the villagecould be in the mind of the person surveyed. In this instance, weusually introduce the subject by asking, “If you could remake your village in any way that you wanted, what would it look like?” Thefollowing is an example of how our friend in the village described aboveanswered this question with his artwork:

• Housing – First and foremost, none of the houses in his revised visionfor the community have thatched roofs. They are all concrete housesand not in danger of falling down.

• Across the Street – Next, there is privately owned land across thestreet that is currently off limits to the community, but under the visionfor what might be possible, that land is appropriated for community use.

• Latrine – Currently, the community members simply use the man-madelake or bushes to take care of their daily bathroom needs. Unlike their rural cousins, this village knows that other options are available, and sodrew a centralized community latrine as one of the most important next



steps beyond housing.

• Vocational Training – Most of the people in the village are day laborersand work for less than a dollar a day. They have jobs like cuttingrewood or hiring themselves out to farmers and business owners for simple tasks. If they could control their destinies, they would have aspecial place set aside where they could learn other trades and helptheir children to achieve better standards of living.

• Medical Care Center – The nearest hospital or medical care facility is5 km from the village. Virtually no one in the community has a car or motorcycle, so most of the people walk where they need to go. Theresult is that in emergencies or situations of signi cant illness, thepeople have to simply stay home or wait until they are well enough totravel on foot to the hospital.

• Community Hall or Center – Currently for weddings, funerals and other large-scale community activities, the village members have to rentout halls or facilities that cost more than they can really afford. In thisvision, there is a place for them to gather for such functions, as well asfor celebrations and festivals where the entire community can cometogether at a more affordable price.

• “Big Church” – Because the church planter who introduced us to thevillage had been at work there for several months, many of the peoplein the community were deciding to follow Jesus. As a result (and I canstill remember the smile on our friend’s face), when he drew the nextitem, his voice increased in volume and he smiled broadly as he said,“And then, there would be a BIG CHURCH for us all to come and learnabout Jesus!”

• Play Area – Finally, there would be a sectioned off area where childrenin the community could play without fear of having to be tethered totrees to keep them from running into traf c or falling into poorly craftedlakes with quickly eroding banks.

If that’s “The Village As it Could Be” in the mind of one of the village members,then survey teams can get a tremendous amount of data about not onlywhat it important in the existing village, but where the hearts and minds of itsmembers are hoping and dreaming. And again, it is important to note that theabove drawing was “just a dream vision.” We did not promise to deliver anycomponent of the dream and the prioritization of the items within the dream.Some might argue that we set expectations by even asking the question. Wehoped to minimize those expectations by having similar caste/class Indian churchmembers do the asking rather than American survey teams.

Community PrioritizationOnce our Indian survey teams began to get a sense of some of the basic issues



going on in the community, they were then trained to sit down and provide acategorization of those issues into the following three categories:

1. What can they do themselves?2. What is the government’s responsibility?3. What will require outside help?

We Can Do It Ourselves

In many instances, with just a little bit of training or help, village communitiescan actually do a signi cant amount of their own development work without anyoutside help. Here’s an example from one community who had a high incidenceof Malaria infection: In the process of determining what assets and resourcesthe community could deliver on their own, they learned that a retired doctor actually lived on the outskirts of the village. The doctor told the church that if they all brought their digging tools and were willing to work for a single weekendto dig the drainage ditches on either side of the main road that came throughthe community 6 inches deeper, they could cut the Malaria infection rate in their village by 75%. He taught them that mosquitoes like to lay eggs in shallow water.If the ditches were a little deeper, the water level would stay at a depth that woulddeter most female mosquitoes. As a result of this new to them information, thechurch members showed up and in a single weekend dug the ditches deeper.This team effort signi cantly bene tted their community. Voila! No outside or government help needed.

What The Government Can Do

Next, our survey teams did a series of exercises to outline what the Indiangovernment is actually responsible to deliver and do in each community, andhow to access the appropriate authorities if things go wrong. Rabi, our friendfrom World Relief who helped us develop this training, addressed our team:“There is a road that runs through the village you are surveying that is brokenand impassable. Everyone in the community knows it and indicates that it is asigni cant problem. No one in the village knows how to repair the road. Whatdo you do?” As innovative Christ-followers, our Indian brothers and sisters gottogether and developed very detailed plans for how their local churches mightraise the funds necessary to repair the road and bene t the ctional community.

Rabi encouraged them for their creative initiative and innovation, but thenexplained that the Indian government maintains contracts with private roadconstruction companies to maintain roads, even in remote settings throughoutIndia. He explained that by raising the money and xing the problem, thecontractor whom the government pays, never has to do his job, and continues toget wealthier and fatter. In response, he walked the church members through theIndian legal system, the contract system, and divisions of government. He taughtthem how to leverage political clout and hold contract holders accountable for their jobs.



What We As Outsiders Can Do To Help

There may be things that the people do not know how to x or do. There maybe things that the government will not or cannot change. This category is wherewe, as an outside friend to the community and ally of the local church, typicallystep in to help. In many of the villages where we work (particularly those thathouse large populations of “Untouchable” caste families), the Indian governmentoften makes a cursory attempt to provide basic shelter and water, but bids thosecontracts out to the lowest bidder. As a result, the contractors often skimp onbuilding supplies and resources in order to maximize pro t. The wells breakand the houses cave in. When the people try to navigate the Indian governmentsystem to x it, the government responds that it’s obligations have been met(“It’s your problem now!”). The result is that we often engage housing and cleanwater issues early on in the process in these communities, but do so with localcommunity so that it is truly a joint effort to deliver the nished product.

Even in the nal category of Needing Outside Help, we try to continually makethe process as “We Can Do It Ourselves” as much as we can.

Customized SolutionsEvery community in the world is different. Even villages or communities withinthe same people group are very different. Each is a complicated eco-systemof history, families, culture and relationships that are interdependent, often inways that are completely invisible to outsiders. After our survey teams gatheredcommunity maps and prioritized surveys based on the categories above, westill asked each survey team to provide a customized development plan for each community. This prevented us from assuming that all communities neednew houses, or all communities will need wells. Customizing the plan enabledus to see the diversity of need and opportunity across the board. We were alsoable to see common threads that ran throughout all the surveyed communities.Interestingly, the top issues across all of the communities were (in order of greatest need to least):

• Microenterprise/Vocational Training• Housing/Shelter • Clean Water • Education• Justice Issues• HIV/AIDS Issues

Understanding these factors allowed us to begin to develop our own skill setsto intercept these issues. We did so within the customized framework of eachvillage rather than just marching in with a bag of tricks and insisting on deployingall of them, whether the community needed them or not. It also helped us toremember that innovation and customization would be required in every singlevillage. While such requires a high degree of work beforehand, it ultimatelyguarantees a higher level of impact and effect in a given community. Lars Kolinddescribes how the value of customization is increasing in the corporate world; we



nd that it is remarkably true for local churches and transformational partnershipsas well:

“If innovation and customization are what matter, don’t be surprised if the conventional machine organization just doesn’t work. In fact, theconventional company as a whole won’t be successful. That’s becauseinnovation and customization are totally different jobs compared to stable,cost-ef cient mass production. The organization that can deliver innovationand mass customization is not only slightly different from the conventionalmanufacturing business, it is a new paradigm.” 4

Yeah, but how?It’s usually at this point that we start to lose people. Again, all of what’s abovesounds really cool, but it also just sounds way too dif cult for most people in mostchurches. And make no mistake, it is hard. But we also think it’s worth noting thatthe things that we as a local church do when operating in any environment arenot things that only rocket-scientists and commandos can accomplish. We teachour people how to teach basic health and hygiene like hand washing, footwear and basic germ pathology rather than asking them to train to be heart surgeonsor become full-time health professionals. Instead of requiring Construction Teammembers to become licensed union carpenters, electricians, plumbers andtechnicians (though such people are always welcome on our teams, and we oftentap their expertise for training others), we ask team members to train with localmasons and do large scale demolition, debris-clearing and concrete-work.

We try to focus on what our friend Mike Constantz at Saddleback ValleyCommunity Church calls “Primary” and “Secondary” levels of CommunityDevelopment. As per the chart below, you will notice that in each of the primarycategories for community transformation in their church (P.E.A.C.E), they try rstto focus on initiatives that the “average Joe” can do or be trained to do. As theprocess of development in the community continues over time, the developmentgoes deeper and deeper, eventually to the point of building hospitals andseminaries, schools and universities. Some churches maybe called to do that.We don’t. We focus on levels one and two. These provide focus and reasonableexpectation for each team and what they will be expected to deliver when theyare on the eld.

4 The Second Cycle , Lars Kolind, Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Wharton School Publishing, copy: 2006 P.19



Specialized TeamsSo how and when do we know what kinds of teams to send once a surveycomes back and we begin to target the community for development? Mostlocal churches have “mission teams” and tend to nd things for that team todo. This may sound natural and logical, but it’s not the most effective. Instead,teams should be built to accomplish missions to solve speci c problems, not thereverse.

I (Jack) am a fan of Special Forces Units from all over the world. Among myfavorites in the Spec Ops community are those belonging to the United StatesNavy’s famed SEAL program. Remaining from the days of World War two’s UDT(Underwater Demolition Teams) units, contemporary SEALs are trained to deployfrom any possible point of entry (their name literally stands for “SEa, Air, Land” =SEAL) to some of the most hazardous warzones on the planet. Each SEAL unitis highly trained, coordinated, resourced and even highly specialized within givenparameters. Some may specialize in amphibious assault. Some in antiterrorism.Some in air in ltration. Regardless of their specialty, SEAL units always maximizethis notion, “It’s problems that de ne missions, and missions that de ne teams.”Teams do not de ne missions. Ever. Consider the following diagram:

In this example, a Team de nes a Mission, and the Mission de nes the Problem.The most common approach goes like this, “Hey, you know what? We’ve gota Men’s Ministry that loves to get their hands dirty! We should go and buildsomething in [insert country] so that we can utilize our skills!” It may certainly besomething that such a church leader wants to do in order to get his men into thegame. But to just show up in an environment already knowing what you want to



entering their homes, prevent any feces they have walked through from enteringwhere food is being prepared or served.

So our wheels got turning. We did several sets of surveys within the communityto determine if they would wear footwear if we found it and or provided it. Thenwe did Health and Hygiene training on parasite pathways, how footwear wouldcounter and intervene, etc. The community seemed excited about the prospectsof wearing shoes, so we came back home and started to ask questions. Then,friends and partners told us that the company who manufactures Croc’s providingfree distribution for impoverished settings outside of the United States. A lightbulb went on in my head. We excitedly reported to our friends in India, “We justfound a contractor who would be willing to provide footwear for free to the peoplein the village! Rather than us buying a bunch of shoes there in-country (we know,we know, specialists will want our heads for not stimulating the local economy,but hang with us), why don’t we just bring them over and then hand them out?”The local leaders never having seen Croc’s, said that they thought it was worth ashot, and so we started the process.

Bene t: Croc’s are amazing products. They are super-light, don’t break down,are waterproof, easy to slip on and off, and are available in fun and stylish brightcolors. Problem: How would we know what sizes to bring? Solution: We’ll traceeveryone’s feet in the village and then bring them back with us to match up! Thetracings will have a foot outline, a name and a boy/girl tag on them so that wecan pick out the appropriate size and look. So we did that, and came back homewith some two hundred foot tracings. Team members promptly matched thedrawings up to Crocs that would t. We then slipped the tracing into a bag alongwith the shoes, and even included a size bigger for kids so that they could growinto them! Voila! The next team took the Croc’s to the village and distributedthem amidst much fanfare. The end result was one of what we considered to bean effective prototype…until we assessed/evaluated it.

On our next team, we performed a basic assessment of the Croc’s. Very simple,really: how many people were wearing them? How many were not? If theywere not, why? How can we improve the footwear issue based on what we’relearning?

Want to know the result? In 4 months, no one was wearing the Croc’s. Argh!The reasons were both legitimate and very telling. Our friends in the communitytold us, “It was kind of you to bring the shoes. Here’s the thing, though. First,they contain water when we walk through puddles.” This was true, actually, andwe hadn’t thought of it. The same quality that made them waterproof from theoutside also made them not drain if the water got into the shoe. “Second, theysqueak horribly when they get wet. We sound funny when we walk.” Okay, alsototally legitimate. “Third, we feel like clowns when we wear them.” Clowns? I waspuzzled. They continued, “We don’t know how you do it in America, but everyonehere prefers not to draw attention to their feet. If you look around, you will noticethat everyone’s shoes are usually only black or brown. There are no brightlycolored shoes that cover over the toe. These shoes are all brightly colored and



make us feel as though we are wearing funny shoes.” Now, you might not thinkthat this is a big deal. You might think the standard American line of “beggarscan’t be choosers”, but I’d challenge that thinking. In South India, even thepoorest woman tries to dress modestly and beautifully. The average Indian saridress for a woman includes some 30’ of fabric and a tailored top and bottom.Even when doing hard, manual labor, it is important to look modest and not drawtoo much attention to oneself. The Croc’s did not accomplish that objective.They were bright and fun and stylish…in the United States, but not in India. InIndia, the value for wearing shoes was not outweighed suf ciently by the self-consciousness of feeling like you were wearing clown shoes. So we went back tothe drawing board.

We now have a decent program to provide contextualized footwear to thecommunity at a reduced cost, so the story ends better than it starts. But, takecomfort in the fact that we don’t view the Croc’s as a “failure.” Rather, we learnedmore about the culture, deepened our relationship with the community andpartner church, and ended up with a long-term solution.

Conclusion: Partnerships That WorkHow do these principles line up in a real world environment and utilizethe practical tools listed to develop a process that will lead to communitytransformation with a functioning indigenous local church at the center? For us, itlooks like the diagram and description below.

As we engage church-to-church partnerships for the purpose of communitytransformation, we are going to do so directly in no more than three villages at atime. We also do this in a staggered fashion so as not to overextend ourselvesrelationally or nancially.

Here’s a snapshot from one village of Irula people on the outskirts of Kalavai,Southern India. When we started in the community, there was only one half-functioning well, no electricity, no latrine (the community simply used a nearbyeld), no sanitation system, and most of the homes were falling in on themselves.The average income was less than a dollar a day and almost none of thechildren in the village attended school. There was only one Christ-follower in thevillage. As a result, in the rst eighteen months, the bulk of our time, energy andresources were spent in the following alongside the indigenous local church andthe community itself:

• A 500-foot tap well was drilled, giving the community the deepest well



They are not angry we are leaving because they know we are equipping them tofunction without us. The great part is, they will also go and help people in other villages as well. As we move forward, we will ask them to be part of our coachingprocess with other communities, serving as a model for self-suf ciency, movinginto interdependence together with them. This ensures that we continue to love,grow and see one another. Our relationship is one where we are both movingforward as equals to take ground for the Kingdom together. We have relationshipof reciprocity and interdependence where we both lead and we both follow in adance of exceptional beauty as we work together to advance the Kingdom in thatarea of the world.

Much of where GCC is attempting to go next in terms of building MissionalCommunities and impact our community will incorporate lessons we havelearned on the eld in India or from our friends at Monroe Circle. When we havea relationship of interdependence, we recognize that while we do not need eachother in a co-dependent and dysfunctional fashion, we actually need each other to be all God made us to be. We are all made better by our interaction. Our church planters in India make changes when we share what has worked in our world. Our friends in Monroe Circle make changes based on things we learntogether, both from India and as a function of GCC’s own operation in Granger.

When church-to-church partnership is working, it becomes a force for amazinggood in the world as opposed to the monster that dependency creates.

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