I was reminded today about the amazing global impact of The Salvation Army. Speaking with some legend officers from indonesia who both have multiple jobs including raising orphaned children (39 in one home alone). We have scores of children's homes in Indonesia and all of them need our prayers and support... not to mention the trafficking issues - there is much work to be done. Which brings me to another issue: in our movement we have developed a partnership system... matching developed world countries to developing world countries as 'partners in mission'. This has amazing potential because of course we need to learn from them more than we think. Often these partnerships have devloved into financial contractions. We simply write a check. This is a beginning forsure and we do have all the resources and we ought to share but there is much more to partnership than this.
We're developing a partnership system that is based on three things:
1. relationship. any real partnership is based on relationship not function. We aim to create meaningful relationships with our partners in mission.
2. respect. Often charity ends up being patriarchal and pedantic - we need to start fostering relationship based partnership that is based on respect. often officers in developing world countries have much to teach us about corps growth and creative, innovative ministries - including spiritual fervour and warfare... respect based relationships mean that we take the time to learn.
3. resource. Strategic resourcing is key - including sharing our fair share of the worlds resources and calling on our government to make good on it's promise to the world's poor.
that's a start anyway... any other thoughts about partnerships and global impact... the idea itself is quite exciting.
The World for God.
D
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