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Scenes from the Least-Reached People Group village I visited with Park Meadows Baptist.
As you’ll recall from my last newsletter in November, I took some time to reflect on some of what continues to inspire NAB Gateway’s missional paradigm of sister-church partnerships (SCPs). In this newsletter, on a more practical rather than hermeneutical approach, I’d like to share about how diverse the SCPs actually are that we work with.
As I’m fond of saying in our SCP orientations with pastors and church leaders, not one of the SCPs we currently see inspired or under the umbrella of NAB Gateway is the same. Some of these ‘sister-church’ partnerships are between mature and well-established Baptist churches that, at first glance at least, share similar roots, beliefs, etc. Others are between churches (or a network of churches or ministries) in North America and ‘seed-planting’ ministries in the majority world that have among their goals the establishment of communities of faith as those seeds grow and mature. In the case of the latter, a specific/local church, traditionally defined, could be a goal in the future but will require a number of steps to get to; even with a partner, whether that partner is a local (sister) church or another entity/community. Here are a few examples of these different points along the spectrum when it comes to SCPs.
SCP Scenario #1: A Canadian Baptist church and a Hungarian Baptist church in Romania – Although at first glance, this partnership looks like a classic sister-church relationship, in 2025 the Canadian church is quite multi-ethnic and the Hungarian church finds itself as an ethnic minority congregation in this country.
SCP Scenario #2: A Baptist church in the USA and a ministry in Hungary focused on reaching the holistic needs (poverty, economic, spiritual, community) of Roma/Gypsy villages/neighborhoods – A church is clearly the partner on one side, but on the other side, there is a future hope to establish a congregation or Christian fellowship. Nonetheless, this is within Gateway’s parameters of our sister ‘church’ partnership paradigm.
SCP Scenario #3: (An example from the past) NAB’s student/youth ministry and the Cameroon Baptist Youth Department – In this case, a local church was not the focus on either side of the SCP, but the guiding principles of relationship, mutuality, and global church identity, as well as partnership for the sake of mission (all SCP values) were always the focus.
SCP Scenario #4: Two churches in Canada and the USA and a church/planting ministry in Mexico established by a former NAB missionary – Here we have a multi-church sister-church partner on the North American side combining their aligned efforts with this Latino congregation in Mexico City.
SCP Scenario #5: This scenario is more of a future pursuit in the beginning stages – a Canadian Baptist church that recently merged with an African congregation that is pursuing partnership with churches back in Africa from the same ethnic group. (Incidentally, as is the case in a number of areas of the world where Gateway is involved, there is room for more sister-church partners in this specific scenario.)
So, what’s in a name? The moniker sister-church partnership is definitely descriptive (as was said in my prior newsletter) as far as our original intent; “this IS the goal of SCPs, to find ways to do MISSION together as a result of the purposeful intentions of integral relationships and mutuality.” But, clearly, there are factors that come into play as parts of the Global Church seek to partner with each other. ‘Making room for growth’ is one major factor to consider when one looks at what the Spirit is doing among different groups of people around the world. As God draws all humanity to Himself, and as these communities and individuals find themselves on the trajectory to being part of the Global Church, we find ourselves ‘making room for growth’ in these diverse communities and among these people groups. It’s exciting to partner with people across the globe who are created in God’s image, and, yes, that image is one of a relational, community-driven, missional God (missio Dei).
And as these examples from our own experience with NAB Gateway show, the church in sister ‘church’ points more at the presence of each of our diverse places in the Global Church. And most often, that presence describes what we’ve come to understand as church in our own local setting rather than somehow forcing our understanding of what church is onto another part of the Global Church. (We do not force our understanding of being a ‘foot’ onto others who are clearly ‘hands’ – 1 Corinthians 12:15.)
So, does ‘sister-church partnerships’ describe what this is all about? Yes, but with an understanding that allows for the Spirit of God to do the amazing work of drawing all humanity (and creation) into this amazing body (Global Church) in all its diversity that Jesus is King over.
Cameroon Sister-Church Partnership Vision Trip – Jacky Ketel (far left), Randy Schmor (third from left), and Gary Dupuis (far right).
Please contact us at NAB Gateway (rschmor@nabconf.org) for more information on sister-church partnerships, as well as training and opportunities for doing short-term mission with excellence, something that Gateway has been about for more than thirty-five years.
For the Kingdom