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This past month I had the opportunity to lead a unique Gateway team consisting of NAB Regional Ministers from around Canada and the USA, as well as our NAB International Office Executive Team, with a good number of spouses included. Not only did this group of more than twenty people get the chance to experience some of what a Gateway team typically experiences – with pre-field training, on-field mission, and post-field debriefing – they also had the opportunity to go through Gateway sister-church partnership training and to understand sister-church partnerships in the Hungarian/Romanian setting in particular.
The Hungary Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, with the NAB Gateway Romania/Hungary RM Team.
In reflecting on this experience and also the good number of recent sister-church partnership inquiries that have come my way of late, I thought this quarter’s newsletter was a good time to take a look at some of what continues to inspire NAB Gateway’s unique approach for churches to be involved in international mission through sister-church partnerships. Please read on. . . .
Sandwiched in the middle of six dense verses of a poetic stanza in Colossians 1, amid statements about Jesus Christ that paint an amazing comprehensive picture about our King, Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Reconciler, is another description about the One we follow as the Head of this Global Body, the Church, that we find ourselves to be a part of: a Church that should not be known to be fractured, divided, or separated by language, culture, or anything else, but a Church that Ephesians 4:4 tells us is one.
It is within this one-ness that the Global Church can find itself as it seeks to position its footing and find its stability under our one Head, Christ (King) Jesus. And although at times it can feel as if these thoughts are mysterious (according to Paul), we recognize it to be true that there is truly only One Head and One Body. Jesus is in fact ‘ecclesiologically Christ’ as the head of the global body.
This is where NAB Gateway and our model of sister-church partnerships finds its foundation – within the idea that we can partner together as One Body and that our sense of identity, partnership, and mission comes essentially from the same place, the same understanding, an understanding that our sister-church partnerships are formed in a way so churches that are diverse geographically, cross-culturally, and beyond can find a way to do mission together through partnership with one another.
Ultimately, this is the goal of sister-church partnerships, to find ways to do mission together as a result of the purposeful intentions of integral relationships and mutuality.
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