THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTNERING

This past weekend my congregation partnered with an important community ministry, Hope Within. Hope Within, based in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, seeks to help provide medicine and medical care for families in Dauphin and Lancaster County who have no medical insurance. Our partnership involved sponsoring a concert by At the Well, a Celtic American Band made led by Bill Stine, our church's choir director. Many people love the lively and poignant sounds of celtic music with its varied instrumentation and winsome lyrics. Only about 70 people made the concert on a cold Saturday afternoon, but they generously contributed $900 to this important community outreach.
(This was actually the second such concert we sponsored, the previous one raising well over $1200 for Hope Within).

In 2002, when my congregation began to move toward being an outward focused church, we developed a very intentional philosophy of outreach and evangelism. One of the foundational values was that we would not attempt to duplicate any effective established ministry; we would partner with it. Another was that we would make our church available to community groups without charge, seeking to affirm those community groups (religious and non-religious) who were trying to strengthen the quality of life in our community. The third is that we would seek out ministries, such as Hope Within, and be very intentional about helping them tell their story and generate income for their ministries. We would do this by involving our people in this support effort, not simply sending a budget contribution. We wanted our people to have a practical hands-on experience in kingdom work--not just church work. We also wanted to provide manpower and gifts that were sometimes unavailable otherwise to often budget-limited groups like Hope Within.

Partnering has helped those groups get the word out and get the job done. It has broadened our own people's vision for kingdom work and exposed them to ministry opportunities that would not have been generated by our own church programs. And it has been one more way to make outreach by which people know the Church of God of Landisville.