TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS: Church

To Church

ROB WEGNER + JACK MAGRUDER

MISSIONAL

MOVES // Supplemental Ebook #2

Transformational Partnerships: Church to Church

MISSIONAL/ MOVES //
ROB WEGNER + JACK MAGRUDER

Transformational Partnerships: Church to Church Copyright 2012 by Rob Wegner and Jack Magruder Distributed via Exponential Resources Exponential is a growing movement of leaders committed to the spread of healthy new churches. Exponential Resources spotlights and spreads actionable principles, ideas and solutions 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 in the 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, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors. Credits Cover Design & Layout: Brittany Riblet Editor: 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 leaders like you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: NOT JUST YOUR AVERAGE BUZZ WORD PART ONE: A PICTURE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH-TO-CHURCH PARTNERSHIPS PART TWO: A PROCESS FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH-TO-CHURCH PARTNERSHIPS CONCLUSION: CHURCH-TO-CHURCH PARTNERSHIPS THAT WORK

INTRODUCTION: NOT JUST YOUR AVERAGE BUZZ WORD

Back in 2008, three pastor friends in Kansas City came together around coffee to wrestle with a powerful question, What if? What if the Church in Kansas City began 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, had been sent a challenging article from a young woman in his church, reporting that a few churches of different denominations in another part of the country had been intentionally praying for each other and finding ways to serve together. The idea started working on Brian. He encouraged the staff and church members to visit other 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 Churchs facility, when Heartlands lead Pastor, Dan Deeble, heard that they were there and came out to thank them. They did what pastors do and set up an appointment for coffee. Brian and Dan contacted their friend Schaun Colin, a Pastor at Westside Family Church. Together they began asking a powerful question, What if? What if we served together? What if we prayed 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 respect and friendship the church in Kanas City is now worshipping together, praying together, and serving together. Last year, more than five thousand people from those congregations served side by side the entire Kanas City urban core. Partnership is one of those buzzwords that everyone seems to want to use these days. Weve learned the hard way that it means different things to different people. Here are some of the different definitions weve 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 dont tell you what Im going to do, where or with whom, but you just give me money and trust by faith that Im going to do good things with it. We each bring our strengths, resources and budgets to bear on a single mission, vision and objective that will be bigger than either of us could accomplish on our own. For us, the last definition is the only feasible definition on which we can build a strategic 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 Transformational Partnerships and also chapter nine, From Relief to Development. While this eBook can stand alone, it is most meaningful when read as expansion of the material covered in Missional Moves. Within the book, we describe 15 tectonic shifts that unleash missional energy and have the power within them to transform churches, communities and the world. The heart of the specific Missional Move that this eBook expands on can best be summarized with these words from the book: Every local church and every follower of Jesus is called to the frontline of mission. Your local church is intended to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat at the very gates of Hell. Jesus hasnt called the local church to simply be financial donors, but dangerous revolutionaries. If youre reading this eBook, were betting that you agree. Intellectual assent is the easy part. Thats what the book Missional Moves is all about. More specifically, were going to explore how to leverage our collective horsepower with other likeminded local churches in the process to amplify our impact without destroying each other. Heres where were headed. Part One: A Picture of Transformational Church-to-Church Partnerships Part Two: A Process for Transformational Church-to-Church Partnerships Part Three: Conclusion Church-to-Church Partnerships that Work Here we go! A PICTURE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIP: CHURCH-TOCHURCH PARTNERSHIP The greatest development in the spiritual scene globally is the rise of Gods global church. Gods church has been global for a long time, but in recent years its capacity to live out its global identity has increased dramatically. Thats an understatement. The church is the greatest distribution network in the entire world. We could visit a million remote villages and run-down neighborhoods. They might not have any thing 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 church was going global centuries before globalization became a buzzword. In other words, its a new word for an old idea. Gods globalization looks something like this: There are 2.3 billion people who claim to be followers of Christ. That means the church is bigger than China. That means the church is bigger than India. That means the church is bigger than China 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 has a volunteer force that even comes close to the Church. Every church is filled with intrinsically motivated people led by a Savior who is bent on healing and redeeming this sin sick world. In addition, local churches are beginning to work together like never before, both locally globally. Every time churches put their hands together around the purpose of community transformation, they become the answer to Jesus prayer in John 17. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-12 (NIV) When a single local church tries to transform an entire community, usually only a small part of the community is actually lifted. When a network of churches work together, transformation of a community can become 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 annual initiative 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 lowincome neighborhoods around the South Bend community. The next Food Drop, we decided to move what the stage area to our own parking lot at GCC, which instantly bumped our attendance to over 1,000 people. This increased the distribution to several semis of food and personal care items. The organization that helped source the supplies moved their new distribution center in our backyard. This ensured that even beyond the Drop itself, we had the opportunity to begin actually packing boxes full of food and necessities beyond the event.Over the course of a couple of years, and the development of our own community center in downtown South Bend, we moved from eventbased distribution to ongoing distribution of food and other supplies through our food pantry. The number of people involved and impacted through Granger had moved 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 local churches started joining us in our Food Drops, purchasing and distributing their own semis. We continued to distribute them on the same dates to demonstrate to 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 2nd Saturday events, a monthly community service event. At that point, the phones started ringing and emails started coming in from churches from all over the country. Weve been able to not only connect them to our partner organizations, but to share the nuts and bolts about mobilization events like Food Drop and 2nd 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 through partnership 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 Networks Globally, 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 dynamics and massive opportunities to be seized by networking networks of local churches for Kingdom advancement. Right now, well bring the focus in a little tighter by looking at a snapshot of two local churches, separated by thousands of miles, partnering together for the transformation of an entire village. Church to Church One on One The transformation we talk about throughout Missional Moves in the small, rural community of Kalavai in Tamilnadu, India, has been built upon the foundation of a church to church partnership between Granger Community Church, Showers of Blessings Church (a church we helped plant in that community) and a small, additional church plant within the community itself. We wont approach a community transformation project unless there is an indigenous local church that can become the hub for the project. Heres 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 Southern India, heres how it worked: The western missionaries would buy one-way tickets on a boat to India. Many times, they would pack their belongings in a 7ft by 2ft pine wood box. A box commonly called a coffin. Why pack your belongings in a coffin? Because with the average field longevity in these tropical third world environments 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 the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They would hammer as deep as they could go, and when the box came back to their home sending church somewhere in the West, their home church would send another missionary equipped with another box. But its a new day. We are called to discern this changing global season and join God in seizing the globalization 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 is standing there offering a foothold from which to move forward. As a result, it is now 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 by the vast majority of local churches in the West. Honestly, up to this point, many of the first forays into church-to-church partnerships around the world have been less than successful, even damaging in their effect. Church to Church - The Danger of Pipeline Relationships Many local churches in the West have carried the old transactional model of partnership into new church-to-church partnerships. All over the world, in second and third world countries, there are pastors and churches that desperately want what we call a pipeline relationship with a western church. They want to partner with a Western church that will establish a direct and unending stream of resources to/for them, just like a pipeline for water, oil or other resources. In addition, many western churches, because of the traditional and transactional mindset, which characterizes most partnerships, are actually looking for this type of relationship as well. If youre a pastor reading this, we bet youve already received an email from a pastor in another country asking for this type of partnership. They will gladly host teams for you. They will suddenly be interested in any type of project that you fancy and speak any lingo that is required. The reports of their overwhelming need 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 is the 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, stealing all the sound equipment and everything of value. Afterward, they burned down the churchs 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 faced some form of severe persecution: beatings, vandalism of property, threats, excommunication from their families, or the loss of a job. However, this attack has less to do with faith and more to do with finances. When our pastor went to investigate, he discovered that some local thugs noticed a pattern: when the local pastor hosted teams from an American church, it was apparent afterward that the pastor was suddenly flush with money. Sure enough, a pipeline had been established and the money was following. These thugs just decided to tap into it. The pastor fully recovered from his physical repercussions of the pipeline relationship, but we wonder about the other more costly and lasting repercussions: co-dependency, paternalism, and dysfunction that will handicap that pastor and his church for decades. Were sure the folks back home at the American church were devastated by the news, and were likewise sure that they care for that pastor and that church, but we wonder if they have been reflective enough to see that the thugs arent the ultimate source of the problem. This wellmeaning local church was unintentionally hurting the church they were trying to help. Why and how does this happen? We think that there are some key reasons: Lack of Meaningful Relationships Authors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert note in their incredibly helpful little book When Helping Hurts that the monster of dependency and pipeline relationships proliferates throughout the developing world because often, those of us in the West simply misunderstand the nature of poverty and brokenness. We think that poverty is fundamentally a material issue, so we counter it by providing material relief and believe our job to be done when a given community has access to the same material benefits that we take as both given and representative of the kind of life that all people should be allowed to have. But to the authors, poverty is not just a material issue. Rather, it is an issue of relationships. It is an issue where if people fully understand and embrace their right relationships with one another, with God, with themselves and with the world around them, they will begin to champion the kind of wholeness that their Shalom really intends. The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world into middle-to-upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse and mental illness. Nor is the goal to make sure that the materially poor have enough moneyRather, the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be, people who glorify God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with 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 that goods and materials are our greatest assets as we engage the world around us, when really; the creation of long-term relationships is our greatest strength. This is because when we have the ability to deeply understand someones world (i.e. by being in it with them over time), we learn the difference between what might be perceived as helpful to them versus what might actually be truly helpful. One-shot short-term projects disconnected from longer term strategies and the intelligence provided by long-term relationships creates a Santa Clause mentality. Why? Because theyre not coming back, of course, Well get what we can while the gettin is good! Saved Souls Methodologies Second, and pursuant to our first Missional Move: Saved Souls to Saved Wholes, the Saved Souls mentality of so many of us has actually accelerated much of the dependency monsters strength. A quick story will illustrate. When our friends Sandra, Jodi and Dan first started working toward a missional 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 building a long-term initiative to reach children in the Monroe Circle Community. Without much hesitation, the people we are now long-time friends with in that organization said, No, you cant work here. When our team asked why, the response was as follows. We are all Christians here in this office. We all attend church and have relationships with Jesus. But we have watched far too many church groups come into our community here 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 Vacation Bible School for some of our kids--maybe in the summer or when they can guarantee the highest attendance. They spend a week here and get the kids really attached to them. Then, at the end of the week, they have the kids all memorize a Bible verse on salvation, ask them how many 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, they promise to come back later to meet again and continue the friendships that have begun to blossom over the week. But they never do. They never come back. They go back to their churches and report how many of 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 first, the kids are hurt that their friends never return. Then, their hurt turns to confusion and, eventually, anger and resentment. This doesnt help the Kingdom of God to advance in this community. Our people have enough issues with abandonment without the church adding to it. So, no, you cant work here. In this instance, our friends at the Housing Authority had seen in action the 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 thats not how it works. True transformation comes at a very high cost for everyone involved. It takes long-term commitments from local churches, partner agencies and the community in which you are working. It requires all age-levels and representatives of the community to participate, and it requires that all parties understand that transformation is, will and must affect every area of their lives. But when you have a Saved Souls mentality you feed the dependency monsterand 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 willingness to be aggressive learners of one another along the way. Indigenous people and churches have their own culture and customs, and ultimately need to understand that the Kingdom of God will have a unique expression in their midst that will require them to champion their own transformation. Churches partnering together must realize that doing true development and transformation comes at the cost of immense education, relationship, blood, sweat, tears and long-term commitment. If any of those players enters the relationships without an understanding of the complex and fragile nature of the ecosystem in which 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 has been 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 the materially poor and the materially non-poor. Our concern is not just that these methods are wasting human, spiritual, financial, and organizational resources but that these methods are actually exacerbating the very problems they are trying to 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, the monster is loose, and is wreaking havoc in our world. We see him when NGOs and non-profits really dont want the local church involved because often, the local church destroys years of carefully laid infrastructure in a given context. He is loose when rich churches only feel valued for their financial contributions. He is loose when our brothers and sisters in impoverished settings feel that they are pets, projects or poor people with no resources of their own. So, whether from centuries of colonialism or even very well intentioned, good old fashioned but poorly implemented charity, the monster is at work, and he is crippling the advancement of the Kingdom of God.
3 When Helping Hurts, Corbett & Fikkert, p.28

THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIP: CHURCHTO-CHURCH If youre going to try to engineer partnerships between churches in a fashion that are truly transformational and not transactional, where do you start? We notice that often, when it comes to partnering with a church, whether locally in an under-resourced neighborhood, or globally in remote village, the first question most American local churches ask is, What can we go do? Thats a direct ministry question. Thats not a bad question. As pastors and church leaders, we understand the context and essential nature of that question. It actually comes from 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 first. The first time we walk through the village in a developing country or an inner city neighborhood, we only see the need -- filthy water sources or the run-down buildings. We only see the hunger. We only see the lack of education. When we start with needs and jump to direct ministry, we end up damaging the development of the local people 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 how to break out of a needs-based approach. We ask you to consider the possibility that our attempts to serve others through direct ministry, particularly when done of out sequence, are actually self-serving. Sure, we had our amazing mission experience, 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 trips have been amazing in terms of awakening millions of hearts and in moving them toward Gods heart for the poor and unreached. We are both among those people who were awakened on the field. However, a clear-eyed evaluation of the short term mission movement will reveal that weve done very little in terms of adding real and sustained value in terms of building capacity in the local people and the local churches we have served. In many cases, we have done damage. Talk to anyone who works long term in those environments and I bet theyll have a story to tell you. Our friends, whose organization runs church-based health clinics all over the world, told us such a story. A short-term team from a leading church whose name you would recognize sent a trained team to work in one of the clinics. After the team left, they had to shut down the on-going work to focus on damage control. What happened? The Americans came in ready to do stuff. Their attitudes were paternalistic, Were here to help you poor people. Get ready to have your life changed! Theyre methods were flashy, Weve got candy for the kids, free t-shirts for everyone, flashy technology, and so much more! They made promises to local leaders, I

see you need a motorcycle. I promise well get that for you. Our friends had built a fragile web of relationships that had culminated into a 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 friends hearts had extended a sacred trust to the American team who did not 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 thought you respected us. Now, we arent sure.Others enjoyed the bells and whistles and said, We like the gravy train. Can we have more free stuff? Finally, the promises of the American team created a sense of viscous competition between the local church leaders. Whereas before they had worked together with a shared concern for the community, now they were competing to see who could secure the pipeline first. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story. This story has been repeated in various forms thousands of times all over the world. Thats what happens when our first 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 approaching healthy church to church partnerships. Heres a brief summary of each (Missional Moves provides much more detail): Car Model In order for partner churches, local churches, NGOs, agencies, governments and businesses to operate in conjunction with one another around a common mission and vision, all partners must recognize that the functioning indigenous local church is the closest element to the ground of the community. If the partnership assembly were a car, the local indigenous church would be the wheels and chassis. If its not in place, the vehicle may generate power or look really cool or even have really nice roads, but its not actually going to move. 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 through sequences of mission building and capacity building in the local community. They must start by utilizing the relational credibility, currency, and continuity of the local indigenous church before attempting to move to any type of direct ministry. Bore Well Model The most effective church-to-church partnerships operate in ever-deepening layers of impact, commitment and execution. Just like a deep drill bore well in a developing nations village, deep transformational partnerships drill in. Their ministry is always deepening commitment and coaching, mentoring and mutual support into indigenous people and church leaders.

All of these models provide long-term filtering for the question, What do we do? and keep us from falling into the following common traps: Well getcha fixed right up! I (Jack) grew up in the southern part of the United States. I can tell you we Southerners, known for our Southern hospitality, have created polite ways of saying things that might otherwise be offensive. I heard a comedian say, Bless their heart,is really a covert way of saying, Theyre an idiot! One of the other terms I used to hear a lot was, Well getcha fixed right up! (Usually, the right was sort of strung out as riiiiiiiiiight). Usually, this is uttered by someone who a) doesnt really know what theyre doing, b) is probably going to make things worse than they were to begin with and 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 an auto-mechanicyoure in trouble. When engaging local communities, in your own back yard or across the world, there is a tendency to overestimate our expertise. We come into a context largely ignorant of the social and cultural nuances and say something like the following: Well, looks to me like you need fill-in the blank. Well getcha fixed right up! Then we start mobilizing teams and people to do that. Often the community in which were working, because it is either too polite or simply figures that those things cant or wont hurt, never tells us that as soon as we leave, the initiatives will either go away or lack long term sticking power. Tell us what you want! Parents will see the flaw in this immediately. The problem with want is that there are all sorts of things that I want. I want a Ferrari. Yes, a black one. Id prefer the new Ferrari 458 Italia V8 twin seat Berlinetta if anyones asking. I really want one (never mind that I couldnt even afford the insurance to have one, much less the premium gas to drive it). Do I need one? No, of course not. In fact, no one needs a Ferrari (honestly!), but thats not what you asked. You asked what I wanted. When a group of people from outside the community walks in and says, Tell us what you want, wellwe often get very Ferrari sounding answer. Tell us what you need! But thats not as easy as it sounds either. When we reflect on our own lives, well realize much of the time we honestly dont know what we need the most. Its difficult for us to distinguish the difference between what I want and what I need. On top of that, what I say about what I need is largely dependent upon who Im talking to. If my mom asks me what I need, I usually say Nothing. I have what I need when Im talking to my mom. But if my nearest friendly neighborhood billionaire asks me what I need, wellmaybe the Ferrari is back on the table! Besides, I may actually think that if I had a Ferrari, the other problems in my life might disappear. I might be single, so the Ferrari might help me find a girlfriend. I might not have

much money, so the Ferrari might make me seem more important and improve my standing at work, especially if I offer to give the boss a ride to work each morning. I dont have many friends, and everyone wants to be friends with a guy who owns a Ferrari, right? You get the idea. Needs and wants, when asked directly, often gather very different responses from the actual needs at the root of any community, and often depend greatly on who is doing the asking. How do you get at the what youre 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. First of all, we asked a lot of questions on the front end. We stole (borrowed and gave credit) from our friends at World Relief and other NGOs we respect. We read books on assessment processes. We hired consultants to teach us. We learned about various assessment methods from universities who are doing it well in training their students (such as Northwestern Universitys Asset Based Community Development Program or ABCD Method). We gathered business and non-profit leaders from within our church who already work in the community or have expertise on particular issues to tell us what they already knew. We had numerous conversations with people in the communities in which we were hoping to work on a one-on-one basis to determine what they thought. Then we began the process of determining what we really wanted to know before we ever asked the communities in which we were working about their perspectives on what would be the most helpful from a Development point of view. While our process with Monroe Circle was nearly identical to the process we used in India, for the sake of space, were only going to highlight the methodology we used in India to give an idea of how we have proceeded along our way. Consultation First, we gathered members from seven churches. These churches had pastors who had been all the way through our Bore Well training (which we unpack in Missional Moves). Each had successfully started churches with a vision for community transformation. They then supplied three members who would be passionate 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 basics that we developed through a partnership with World Relief. The following was covered: How to acquire basic demographics and psychographics for each community. How to use some basic skills/tools to look for common threads between each 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 potential development plan for the community. Community Mapping Interestingly, one of the easiest and most effective tools for gathering the community assessment data is basic community mapping. In most of the places where our church planters were working, the people in the communities were largely illiterate. To try to do large scale surveys or even verbally aided questionnaires would probably have been difficult, especially when seeking to get at the real hearts, thoughts, beliefs, values and behaviors of the people within the community. 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 very well. Rabi showed our survey teams how to do the following: The Village As It Is Sitting down first with a cross-section of the community, including both men and women, village elders and common people, adults and children. Survey teams asked various individuals to draw the community as it currently exists from their perspective. An introductory question like if a bird were flying overhead, how would they see your village? introduced the topic. As the community member began to draw, the survey team members were looking for the following sorts of features: Orientation What does the person draw first? In most instances, whatever they draw first will be their point of orientation for the life of the community--often the most important thing in the community as well. Perhaps they draw the local temple first, or a particular village elders house, or maybe their house. Whatever is first will most likely be the thing that they perceive to be the most important central structure in their community. As such, survey teams can often extrapolate a great deal about the person. As they gain more and more data from other people in the same fashion, they can determine cohesive threads throughout the community. If one person draws the temple first, the survey member might determine that the village members spiritual life may be important to them. If 75% of the people in the community draw the temple first, they can make the reasonable determination that spiritual life is very important to the bulk of the community. Sequencing What does the person draw next? Watching what the village members draw after their point of orientation may continue to provide clues as to what they perceive to be important

in their village. Do they draw houses first? Do they draw roads or temples or wells? Watching how they draw and not just what they draw may give clues as to the individual personality and skill-set of the person drawing as well as provide additional information about the perception of importance and orientation of other key structures within the village. Proximity and Perspective Sometimes, subtle things that the village member may even be unaware that they are doing might be helpful to the survey team members. For instance, if a village member draws certain houses larger than other houses in the community, they can check on the back end and see if the houses are actually larger. In many instances, the houses are not, but the village member perceives the person who lives there to be more important or prominent in village life. Or perhaps the house is the same size, but it is in better repair or looks nicer than their own. This can tip off the survey team that even though the house is not actually physically larger, there is something about it that causes it to stand out to the village member. Also, drawings of proximity may yield critical clues for follow-up by survey teams, such as whether or not houses or structures are actually closer or farther away from other structures than they actually are. In some of the remote villages in India where we have worked in the past, widowed women sometimes have to function as prostitutes in order to survive. In such instances, their houses might be drawn smaller or farther away (particularly if a woman is drawing the map) because the person perceives them as being more estranged from the community. Family members may draw houses close together where their relatives live, or may inadvertently provide details about other points of perspective that a trained survey team member may be able to use even if the village member isnt conscious of the nuances of their drawing. In the drawing insert, you will notice one of the community maps that I had a chance to personally observe in a community near Chennai. (Note: this map was drawn after survey teams had already done the initial data gathering. This was done with indigenous people; members of Granger were not present with the initial survey teams. The English writing is mine as I made notes while the village friends provided commentary on the drawing.) Heres what we found as a result of the first map: Point of Orientation The first two points drawn on the map were the main street and the body of water that serves as the other border of the small community. If you had walked through the village, you would not wonder why these were important. The village exists on a relatively narrow isthmus between a fairly heavily travelled street and a man-made lake, created by a brick kiln owner who hollowed out the land to provide mud for his kiln

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

Sequencing Next, our friend from the village drew the various lanes that branched off from the main road into their village and provided small boxes for the houses in the community. Notice that he did not draw all the houses the same. The houses with the little wavy lines on top are thatched roof houses since some of the houses in the community have concrete roofs while other (i.e. the poorer families) do not. Why is that important? Because the village member thought it was. He actually commented on this fact as he drew, and told us that many of the thatched homes were in serious danger of falling down. Later, as we walked the village, we also noticed that things we expected to be prominent features were not represented on the map at all. A well or water source was one of the biggest things that I didnt see, for example, as more remote village almost always list that in their initial map. In this particular village, water availability is virtually a non-existent issue since the nearby city has actually done a good job providing clean, running water into the little village. At the top of each lane, a PVC spigot can be seen providing as much water as any family can carry at any time they want it. Water is important, but is considered more of a given in this community, and is therefore not particularly worthy of highlighting. (Note: The women of the village most certainly consider the water source to be worthy of note since they are responsible for washing, cooking, cleaning and making sure there is enough drinking water on hand). Proximity and Perspective Want to know what else is interesting? When we asked our friend to draw his community, he did so. However, if you had been to the community, you would note that there is a rather large community within a community (i.e. a group of wealthier outsider, higher caste people who moved into their midst and created a walled compound around

themselves so that they wouldnt have to interact with our lowcaste friends) that didnt make it into the drawing at all. Why? Because our friend doesnt consider them to be part of his community. They may be a proverbial elephant in his room, but its not his elephant, so who cares about them? This exercise is not the definitive way to gain all data for a community. Our survey teams also did various other exercises, including some person-to-person questionnaires. We just found that mapping provided helpful insights which, when included with other survey tools, helped our teams to get a better handle on what the community thought about itself as well as the various values that already existed 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 village could be in the mind of the person surveyed. In this instance, we usually introduce the subject by asking, If you could remake your village in any way that you wanted, what would it look like? The following is an example of how our friend in the village described above answered this question with his artwork:

Housing First and foremost, none of the houses in his revised vision for the community have thatched roofs. They are all concrete houses and not in danger of falling down. Across the Street Next, there is privately owned land across the street that is currently off limits to the community, but under the vision for what might be possible, that land is appropriated for community use. Latrine Currently, the community members simply use the man-made lake or bushes to take care of their daily bathroom needs. Unlike their rural cousins, this village knows that other options are available, and so drew 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 laborers and work for less than a dollar a day. They have jobs like cutting firewood or hiring themselves out to farmers and business owners for simple tasks. If they could control their destinies, they would have a special place set aside where they could learn other trades and help their children to achieve better standards of living. Medical Care Center The nearest hospital or medical care facility is 5 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. The result is that in emergencies or situations of significant illness, the people have to simply stay home or wait until they are well enough to travel on foot to the hospital. Community Hall or Center Currently for weddings, funerals and other large-scale community activities, the village members have to rent out halls or facilities that cost more than they can really afford. In this vision, there is a place for them to gather for such functions, as well as for celebrations and festivals where the entire community can come together at a more affordable price. Big Church Because the church planter who introduced us to the village had been at work there for several months, many of the people in the community were deciding to follow Jesus. As a result (and I can still remember the smile on our friends face), when he drew the next item, 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 learn about Jesus! Play Area Finally, there would be a sectioned off area where children in the community could play without fear of having to be tethered to trees to keep them from running into traffic or falling into poorly crafted lakes with quickly eroding banks. If thats 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 only what it important in the existing village, but where the hearts and minds of its members are hoping and dreaming. And again, it is important to note that the above drawing was just a dream vision. We did not promise to deliver any component of the dream and the prioritization of the items within the dream. Some might argue that we set expectations by even asking the question. We hoped to minimize those expectations by having similar caste/class Indian church members do the asking rather than American survey teams. Community Prioritization Once 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 a categorization of those issues into the following three categories: 1. What can they do themselves? 2. What is the governments 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 communities can actually do a significant amount of their own development work without any outside help. Heres an example from one community who had a high incidence of Malaria infection: In the process of determining what assets and resources the 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 weekend to dig the drainage ditches on either side of the main road that came through the 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 would deter most female mosquitoes. As a result of this new to them information, the church members showed up and in a single weekend dug the ditches deeper. This team effort significantly benefitted 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 Indian government is actually responsible to deliver and do in each community, and how to access the appropriate authorities if things go wrong. Rabi, our friend from 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 broken and impassable. Everyone in the community knows it and indicates that it is a significant problem. No one in the village knows how to repair the road. What do you do? As innovative Christ-followers, our Indian brothers and sisters got together and developed very detailed plans for how their local churches might raise the funds necessary to repair the road and benefit the fictional community. Rabi encouraged them for their creative initiative and innovation, but then explained that the Indian government maintains contracts with private road construction companies to maintain roads, even in remote settings throughout India. He explained that by raising the money and fixing the problem, the contractor whom the government pays, never has to do his job, and continues to get wealthier and fatter. In response, he walked the church members through the Indian legal system, the contract system, and divisions of government. He taught them 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 fix or do. There may be things that the government will not or cannot change. This category is where we, as an outside friend to the community and ally of the local church, typically step in to help. In many of the villages where we work (particularly those that house large populations of Untouchable caste families), the Indian government often makes a cursory attempt to provide basic shelter and water, but bids those contracts out to the lowest bidder. As a result, the contractors often skimp on building supplies and resources in order to maximize profit. The wells break and the houses cave in. When the people try to navigate the Indian government system to fix it, the government responds that its obligations have been met (Its your problem now!). The result is that we often engage housing and clean water issues early on in the process in these communities, but do so with local community so that it is truly a joint effort to deliver the finished product. Even in the final category of Needing Outside Help, we try to continually make the process as We Can Do It Ourselves as much as we can. Customized Solutions Every community in the world is different. Even villages or communities within the same people group are very different. Each is a complicated eco-system of history, families, culture and relationships that are interdependent, often in ways that are completely invisible to outsiders. After our survey teams gathered community maps and prioritized surveys based on the categories above, we still asked each survey team to provide a customized development plan for each community. This prevented us from assuming that all communities need new houses, or all communities will need wells. Customizing the plan enabled us to see the diversity of need and opportunity across the board. We were also able 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 sets to intercept these issues. We did so within the customized framework of each village rather than just marching in with a bag of tricks and insisting on deploying all of them, whether the community needed them or not. It also helped us to remember that innovation and customization would be required in every single village. While such requires a high degree of work beforehand, it ultimately guarantees a higher level of impact and effect in a given community. Lars Kolind describes how the value of customization is increasing in the corporate world; we

find that it is remarkably true for local churches and transformational partnerships as well: If innovation and customization are what matter, dont be surprised if the conventional machine organization just doesnt work. In fact, the conventional company as a whole wont be successful. Thats because innovation and customization are totally different jobs compared to stable, cost-efficient mass production. The organization that can deliver innovation and mass customization is not only slightly different from the conventional manufacturing business, it is a new paradigm.4 Yeah, but how? Its usually at this point that we start to lose people. Again, all of whats above sounds really cool, but it also just sounds way too difficult for most people in most churches. And make no mistake, it is hard. But we also think its worth noting that the things that we as a local church do when operating in any environment are not things that only rocket-scientists and commandos can accomplish. We teach our 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 surgeons or become full-time health professionals. Instead of requiring Construction Team members to become licensed union carpenters, electricians, plumbers and technicians (though such people are always welcome on our teams, and we often tap their expertise for training others), we ask team members to train with local masons and do large scale demolition, debris-clearing and concrete-work. We try to focus on what our friend Mike Constantz at Saddleback Valley Community Church calls Primary and Secondary levels of Community Development. As per the chart below, you will notice that in each of the primary categories for community transformation in their church (P.E.A.C.E), they try first to focus on initiatives that the average Joe can do or be trained to do. As the process of development in the community continues over time, the development goes deeper and deeper, eventually to the point of building hospitals and seminaries, schools and universities. Some churches maybe called to do that. We dont. We focus on levels one and two. These provide focus and reasonable expectation for each team and what they will be expected to deliver when they are on the field.

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

Specialized Teams So how and when do we know what kinds of teams to send once a survey comes back and we begin to target the community for development? Most local churches have mission teams and tend to find things for that team to do. This may sound natural and logical, but its not the most effective. Instead, teams should be built to accomplish missions to solve specific problems, not the reverse. I (Jack) am a fan of Special Forces Units from all over the world. Among my favorites in the Spec Ops community are those belonging to the United States Navys famed SEAL program. Remaining from the days of World War twos UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams) units, contemporary SEALs are trained to deploy from 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 unit is highly trained, coordinated, resourced and even highly specialized within given parameters. Some may specialize in amphibious assault. Some in antiterrorism. Some in air infiltration. Regardless of their specialty, SEAL units always maximize this notion, Its problems that define missions, and missions that define teams. Teams do not define missions. Ever. Consider the following diagram:

In this example, a Team defines a Mission, and the Mission defines the Problem. The most common approach goes like this, Hey, you know what? Weve got a Mens Ministry that loves to get their hands dirty! We should go and build something in [insert country] so that we can utilize our skills! It may certainly be something that such a church leader wants to do in order to get his men into the game. But to just show up in an environment already knowing what you want to

do, then going and finding a place to do it may not yield results that will last long-term. The more strategic approach is to say, Hey, weve got a housing problem in this village in [insert country]. Most of the families are homeless and the government cut corners on their homes. When it rains, it floods the entire community and the children have to huddle under trees to try to stay dry. Wed like to send a team of people to build eight houses in this village alongside the homeless families who will be participating in the work. As you are our Mens Ministry and we know you guys love to get your hands dirty, we thought wed give you first dibs on the team slots. Are you in? This method is usually more effective. It creates the vision and problem first and then allows the team to assemble based on the mission being engineered to solve it. It is, then, more representative of the following:

In our environment in India, we only sourced a Construction Team when it became obvious that housing was a significant issue in the community in which we were working. Like the above hypothetical, the situation was, in fact, one where the government had built houses for an Irula community and sourced the contract to the lowest bidder. This bidder used roughly 1/3 of the necessary cement in their concrete mixture in order to cut costs, and so while the houses looked fine upon completion, within 3 years, they were all death traps with ceilings with walls caving in on families. Many ended up as piles of rubble. We took lots of pictures and went back to our people. In that village over the past two years, our people, in conjunction with the indigenous community, have built some 19 homes and also provided a community latrine and a community center alongside locally contracted masons. We have never had a problem sourcing or building a construction team. Why? Because the problem is massive and we have a defined mission to solve it. Once we have those two elements, Teambuilding is much easier. SEAL Team Lt. Commander Jon Cannon states, Its often tempting to invent a mission simply in order to have a mission. This is especially true when a team is looking for a way to join an exciting or lucrative project. Commandos are guilty of this just like everyone else. Commandos want to keep busy. Commandos want to take part in the war. However, billion-dollar submarines and several commandos lives shouldnt be risked simply because someone needs a notch in his belt. Billion-dollar submarines and commandos lives are risked only to accomplish objectives that are worth the possible loss of billion-dollar submarines and commandos lives. It should be no different in your world.5

Leadership Lessons of the Navy SEALs, Jeff Cannon and Lt. Cmdr. Jon Cannon, P.28-29, McGraw Hill Publishers, Copy: 2003.

Ongoing Evaluation Even after doing all of the above, just because you think something is going to work doesnt mean that it actually will. It may be a fantastic idea, look great on paper, be well-supported and even have local community and cross-agency buyin. For reasons you didnt anticipate, your idea may simply not work. It happens all the time. Rather than being frustrated by it, you simply need to make sure that you are building adequate processes of analysis and evaluation after every initiative to see how each is working. This is one of the most critical areas where trust is built with and in the community in which you are working. It demonstrates that youre not just going to charge forward, insisting that you know the best way to accomplish something in a community environment that is not your own. We actually view this more as a spiral, which we reference in Chapters 6 and 9 of Missional Moves. If you are familiar with the Hermeneutics Spiral6 in Biblestudy methods, this will sound very similar. Essentially, it is useful to do significant amounts of survey work (questionnaires, government data, etc) before actually doing anything. After each survey, you should evaluate and assess how the new information impacts or affects your perspective on the problem being solved in the community. After you have deployed it, you build in time to assess and evaluate it. You make modifications and adjustments based on how well it was received and worked, and then you re-issue another prototype based on the feedback. As you begin to notice prototypes gaining traction, you move toward implementing a program. Yes, this is painstaking work, but it is critical if you want to deliver interventions and initiatives that are truly helpful and not just something you think is helpful. One of our more humorous evolving spirals has revolved around shoes. You might think that sounds like a hard thing to mess up, but let me explain. Dr. Jim Blechl, a volunteer leader and dear friend who helps us to drive and steer everything that we do in India, is a physician in our area. In the process of developing our Health and Hygiene initiatives, Dr. Jim noted that most of the children in one of our villages did not wear shoes. Indeed, it seemed that no one in the village wore shoes. Numerous parasites were actually plaguing the people often entering directly through the soles of their feet. With the simple solution of providing shoes, the villagers would prevent the parasites from entering through the soles of their feet and by taking the shoes off (as all Indians would) before
6
their lives, and then approaches the text again but from a new vantage-point, thus allowing new and fresh transformation to occur at a whole new level, even though the text itself has not changed. The idea would be, the Text does not change you do as you are transformed by it. Originally posited by Grant Osborne, the Hermeneutics Spiral describes the process by which one repeatedly engages the Biblical text, is transformed by it, implements it into

entering their homes, prevent any feces they have walked through from entering where food is being prepared or served. So our wheels got turning. We did several sets of surveys within the community to determine if they would wear footwear if we found it and or provided it. Then we did Health and Hygiene training on parasite pathways, how footwear would counter and intervene, etc. The community seemed excited about the prospects of wearing shoes, so we came back home and started to ask questions. Then, friends and partners told us that the company who manufactures Crocs providing free distribution for impoverished settings outside of the United States. A light bulb went on in my head. We excitedly reported to our friends in India, We just found a contractor who would be willing to provide footwear for free to the people in 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 dont we just bring them over and then hand them out? The local leaders never having seen Crocs, said that they thought it was worth a shot, and so we started the process. Benefit: Crocs are amazing products. They are super-light, dont break down, are waterproof, easy to slip on and off, and are available in fun and stylish bright colors. Problem: How would we know what sizes to bring? Solution: Well trace everyones feet in the village and then bring them back with us to match up! The tracings will have a foot outline, a name and a boy/girl tag on them so that we can pick out the appropriate size and look. So we did that, and came back home with some two hundred foot tracings. Team members promptly matched the drawings up to Crocs that would fit. We then slipped the tracing into a bag along with the shoes, and even included a size bigger for kids so that they could grow into them! Voila! The next team took the Crocs to the village and distributed them amidst much fanfare. The end result was one of what we considered to be an effective prototypeuntil we assessed/evaluated it. On our next team, we performed a basic assessment of the Crocs. Very simple, really: how many people were wearing them? How many were not? If they were not, why? How can we improve the footwear issue based on what were learning? Want to know the result? In 4 months, no one was wearing the Crocs. Argh! The reasons were both legitimate and very telling. Our friends in the community told us, It was kind of you to bring the shoes. Heres the thing, though. First, they contain water when we walk through puddles. This was true, actually, and we hadnt thought of it. The same quality that made them waterproof from the outside also made them not drain if the water got into the shoe. Second, they squeak horribly when they get wet. We sound funny when we walk. Okay, also totally legitimate. Third, we feel like clowns when we wear them. Clowns? I was puzzled. They continued, We dont know how you do it in America, but everyone here prefers not to draw attention to their feet. If you look around, you will notice that everyones shoes are usually only black or brown. There are no brightly colored 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 think that this is a big deal. You might think the standard American line of beggars cant be choosers, but Id challenge that thinking. In South India, even the poorest woman tries to dress modestly and beautifully. The average Indian sari dress 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 draw too much attention to oneself. The Crocs did not accomplish that objective. They were bright and fun and stylishin the United States, but not in India. In India, the value for wearing shoes was not outweighed sufficiently by the selfconsciousness of feeling like you were wearing clown shoes. So we went back to the drawing board. We now have a decent program to provide contextualized footwear to the community at a reduced cost, so the story ends better than it starts. But, take comfort in the fact that we dont view the Crocs as a failure. Rather, we learned more about the culture, deepened our relationship with the community and partner church, and ended up with a long-term solution. Conclusion: Partnerships That Work How do these principles line up in a real world environment and utilize the practical tools listed to develop a process that will lead to community transformation with a functioning indigenous local church at the center? For us, it looks like the diagram and description below.

As we engage church-to-church partnerships for the purpose of community transformation, we are going to do so directly in no more than three villages at a time. We also do this in a staggered fashion so as not to overextend ourselves relationally or financially. Heres 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 halffunctioning well, no electricity, no latrine (the community simply used a nearby field), 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 the children in the village attended school. There was only one Christ-follower in the village. As a result, in the first eighteen months, the bulk of our time, energy and resources were spent in the following alongside the indigenous local church and the community itself: A 500-foot tap well was drilled, giving the community the deepest well

for twenty miles and ensuring that it had water even when surrounding communities did not. Nineteen of the homes in the community were either completely restored or destroyed and rebuilt. A new community center was constructed to serve as the central location for after-school tutoring, community activities and small-group Bible studies (we call it KC3 Kalavai Colony Community Center). Electricity was run from the central town grid to approximately 30% of the homes. A community latrine and two hand-washing stations were constructed to centralize waste and improve hygiene in the community. Core Health and Hygiene training along with basic parenting and Family Life skills have been introduced to fantastic effect in the community. With those goals accomplished in Village 1, teams from GCC began scouting work in Village 2 (another small Irula colony near the main city of Chennai). As planning began for the best way to engage the ramp up phase in that community, Village 1 experienced the following additional enhancements: Fifteen of the community children were enrolled in a local private English Medium school at a radically discounted rate in exchange for American speakers from GCC coming to train their teachers how to speak conversational English two to three times per year. Herds of goats operating as animal husbandry projects are now generating revenue for the community as a whole. As of June, 2011, a dozen women have graduated from a tailoring program and formed a collective in which to operate their own tailor shop alongside an import/export textile factory in town. The community formed its own governing body (the Irula Wellfare Association) and elected members to serve as a board for the distribution of microloan funds and financial resources. Friday evening prayer and Sunday morning worship services are attended by as many as thirty-five members of the community. A pastor living within the community leads the worship services, and some of the community members attend the nearby Showers of Blessings church as well on Sunday mornings. As this phase nears a close in Village 1, more funds are available for the more expensive ramp-up in Village 2. In addition, the community in Village 1 is very aware that outside intervention will begin to phase out over the course of the next three years. I had been skeptical about how this phasing out would be perceived by the community. I was shocked in November of 2010 to hear one of the young mothers in the community who has come to Christ tell us, We have been blessed by your friendship. You are our family and we are yours. Other communities around us tell us that we are blessed, and we tell them about the God who has brought us together. We already pray for you that you will be able to go and help other communities as you have helped us.

They are not angry we are leaving because they know we are equipping them to function 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 coaching process with other communities, serving as a model for self-sufficiency, moving into interdependence together with them. This ensures that we continue to love, grow and see one another. Our relationship is one where we are both moving forward as equals to take ground for the Kingdom together. We have relationship of reciprocity and interdependence where we both lead and we both follow in a dance of exceptional beauty as we work together to advance the Kingdom in that area of the world. Much of where GCC is attempting to go next in terms of building Missional Communities and impact our community will incorporate lessons we have learned on the field in India or from our friends at Monroe Circle. When we have a relationship of interdependence, we recognize that while we do not need each other 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 learn together, both from India and as a function of GCCs own operation in Granger. When church-to-church partnership is working, it becomes a force for amazing good in the world as opposed to the monster that dependency creates.