Yesterday, we held a joint service with a partner church in Rochdale. We have been so privileged to partner with them first in the planting of their church and, later, in supporting them as an established church. So, why did we decide to hold a joint service together yesterday? There were several reasons.

Church-to-church not pastor-to-pastor

Primarily, we are interested in church partnerships. We are, however, conscious that often partnerships start and end at a leadership level. It’s very easy for two pastors to become friends, to want to support each other and their respective ministries, and even to develop some sort of gospel partnership out of that. For the record, that is a perfectly reasonable and decent place to begin. It’s just that often partnership then stays at the level. The churches themselves are not really involved in the partnership at all.

We were keen to make sure our partnership between the church in Rochdale and the church in Oldham is genuinely between our churches. Yes, we two pastors are indeed friends. But what happens if and when one of us isn’t there anymore for whatever reason? We wanted to try and make sure the partnership endured. The best way to make sure it continues is to work to try and involve the whole church as far as possible in the partnerships. The simplest and easiest level is to get them praying through prayer letters, but far more effective is seeing the ministry and meeting with the people we support. Having a joint service was a way of making sure the whole church are engaged in partnership, not just the pastors.

Encouragement

I don’t think I am letting any cats out of any bags by telling you we are not exactly a massive church. But despite our not being massive, we are a reasonable size in terms of churches in deprived communities (another post for another day, but how sad it is that what would otherwise be considered a relatively small-small/medium church in UK terms is big in a deprived place because we have so few here). And as small as we may be, compared to us, our partners up in Rochdale are tiny.

Now, it bears saying there are definitely thing even tiny churches can do really well. Actually, some things they can do far, far better than big churches. But there are also some limitations, particularly as far as everything might feel on a Sunday in the ordinary run of things. These are limitations I remember only too well when we were a similarly tiny concern.

One way we thought we could both improve our partnership whilst encouraging our partner church was to meet together. We could encourage them by bringing them into a church and adding them to a slightly larger group of people able to sing and pray together in a way that isn’t always so easy in a smaller meeting. It was also an encouragement to us to see a set of faithful believers willing to come and meet with us so that we could hear more about their work and engage ourselves further with their ministry. I know it was an encouragement to our people to feel more involved with the ministry in Rochdale by meeting with the church from that place and I hope it was an encouragement to their church as they met with us, saw us in situ and heard our prayers for them on their behalf first hand (among the other possible encouragements of being part of a larger gathering).

Partnership not paternalism

It’s very easy as the (slightly) bigger partner to send a bit of money, send one or two people and make sure we are regularly updated about the ministry over there whilst patting ourselves on the back for all the wonderful help we are giving. It can be easy to fall into a sense of being the “bigger partner” or, let’s be honest, the “more important partner”. We are particularly keen to avoid any hint of that.

Happily, in our case, whilst I might have been an Independent longer than my counterpart in Rochdale – so I might have particular insights for him as he think about the nuts and bolts of setting up within Independency having left the Church of England – he is still older and far more experienced in ministry than I am. So, any sense that I might paternalistically offer my insights and wisdom is, if we can be totally honest, entirely misplaced and would be both arrogant and entirely unwarranted. I don’t think I actually do that (because it would be stupid of me to do so) but the age and experience thing certainly help should I ever be tempted to try. But I suppose it would be easy to view us as doing them the massive favour with our support rather than view matters as they really are, a proper partnership.

But that being the case, we need to develop ways for partnership to be expressed as partners. So, it was great to have the pastor from Rochdale preach for us and serve us that way whilst we served them with a few more people to sing along with them. As friends, I have certainly been served in a whole host of ways through regularly meeting up and chewing the fat that wouldn’t necessarily have easily developed. If you listen to our weekly podcast, I think it’s clear there is no senior or superior partner between us. But it’s great for our churches to see that too and to meet together as partners both seeking to reach our respective areas – that are so similar in many ways – with the good news of the gospel.

So, for those reasons – and perhaps a few others – we had a joint service which was greatly encouraging. I think we managed to strengthen our partnership, to get our respective churches to get to know each other better, to hear directly and feel more involved with each other’s ministries and to make sure that the partnership is truly church-wide. I hope we will be able to do it again D.V.