Partnering in Netville

Develop Strategies

As the 18 youth workers sat around indulging their brownbag lunches, clusters of four and five laughed and chided each other over the personal anecdotes they had experienced over the past few weeks. The monthly Netville Youth Worker Coalition meeting was about to begin, and this informal bantering around the room was a vital element of their gathering.

After introducing Greg, the new youth pastor at Netville Assemblies of God Church, Chad, the coordinator, reminded everyone of the homecoming events at Netville High School scheduled for the next week. He suggested that it would be a great opportunity to get on campus, hang out with kids, and meet some school administrators.

Chad then asked if any others had some highlights or needs to share. Rocky from FCA and Tami from Young Life both mentioned groups of kids at Netville High they were spending time with, and asked if any of the youth pastors had kids in those campus groups. Jake from the Nazarene church referred to two juniors who were on the volleyball team that Rocky was working with.

They decided to call later in the week to discuss how to better reach out to the rest of the volleyball team during the coming road trip to the state tournament. Jake and Rocky had already been exploring how to better team up as a local church and ministry organization.

All four junior high youth workers present were excited about working together at Netville Junior High, assisting the activities director with lunchtime games on Wednesdays. They estimated that over the last three months, several kids had asked them "Why are you here?" and that collectively they had seen about 30 students visit their different church youth groups.

Chad then turned the meeting to the day's topic, asking "How do you use short-term mission trips in your ministry?" After some passionate give-and- take, idea sharing and stories of "mission trip disasters," Chad took a moment to summarize the discussion and asked if anyone had comments.

Jolene, the Baptist youth worker, asked if anyone wanted to meet and talk about working together on a special mission project to the city's homeless shelter during Christmas break. She mentioned how her youth were deeply impacted every time that they had gone. She went on to report that "The Shelter" was urging them to come every month and to invite other groups to join them. Their director had just called to say, "Our homeless children and their parents love everything you do for them, and they have begged us to have you back."

Tywone said he'd meet with Jolene to talk about working on this. His church had recently been considering how to get their youth involved over the Christmas break in an "others-focused" project.

As the meeting closed, the youth workers divided into small groups to pray. In one prayer huddle, four youth workers laid their hands on Renee's shoulders, asking God to protect and give wisdom to her as she was facing criticism and a challenging meeting with a few "concerned parents" the next Sunday. Roberto was also prayed for as he and his pastor had to deal with some misunderstandings and their relationship was now strained.

Networking in Netville

This parable of "Netville USA" is typical of many local youth worker gatherings. But what is really going on here?

Embedded in every local network are snapshots of partnering that take place. In reality, various "micro-partnerships" take place under the relational umbrella of an area-wide network.

For a long time now, youth ministries have networked together. In many settings, the lingo has morphed into "partnership language." Yet, language in our evangelical culture can become neutered of its meaning - or so generic - it can be misunderstood.

What you hear in your mind when someone says, "Hey, let's network our efforts" or "We want to partner with you" might be very different, depending on your experience. For instance, it may mean one thing to a local church youth pastor, but something entirely different to a national organization's project leader calling about next year's area-wide event.

Degrees of Partnership

As youth ministry culture has matured, it has become less common for a youth worker to work exclusively "solo." Both locally and nationally, youth workers believe in networking as vital to their personal health and the advancement of their ministry vision.

Today, doing life and ministry in community with other youth workers is more the norm than the exception. Yet in spite of this wonderful sense of interdependence, youth workers approach networking with their own expectations, assumptions and motivations.

Take a look at look at the Partnering Continuum (graphic) and consider the various types of involvement from Connecting, Cooperating, Coordinating and Collaborating. All of these elements and degrees of commitment are typically present in a healthy local network, as well as in national initiatives (such as See You at the Pole) or coalitions (such as the Campus Alliance). You can click on the image to increase its size.

Networks and Partnerships 

All of us have our own networks, both formal and informal. Most ministry networks fall under the "connecting" column, defined as: A group of people who are linked informally and who communicate with one another to share ideas and information to meet their individual needs.

The key activities of a network are introductory relationships and communication. Of course, there are different types of networks, and they can vary greatly in character and complexity. But generally speaking, networks tend to focus on information sharing and relational connections.

In our Christian youth ministry context, networks have provided a place for youth workers to connect with others who have a common interest, whether it's community-oriented, school- focused, or just to get to know and support each other as youth workers.

And this brings us to the distinction of the meaning and use of the word "partnership," loosely defined as: A close working relationship between individuals and/or ministries, who agree to work together for a specific purpose because they can achieve more together than by themselves.

Some Networks engage in a fairly low level of partnering. Their members cooperate together, but have little interest in planning ongoing work in a comprehensive manner together. Others engage in a much higher level of partnering, where there is comprehensive planning together for much of their work, and where they pool their resources.

It may be helpful to emphasize that while a local network may not necessarily be a true "partnership," the relationships that are built may result in members of a network moving towards partnering together.

For instance, all the members of a local network may commit to work on a specific project that benefits everyone - where "the entire network" invests time, money and personnel to advance the kingdom of God in a specific area. Recent examples include large area-wide evangelism campaigns, city-wide training events or See You at the Pole rallies.

In other cases, a subset of the network may spin off to cooperate, coordinate or collaborate to accomplish a vision which they share a unique interest in pursuing. It's possible that only three or four youth workers engage in the work, and thus accept the risk and the reward. Yet, the whole network is the source of their initial connection and stimulates the dreaming of "what could be..." The anecdotal story of the junior high youth workers teaming up to run activities at Netville Junior High is one illustration.

All or Nothing?

Occasionally youth workers communicate frustration that their local network doesn't work together more effectively. But even in cases in which the entire network of area churches and youth workers does not rally behind one project or event, there may still be advances being made through subsets or clusters of youth workers teaming up for a special effort of common interest.

Even though all members of a network may not fully engage or participate in every event or project, this fact is compelling: Formalized networks are the incubator where partnerships are formed and kingdom efforts advanced.

If you ask enough questions of those involved in healthy collaborative efforts, you soon discover that ongoing partnerships that produce lasting spiritual fruit have typically been birthed and strengthened from within a formal ongoing network.

The bottom line: networks create an environment for community and communication, from which partners can roll up their sleeves and invest themselves in efforts where more is gained together than if each one worked alone. By the way, how many "partnerships" can you spot in the story from Netville USA?

How would you describe your network? Where do you see it on the Partnership Continuum? Take a look at the Interactive below to help your partnerships to become stronger in your network.

---

Interactive 

You might find it helpful to gather some core leaders of your network (or prospective network) to discuss where your group is on the Partnership Continuum. It may well lead to ways you can collaborate for greater effectiveness.

Have your leaders read through the article online or print the PDF version.

1. Ask them to consider the following questions, and then discuss it together:
2. Where would they put your network on the Continuum? Why?
3. What examples have you seen as you've worked together that have led to the "Collaboration" side of the line?
4. What impact did they have on kingdom growth in your community?
5. What barriers do you see that make greater cooperation difficult (e.g., history of conflict between ministries or key leaders, denominational or doctrinal issues, nobody has ever talked about it before, etc.)?
6. What are some measurable steps your group might take to advance a climate of cooperation, and possibly see collaboration happen more organically in your ministry community?