Collaboration Across Countries

Part One: Norway. Philippines. Australia. Cambodia.

Taken as a collective, these countries aren’t typically thought of as similar. Humanity has a history of dividing the world into neat, easy categories based on geographic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and philosophical lines. We rely on these categories to make sense of our world because even a cursory glance at these four countries shows that they speak different languages, have different economic engines, celebrate different holidays, have different cultural and societal mores, etc…. Yet more and more they rely on each other, often in invisible ways.

It’s almost a cliché today to speak of our globally connected world, we hear about it all the time and easily see it on TV or through a quick Internet search. We know that we are increasingly reliant on people we’ve never met or spoken with to buy our goods and services to keep the world economy moving. Countries trade grain for cell phones, pop music for washing machines, ideas for oil. Most of us know and recognize the importance of that interdependence in the economic and political sectors of our lives, yet we might not have given serious thought to how the global church is increasingly a similar force in our lives.

We need each other. The church needs our brothers and sisters. Just as the world’s superpowers are becoming more a coalition of like-minded nations than a single, dominant nation, the church is a group of global people connected in local ways that can change the fabric of our world through interdependence and collaboration.

Global thinking can teach us new ways of developing leaders, allow us to hear new strategies for meeting the changing emotional needs of our neighbors, collaborate across ethnic and linguistic lines to strengthen the local church, trade resources to continue planting more and more churches, and swap stories for encouragement and growth. This type of collaboration is the way of the future, the way of Jesus’ Great Collaboration command as seen in John 17:20-23: 

“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. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

God’s intent was that the church would be a global family, a global entity to reach ALL people, in ALL locations, at ALL times. And for the first time in history, that is within our reach!

But this can only happen if we look past shallow, surface differences to see what we can learn from each other. Being content with thinking that our problems and our congregations are unique won’t take us very far. Old attitudes close us off from the global wisdom of the church and keep us isolated instead of engaged.

We need each other. A good case study for this can be seen by looking at how the church is at work in Norway, Cambodia, Philippines, and Australia.

Part Two: How Collaboration could solve isolation in Western Europe and Southeast Asia

We need each other. And while most of us know and recognize the importance of interdependence in the economics and politics, we might not have given serious thought to how the global Church is increasingly a similar force in our lives. The Church is a group of global people connected in local ways that can change the fabric of our world through interdependence and collaboration.

 An example of how similar the Church’s experiences can be despite seemingly disparate exterior circumstances can be seen in comparing Cambodia and Norway. A quick look at these two countries wouldn’t suggest that the emotional landscape of the people are similar, but they are in surprising ways.

 For several decades, Cambodia experienced civil war and genocide as different factions fought for political supremacy. The fighting ended a few decades ago, but not before distrust became woven into society. For years and years, people hadn’t known if their neighbors were informants for one of the other sides, causing vast chasms in people’s emotional lives. This distrust and isolation separated people into intensely loyal family groups, but bred loneliness and isolation into the very culture.

 In Norway, in contrast, an economic boom and stable government combined with traditional Norwegian independence has had unintended emotional results. Fierce independence and the desire to succeed has resulted in 41% of people now living alone. Long-term marriage or partnership has dropped off, and a rise in the construction of single-occupancy apartments and houses reflects this trend. Loneliness is now cited as one of the biggest struggles for most Norwegians.

 Increasing economic affluence also ensures that Norwegians have a strong governmental safety net, lessening opportunities for church involvement in poverty prevention. It is a situation that many countries can only dream of being in (not having poverty as a prevalent issue in our communities), yet it has brought about unique struggles for the Norwegian church. Churches in Norway increasingly have to justify their existence in a society where the church is still linked to complicity with the Nazi regime, and is seen as flat-out irrelevant to modern society.

This loneliness is not the result of trauma, as it is in Cambodia, but the results of this emotional isolation are the same. In both countries, people are suspicious of large gatherings of people and of organizations. Staying isolated means staying safe, not opening yourself up to disappointment when people inevitably disappoint. It’s often easier in the short term to live a lonely life than to risk being caught up in someone else’s struggles or deal with someone else’s quirks. The result is isolated and lonely people who are suspicious of the church and its emphasis on communal living and deep connection.

Yet human nature hasn’t changed, connection is a human need, and so loneliness rises up with isolation.

Today, churches in Cambodia are seeking to reintegrate trust into people’s lives by mentoring and discipling new believers. Yet the Cambodian church constitutes only 0.4% of the population and struggles with finding older mentors in the faith? Who will leaders learn from? This is where global connections are helping Cambodian churches meet needs with leadership resources that are contextualized. As the first generation of Christians are mentored, the bedrock for a strong Cambodian church is laid.

And the Norwegian church is staying relevant is by focusing less on alleviating the virtually non-existent poverty and instead seeking to connect people in vital emotional ways. This includes connecting to churches in other parts of the world for needed poverty-work and providing opportunities for Norwegians to be changed through this work. The church seeks to become a place where loneliness is eradicated by providing real, human-connection and life.

Given the huge increase in access to technology, it’s now possible that leaders in Norway and Cambodia could sit down to talk about how loneliness looks in their countries and brainstorm ways to come alongside lonely people. Loneliness, no matter the root cause, is increasingly an epidemic in modern society. Together these different countries can work to find ways to salve that emotional pain with the love of Christ.

Part Three: Oceania to Philippines, United

 We need each other.  When we look at how different the region of the world known as Oceania can be, from Australia to Indonesia to Papua New Guinea to the Philippines – it can be overwhelming because it is a diverse group of nations and people groups. These countries are often separated by politics, religion, and language and yet find themselves vastly reliant through their political and economic interdependence. Finding commonality can be difficult, even for the Church, but is so vitally needed.

 Most churches in the Philippines face poverty daily. Their leaders have no shortage of people wanting to gather together, but they often lack the affluence that would allow that to happen in a building, and services often fall prey to the elements. New churches in poor areas or rural areas are formed under trees or around the railroads, where shantytowns are built on government land to provide rent-free housing for the country’s poorest.

 The Filipino church will not be stopped by a shortage of buildings, yet in the face of so much material poverty, it is often difficult to get people mobilized because the need is overwhelming. Yet these believers remind us that buildings are just structures that facilitate the people of God to meet. They aren’t as necessary as the more affluent areas of the world like to think. Creative solutions yield huge results.

 Meanwhile in Australia, mainline denomination churches are diminishing because while the country’s demographics have shifted, the established church’s demographics have not, becoming skewed toward people over 60 years old and majority white. This inability to reach the new, immigrant populations has led to older churches closing in record numbers.

Meanwhile, these new immigrants speak other heart languages and do not feel welcomed in older, mostly white and English-speaking church spaces. As a result, increasing numbers of these believers have formed house churches centered on culture and language groups. These churches have vibrant, young life but are separated from each other by language and culture, forming barriers to seeing the whole diversity of the church in Australia utilized in changing their society.

Gathering spaces can be a barrier for many churches to grow and thrive – we see this globally, but the example of the Philippines and Australia provides interesting examples of what can happen when Christians get creative.

In the Philippines, despite economic scarcity, buildings are slowly being built to house and shelter these exposed churches through new partnerships with churches across the world. Through the sharing of global economic resources, we see lives and whole churches changed.

 In Australia, a movement of ethnic house churches are partnering with the older white churches, bringing life and vibrancy to each. This partnership uses already existing buildings to help facilitate growth as established church leaders are taught how to be bridges. Using the experience of immigrant church leaders to show how to form welcoming and inclusive multi-ethnic churches strengthens the global church, providing blueprints for other countries who are experiencing a similar demographic changes.

God is at work in these collaborations, showing us how the whole Church can benefit. Their examples remind us that churches are the people, not the buildings. We can and should get creative about meeting together. Churches are unstoppable when we utilize the full expression of our God-given gifts of ingenuity, creativity, and financial stewardship.

Part Four: The Shift of the Great Collaboration

We need each other! And so, in Norway, churches are finding ways to contribute to people’s emotional well being by giving time through their talents and relationships. Rather than focusing on poverty work, like many churches globally must do, they are ministering to lonely and isolated people. This experience can guide many countries that are on track for having similar levels of isolated and lonely adults. In addition, Norwegian churches are using their economic affluence to partner with churches in India and other places in the world, which has allowed them to have an impact outside of their communities and show their neighbors what Christian love and collaboration look like. 

Cambodian churches are finding ways to build connection to people by pulling on the international leadership skills offered by churches globally. These leadership trainings give perspective and reassurance of how God has shown up to change cultures across the world while giving practical tools to invest in the next generation, knowing that they in turn will become the mature leaders needed for the church to expand and grow into a thriving force in a still-recovering country. Loneliness and isolation can open the door for the church to meet real emotional needs.

The Filipino church is finding innovative ways to have church gatherings happen despite material abundance. They aren’t daunted by the challenges, but can remind the global Church that church is the group of people, not the building. As their partnerships with other churches flourish though, more and more churches are given the gift of security from temperamental weather. This will help them to weather the storms of cultural change happening.

And this new movement of house churches partnering with established denominations in Australia provides hope for countries undergoing similar demographic shifts. We have reason to trust that the Church is a global body, united in Christ, given gifts that can bless one another and lead us to fuller and truer engagement with each other and our contexts.

Meanwhile, there is so much potential for collaboration. Church leaders from the Philippines can sit down the church leaders in Australia to talk about the dynamics of house churches and what their transition from informal to formal settings has been like, gleaning experience from each other. Together they can provide wisdom for the gathering of God’s people.

Additionally as demographics shift in Norway with more refugees and immigrants being welcomed, church leaders in Australia could provide their stories and experiences for perspective and encouragement to show that bridging ethnic and linguistic can have powerfully positive impacts on the Church.

We are not alone. Ministry can be hard, and our situations can feel unique and insurmountable. Yet out of the box solutions happen when churches aren’t afraid of embracing the changing demographics and emotional needs, but see them as new expressions of God’s work and opportunity for ministry. We see this in Norway, in Australia, in the Philippines, in Cambodia, and across the world.

In a world where everything changes rapidly, we know that in a decade our environments will look different because of globalization – our culture, our language, our economy, and even our churches will be different. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and watch it happen while fretting.

Engaging in collaborative efforts strengthens each of us, from providing leadership training, to ushering in paradigm shifts, to bringing spiritual revival, to being examples of bridging seemingly impossible ethnic or language barriers, to providing wisdom and experience. Together the church is poised to be on the front edge of this new world.  

To do this, we focus not on building our own kingdoms, our churches, our multi-sites, but began to think about how we can contribute to the world and in turn be changed. A shift is happening!

But the biggest shirt is that for the upcoming church generation, we will no longer be content to think of ourselves as the church of America, or the church of Cambodia, or the church of Norway. No, we are the global Church and we are interconnected, collaborative, and poised to change the fabric of our world.

Are you ready?

This first appeared on NewThing’s blog as a four part series on May 6th, 13th, 20th, and 24th, 2019.