Doing mission in partnership is the faithful way to go, most people agree. It’s good witness for Christians to work together. We gain the benefits of greater numbers and resources in tackling the faith-sized mission and ministry we have on our hearts. And there’s the practical dimension: We avoid duplicating efforts where our ministry initiatives overlap significantly with other ministries.

The Will/Skill Divide

Many leaders appear to believe that creating a successful partnership is mainly an act of the will, of "getting around to it." Oh, that it were so! Efforts built on an abundance of good intentions and good will, however, have floundered just as routinely as those without. This quandary begs the deeper questions: Can we accomplish enduring collaboration by running on good intentions? Or are there perhaps necessary, identifiable partnership skills—key principles to observe if groups are to work together successfully?

Doing partnership takes "will," certainly. Without the conviction that we can do more together than we can do separately, any attempt to work together may be flawed from the start. The heart has to be in it.

But the heart has its limits. Good intentions start the journey but they lack power to actually reach the goal. People don’t know what they don’t know—and lacking that crucial information, it can be all too often a case of the blind leading the blind.

The Skills of Collaboration

That’s where networking skills enter the scene. Networking and partnership specialists have observed the same cycle over and over again—eager and willing organizations launching hopefully into collaborative ventures, only to bump headlong into predictable but unseen obstacles that trip up their effort. When failure comes, relationships are strained (sometimes never to recover), and collaboration is written off as impractical in the real world. For the participants, it’s back to their separate ways.

This pattern is tragic because it is preventable. Networking skills are not quite like brain surgery, but like brain surgery, we don’t want someone operating on us who doesn’t have high-level, practiced skills. We want someone who has learned under great mentors and teachers. So it is with the delicate work of drawing together distinct organizations into a collaborative effort. Why do we think networking can be approached without learning from experienced practitioners in the field.

Collaboration Trajectory

Partnership, in short, takes will—and skill. It takes the will to persevere forward into the good land of stronger, broader ministry gained only by working together and the skills of successful collaboration to move groups of organizations past the many challenging roadblocks and barriers.

Navigating the Shoals with a Steady, Trained Hand

Like a trained captain who knows the boat and the sea, gaining the skills of collaboration help emerging networks and partnerships navigate the dangerous shoals by...

• Creating a level field for participation among ministries that vary in size, tradition, and approach yet share core convictions.
• Dealing with strong egos and ministries that tend to dominate or propose that others simply follow their lead.
• Preserving the sovereignty of each ministry while discovering new ways to work together.
• Countering the tendency to set unachievable objectives that break momentum and create a downward spiral.
• And dealing with a raft of other typically encountered problems.