Lausanne World Pulse – Church/Parachurch Relations: The Body of Christ at Work
By John Pellowe
Christ the Living Word is growing today because Melodie Bissell and CEF made the decision that CEF would commit to the local church. Instead of running CEF programs under their own name, they do all their ministry in partnership with the local church. Last summer they partnered with ninety-six churches, and it was each church’s name that was featured, not CEF’s. Nearly 2,600 children participated in the programs, and each one was introduced to a local church. CEF lost some of its public identity but saw its mission advanced.
This kind of radical paradigm shift has also occurred at Campus Crusade for Christ Canada, under the leadership of Leonard Buhler. According to Buhler, “We coined this phrase where we shifted from saying, ‘Come join us’ to ‘Come use us.’ Where before we would say, ‘Come join our project, our time, our place,’ we now say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing to build your community, your church, to reach the people that you want to reach.’”
An example of how this change is worked out is the Athletes in Action program. In the past, it took kids out of their communities to attend a soccer camp run by Campus Crusade personnel. Today, Campus Crusade trains local church members to run their own camp in their own community. During the first year under the new model, the number of soccer camps increased from nine to twenty-seven.
2. Churches rethink their ministries. The change must not be only from parachurch ministries. Pastors must come to realize that nondenominational ministries can help them overcome some of their own limitations. Lloyd Eyre, senior pastor of Peterborough Free Methodist Church in Peterborough, Ontario, says his church wanted to plant a church, but at the same time his youth pastor wanted to reach a downtown group which would not come to a conventional church. This group believed their cultures were too different.
The solution to the cultural limitation was to plant a church jointly with Kawartha Youth for Christ, who did know how to reach the downtown people. The resulting church, Third Space, now has between sixty and seventy people attending.
Local churches are also limited by their geographical locations. Parachurch ministries can help local churches with global vision extend their reach. Jim Maley, missions program manager at Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, says his church decides where it wants to work and then finds nondenominational ministries doing the work it wants done. He cites an example: “Wycliffe Bible Translators, based in Calgary, gives us an opportunity to get the gospel into an area where they wouldn’t otherwise have the gospel. We don’t expect Wycliffe to do anything for our church other than do this work for us.”
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