Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Global Alliances as a Strategy for Proactive International Integration

By Benjamin Paul Dean
November 2006

Countless organizations are expanding their transnational activities through partnerships and alliances.

The dynamics of globalization are driving ministries and missions toward greater international integration as surely as it has impacted international business. Advances in technology have enabled the crossing of international borders with increasing regularity and relative ease. Countless organizations and institutions are expanding their transnational activities through partnerships and alliances, and are thus experiencing the effects of a dramatically diverse array of cultures and worldviews. How can leaders of international ministries and missions help their organizations not just to cope with the challenges, but to proactively seize new opportunities resulting from globalization?

Powerful Forces Impel Organizations Toward Greater International Integration
Globalization represents the long-term process by which the world and its myriad of peoples are becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent in nearly every dimension of society. It involves interactive social process on a worldwide scale in which people interrelate, communicate and work in an increasingly culturally-diverse setting. The phenomenon became widely recognized in the 1980s and has become a reality for organizations in every developed and developing nation.¹ Organizations of every kind are operating today in an environment that continues to become increasingly global and culturally diverse.

Globalization presents major challenges and significant changes, yet new opportunities also emerge. For churches, mission agencies and other ministry organizations that want to make a positive impact beyond national borders, and hope to thrive within an environment of increasing international integration, a firm grasp of the challenges and changes proves crucial to recognizing and seizing these strategic opportunities.

New Dynamics Continue to Compel Changes to Old Mental Frameworks
The new global reality that organizations and their leaders face is a rapidly changing international context. The intercultural dynamics of increasing globalization demand strategic cultural thinking and a global mindset that sees beyond national borders and is open to exchanging new ideas. Leaders of all organizations find themselves increasingly working in a fluid environment requiring flexible thinking to adapt quickly to new and different intercultural environments. Globalization itself need not be feared or resisted. While the powerful dynamics driving globalization can produce unpredictable effects, the forces themselves are morally neutral and must be purposefully navigated. Globalization trends enhance an interconnectedness that carries the potential for expanding international ministry through healthy integration and biblical interdependence.

The leadership challenge that globalization presents in missions today arises in understanding these fluid and unpredictable dynamics and then harnessing international integration to achieve biblically righteous objectives by building relationships grounded in mutual respect and trust, engaging in healthy interdependence cross-culturally and extending global community centered on God’s kingdom culture. In missions ministry, globalization not only continues to break down paternalistic approaches to “partnering” in missions, but it accomplishes much more by moving us beyond mental models and strategies of simple indigenization.

Benjamin Paul Dean is global partnerships director for Pioneers in Orlando, Florida, USA. He holds J.D. and LLM degrees in law and is a doctoral candidate at Regent University (Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA), researching intercultural leadership.