What is Kingdom Collaboration
With the collapse of Christendom, it is more important than ever for the church in North America to develop a Kingdom perspective. To experience Gospel transformation we must learn to collaborate with others in our cities. But what does it mean to collaborate?
The Latin word is collaborare, which is the combination of the prefix “co” (derived from the Latin word “com”), meaning “with or together,” and the word laborare, which means “to labor, toil, or struggle.” To collaborate, therefore, is to labor together, even struggling for a common purpose. Collaboration is an active and deliberate effort at working together.
People often use words like “connect,” “coordinate,” or “cooperate” interchangeably with the word “collaborate.” However, this tends to limit the power of genuine collaboration.
When we connect with someone, we meet together. Share ideas. We may even know another person well. But that is not collaboration. We are simply connected.
When groups coordinate, it means they are going to work together, rather than compete. But this is not the same as collaborating, because the success of the two groups remains separate.
Collaborating also is not the same as cooperating. When we cooperate, we help one another. We assist others when they have a need. When we cooperate, we may work together for a common purpose, but usually none of the parties takes responsibility for the outcome. Further, cooperation often speaks of being passive, rather than active. We go along with what someone else wants to do. Lastly, cooperation is normally additive, not multiplicative. In other words, our efforts are not multiplied; instead, we simply add the resources of the two groups together. (1)
Collaboration, on the other hand, is doing more together than we could do alone. Inter-dependency is woven together for the greater good. Instead of the addition of resources, synergy multiplies when we do things together. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts.
The goal of collaboration as a church is the spiritual and social transformation of a city. Spiritual transformation occurs when people begin to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds. and strength (Luke 10:27). Societal transformation happens when people love their neighbors as themselves and, as a result, strive to bring about the restoration of the broken places and systems of their city (Isa. 58:12).
But what does it look like to be a collaborator with others in your city? Here are three key characteristics of an effective collaborator:
1. Collaborators have a kingdom perspective
The “kingdom of God” (or “kingdom of heaven”) was Jesus’ favorite way of talking about the gospel. The language is unmistakable throughout the Gospels: “The kingdom of heaven is like this,” “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” “The kingdom of God has come near,” “until the kingdom of God comes,” “I must preach the kingdom of God.”
But how are we to grasp the way Jesus spoke of the kingdom? A good place to start is to understand that the word “kingdom” is a combination of two words: “king” and “domain.” It refers to the realm of a king’s dominion, including his decrees, codes, and commands. Citizens in a kingdom must abide by the laws of their king and give him their total allegiance. A kingdom refers to the king’s reign, where what the king wants done, gets done.
Now for our purposes, let’s understand the kingdom of God to be God’s active reign through history, bringing about His purposes in the world through Jesus. In the simplest of terms, the kingdom of God is what the world lookslike when King Jesus gets His way.
In the book Kingdom First, author Jeff Christopherson challenges us to consider the kingdom this way:
Although brokenness abounds within individuals, institutions, and structural systems, there is good news. Jesus, our triumphant King, wants things to be much different in our damaged world. He desires to bring the peace of His atonement and His eternal victory into all the manifestations of brokenness in our world (according to Col. 1:19–20). While we now live in the tension that we will not wholly see the fullness of Christ’s peace until the new heaven and the new earth, there is a promise of peace where sorrow currently abounds. This is the gospel of the Kingdom....
According to Jesus, who is the gospel, He Himself proclaimed the good news, liberated captives, healed the sick, freed the oppressed, and brought the Lord’s favor to the least. All of this was Jesus’ activity on this earth and His fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesy. This work of our King is what brings the Kingdom of God to the dark and broken realities of a desperate world. Peace where there was chaos. Healing where there was pain. Comfort where there was deep sorrow. Wholeness where there was systemic fragmentation. (2)
A church leader with a kingdom perspective sees the church as an outpost of the kingdom that exists to bring God’s influence into the affairs of the community. This will certainly involve proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, for the purpose of seeing people reconciled to God and each other, through the atoning work of Jesus. But a leader with a kingdom-centered perspective also will speak up about a broader range of kingdom concerns. They will see the necessity of working to address quality-of-life issues like health care, literacy, institutional and generational poverty, racism, and the environment.
Church leaders whose priority is simply to build their church are not functioning in proper alignment with a kingdom perspective. Church activities that function primarily to keep church members happy violate the true nature and essence of the church. We simply cannot fully understand the scope and depth of the congregation’s mission unless we see it in relation to the kingdom of God in the world. The church must embrace and embody a new narrative that is motivated by God’s mission and kingdom concerns rather than church issues.
Church planters with a collaborative vision will see their church as an instrument of something much greater than themselves. They are tools of the kingdom of God. We in the church often wrongly assume that the primary activity of God is in the church, rather than recognizing that God’s primary activity is in the world, and the church is God’s instrument sent into the world to participate in His kingdom mission of redemption. It is interesting to note that being an instrument of the kingdom represents an active role. In other words, we are actively discovering ways to join in the kingdom agenda. We are constantly looking for ways to participate in God’s mission. For this reason, Paul can address Christians as “co-workers for the kingdom of God” (Col. 4: 11) and consider them to be “suffering” for the reign of God (2 Thess. 1: 5).
Collaboration is so closely tied to a kingdom perspective because when we fully grasp the grand nature of the kingdom, we will begin to recognize this kind of work can’t be accomplished in isolation. We will view the city through a wider lens, one that must involve collaboration with other churches.
One church inherently has a limited view of the needs and assets in the community. Churches working together for community transformation will have a much broader, more realistic picture and holistic understanding of the needs —and therefore can do a better job of meeting the needs.
2. Collaborators seek the welfare of the city
In the prophetic book of Jeremiah, we read how the nation of Israel had forsaken God’s law and, as a result, found themselves taken into captivity and exiled far from their Jerusalem homeland. God had sent the Babylonian empire to discipline His people. As they were relocated to a foreign, idolatrous land, they began to hear that their time there would be short. False prophets were telling the nation of Israel that God would soon deliver them and that settling into this new, strange land was foolish. God’s Word to the exiles, through the prophet Jeremiah, was quite different.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jer. 29:4-7, ESV).
The words of Jeremiah were shocking. The premise of his message was that the exiles would be in Babylon for several generations—at least 70 years, a time period that included not only the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar but of his son and grandson (Jer. 25:11; 27:7; 29:10), and that the Israelites would simply need to come to terms with this fact. God was telling them to settle down and get used to being in this hostile, ungodly place.
Toward this end, Jeremiah counseled his community to not be nostalgic for the past, for the past could not be recovered. He did not advise them to plan for insurrection, for there was no promise of their restoration in Jerusalem, at least not anytime soon. Nor was the community’s survival tied to the remnant that remained in Jerusalem (Jer. 24:5-10). For Jeremiah, exile did not mean that God had abandoned Israel. Rather, exile was the place where God was at work. God’s purposes with Israel, in other words, were served by the Babylonian invasion.
Jeremiah’s instructions were more counterintuitive than they might at first seem. Jeremiah tells the Jews in exile to “seek the welfare” of their captors, to pray for the very people who destroyed their homeland, because the welfare of the exiles and the captors were bound together. If God’s purposes with Israel really were being fulfilled through their captivity, then as the exiles pursued the shalom of the home of their captors—Babylon—God would provide shalom for those in exile.
What God instructs the exiles to do is actually rather ordinary. Consider the list from Jeremiah 29:
Build houses and live in them
Plant gardens and eat their produce
Have children
Marry off your children so they have children
Seek the welfare of the city
Pray for the welfare of the city
Nothing in this list is dramatic or miraculous. It is a list of normal, everyday activities. It could represent any person, regardless of income, social status, education, vocation, or geographical location. The way the kingdom of God takes root in the lives of people, and ultimately changes a city, is by exiles living normal, everyday lives as citizens of the King in every neighborhood and public place that makes up a city. We build houses. We plant gardens. We have children. We seek the welfare of our city. Far more often than not, the ways of Jesus are indeed local and ordinary.
What does it mean for a church planter to seek the welfare of their city? First, it means that a planter may need to be reminded that they have been sent to their city. They live where they live for a purpose. God has sent them there. Consequently, they need to put down roots. Incarnate. Stay. Then they need to ask what it means to seek the welfare of their city.
Second, they will collaborate for the sake of the city. They will search for ways to bridge the work their church is doing with what God is doing in other organizations. As mentioned before, this will certainly involve working with other churches, but it also includes collaborating with business, healthcare, schools, government, etc.
A great collaborator will serve as a kind of social alchemist—to create new social compounds; to gather together people’s ideas, skills, and resources in configurations the city is not naturally aligned to produce. People typically self-organize around interests, work, and proximity. But faced with significant city-wide problems, collaborators will cross boundaries, pulling together people from different arenas, with different kinds of experience and expertise who can, together, build solutions that are new. To truly seek the welfare of our cities, we cannot operate in a bubble. Instead the church must collaborate with others who love and care for the city. e church must show the world around us what it means to move from competition to collaboration.
3. Collaborators don’t care who gets the credit
In a fascinating book titled How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, author David Bornstein provides 10 profiles of men and women from around the world who have found solutions to a wide variety of social and economic problems. For Bornstein, social entrepreneurs are transformative forces. They are people with new ideas to address major problems, who are relentless in the pursuit of their visions. They are people who simply will not take “no” for an answer.
While each of the profiles are inspiring, my favorite part of the book comes when Bornstein highlights common themes found in each of the stories. One of the most powerful themes, and one closely connected to collaboration, is the willingness to share credit.
There is a well-known adage that goes like this: There is no limit to what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit. Bornstein found this to be acutely true with each of the individuals he highlighted. Their willingness to share credit was a critical path to success, simply because the more credit they shared, the more people wanted to help them.
An equally important aspect of sharing credit relates to a person’s motivation. Our desire to share the credit for success with others should ow out of our longing for transformation. In other words, if a church planter’s true intention is to see genuine spiritual and social transformation occur in their city, then sharing credit will come naturally. However, if the true motivation is to be recognized as having made change happen, sharing credit may run against the grain. e desire to see transformation should be so strong that it simply doesn’t matter who may receive accolades for a job well done.
Reflection Questions:
How does this post contribute to your understanding of what it means to be a collaborator?
List three steps you can take toward greater collaboration in your context.
List two people who can help you take those steps.
How can you help others in your church plant be better collaborators?
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1. https://vimeo.com/126891687
2. Jeff Christopherson, and Mac Lake, Kingdom First, (B&H Publishing Group), Kindle Location 2791-2798.
