Peter Greer, CEO of Hope International and an expert in microfinance was the keynote speaker at the recent Christian Ministry Advancement (CMA) national conference, attended by a large number of teams from Australian non-profits. His topic? Collaboration.
“When I started doing my work in international development, I started working for an organisation that was called World Relief. And do you know the question that I got more than any other? ‘Hey Peter, how are you different from World Vision?’ They’re similar in name, they’re similar in scope. And again, the more that we have organisations that are in similar spaces, the more likely it is that we’re going to be seen as rivals. The organisation I work with now, hope International, I am asked more often than any other question to differentiate ourself by making an argument for our organisation by in a very subtle way, talking negatively about another. And I have become convinced that that undermines all of us.
And it happens in churches, it happens in churches that even in the very way that we think about inviting someone to church, if we’re not careful, it can be done in such a way that it is subtly or not so subtly talking about the other. In fact, a friend sent an advertisement to me in a local newspaper and it said this, it was an advertisement for a local church and it said, ‘iIs your church boring? Then come check out hours Sunday morning, 10:30 AM’ and it gave the location.
“What are we doing? What are we doing? We are undermining our shared credibility. And Mark Twain said this, he said, comparison is the death of joy. And I think that is true. I think that will be true over the next two days that you are together. If you are constantly feeling like you need to compare yourself with someone else in that room, you will have no joy in the next two days [while they are together at of the CMA conference].
“And I believe the enemy knows this. I absolutely do. If we can undermine the shared relationship, if we can undermine that root of relationship, if we can turn brothers and sisters against each other, the kingdom, the house, the city, it will not stand. And we see this at a national level. We see this on a global level. Division has real world impact. And parenthetically, I have to say I also believe that in this moment when there is so much division in the world, what if church, what church we could rediscover our shared unity.
“Speaker 2 (09:59):
What if in a world of polarisation we could find a picture of coming together? What if in a world that said we’ve got nothing in common, followers of Jesus said we have one thing in common and that’s actually enough to be in relationship with each other. What if in a moment of division we could have a picture to a watching world of what happens? And I know this matters to Jesus because this is what Jesus was praying for the night before he went to the cross. This is the prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and then he expands his prayer, he prays for his disciples and then he says, my prayer is not for them alone. I pray also that those who believe in me through the message that means Jesus was praying for you and me the night before he went to the cross with limited hours left. …
Not the American way
Greer then related his own journey “As we started looking at this issue, I knew in my heart that collaboration was so good. I knew that it was so important. And yet there was this gap between what I knew to be true and what I actually practised. And so we started on a tour. We started listening to the most open-handed and generous leaders that we could find those individuals that seemed to just operate differently, that had just a graciousness with how they engaged with others. They had a different level and different posture in how they treated others. And after interviewing many leaders, I want to share two things that they all had in common. And I think these two things will unlock our ability to have a posture of more collaboration and more generosity.
“And the first is this is do we believe that we live in a world of scarcity or abundance? Maybe some of you discussed that during that. But this idea of a scarcity mindset or abundance mindset impacts the way that we see others. If we believe that there’s not enough to go around, then anyone else who gets a little bit more is a threat. And I find this interesting that it’s not just in the nonprofit, this exists everywhere. But this individual is the founder of McDonald’s. And he said this famously, he said, if any of my competitors are drowning, I’d stick hose in their mouth and turn on the water. This is rat eat rat dog, eat dog.
“You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest. Now my apologies to the rest of the world if this is the American way, it certainly is not the way of Jesus in this that I’ve got to win. And the only way for me to win is for you to lose. So I’m going to do everything possible to defeat you. But this would never exist within Christian nonprofits would it? …
“There was this one video that we sent out to our supporters and it was built on this question that God asked Moses of what’s in your hands? And it was simply a devotional that one of our leaders from Rwanda did. And it was this idea that oftentimes when God does the miraculous, he oftentimes does it using what he’s already given us. And so the question is what has God put in our hands and how might God use that?
“And we sent this video out and the same day that the video went out, another nonprofit leader called me, left a message and said that we need to stop that video. We needed to take it down immediately. And I was surprised I didn’t understand. So I called the individual back and he said that they had trademarked Exodus four, two. And so we were not able to use that and it would be humorous if it were not tragic on that, this idea that someone would trademark a Bible verse rather than have someone else use it.”
Beyond jealousy
One of the Leaders Greer’s team interviewed was Melissa Russell who was leading fundraising for the International Justice Mission
“She said there was a time when a friend came to them and everyone was doing the ice bucket challenge. And the friend said, oh Melissa, ‘I wish all of that attention were on you.’
Is that rooted in a worldview of abundance or scarcity?
It’s scarcity. There’s not enough to go around. But Melissa’s response was this. She said, ‘no, no, no, this is important. And imagine if you had a family member with ALS, [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease which raised funds using the ice bucket challenge],imagine how you’d feel.” She said, “Let’s join into that.”
And then she said this. “Because I believe in a God that took five loaves and two fish and fed the multitudes, I have to believe that the God who did that is still the God who is going to provide for you. God will not call you to do something and not equip you to do it on this.” So there is not a worldview of abundance, of scarcity. There’s a worldview of abundance and that has everything to do with how we treat each other. If we believe in scarcity, we’re always going to see others as a threat. If we believe in a world of abundance, we truly can have the freedom to love and serve.
Kingdom or club?
“The second thing that I’m just going to hit real quickly is this question of do we believe that our primary loyalty is to our club, our organisation, or to the kingdom of God? And while I love talking about the work that I do with Hope International, the minute that I get more animated by that logo than I do about the name of Jesus, I have completely lost my way. The reality is we are all part of a bigger story and we are to seek first not our organisational mission, we’re to seek first the kingdom of God, the better mission. The bigger mission we’re to be people who seek God in his righteousness. We’re to be people that think the bounds of our organisation and say, what is God doing in the world? How we can enter into it. And if we believe in a world where we are focused on the kingdom, not our club, if we’re focused on believing that God is a God of abundance, not scarcity, that is where the real significant work is happening in our world.”
Image Credit: Mohammed Hassan / Pxhere