To understand partnership, you need to understand the following four things:

1. The big themes in the Book of Acts
2. The imperative of the Great Commission
3. The basics about Hubs
4. Our planting and strengthening strategy

1. The big themes in the Book of Acts

When I read the Book of Acts, six main themes come to the surface. The first one is the atmosphere of advance. The gospel won the initial 120, then 3000, then more and more. Then it spread from Jerusalem to the surrounding regions, and then to Cyprus, and then to Antioch. Then Barnabas and Saul were set apart to ensure the next surge of advance.

In fact, a culture of advance has always been integral to the people of God, so much so that God told the father of our Faith, Abraham, to advance without sure knowledge of his destination! In Dt 1:6-7 God said to the Israelites, “You have waited long enough at this mountain, now advance!” And Jesus Himself lived like this, refusing to be held back stating, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose”. Paul also lived like this, determined to push on to Spain and see the gospel preached where it hadn’t been preached. So, it is no surprise that a culture of advance is so prevalent in the Book of Acts.

The second standout feature of the Books of Acts is the prominence of local churches. As the Apostles proclaimed the gospel and made disciples, guided by the Holy Spirit they formed up into units of believers called churches. Acts is the story of the gospel creating believers, believers forming churches, and these churches proclaiming the gospel to create more believers, and more churches. The local church is the Bride of Christ, the family of God, the mainstay of truth, the reason for all creation, and the centrepiece in God’s mission strategy. We have an extremely high view of the local church.

The third standout feature of the Book of Acts is how churches partnered together with trans-local teams. Partnership is an oft-missed aspect of the New Testament maybe because the texts referring to partnership, whilst numerous, often fall in between the texts we like to preach on. Partnership is a thoroughly biblical word used to describe both church leaders working together and churches working together. We prefer to speak of partnership rather than joining to help emphasise the missional nature of Advance. “Joining” can conjure up images of a static Head Office, whilst partnership begs the question “partnering in what?” The answer is we partner together in His great mission. God’s plan is partnership not isolation. Like Paul, we want churches to be mature and capable of standing on their own two feet, yet not isolated or independent from trans-local ministry or from other churches. The body metaphor is not just for members of a local church, but for local churches themselves – we can do more together than apart. In fact, it is inconceivable to think that any local church can fulfil the Great Commission outside of partnership. Together, our mission can be healthier, stronger and more sustainable. New Testament partnership happened around four main things:

1. Doctrine and values: The content of the epistles testifies to how much Paul wanted his churches to believe correct doctrine and be “pillars of truth”. Some well-meaning yet slightly misguided networks say, “Outside of believing that Jesus is Lord, it doesn’t really matter what you believe. It just matters that we plant more churches!” Whilst planting more churches certainly mattered to Paul, so did having these churches believe the right things (doctrine), and live out these doctrines in the right way (values).
2. Shared mission: New Testament partnership was productive. Amongst other things they planted churches, strengthened churches, and pooled finance for worthy causes. Our partnership is productive, and we consider partner churches “fellow workers” in our shared mission. We primarily exist for the goal of mission rather than to build an organization or even to give churches a sense of belonging. Partner churches do feel a sense of belonging, but this is derivative of our partnership in His mission. Advance describes something we do Think of Advance as a verb more than a noun.
3. Genuine relationship: The New Testament church couldn’t think about God without thinking about father or church. Without thinking about the bandwidth of relationships ranged from brotherly connection on one side through to seasoned fathers like Paul on the other, but never to a purely functional or corporate atmosphere. Paul encouraged church leaders to lead their churches in a family manner and sometimes referred to the churches he partnered with as his children. It was on that basis that he felt authority to encourage, comfort and urge them to live lives worthy of God. Paul even displayed concern for the church leader’s physical health and often ended his letters with lists of personal greetings and messages to people in the church that he had got to know over years of involvement. With the pressures of a busy world and an expanding movement, we need to be clear that the relational aspect of church partnership is a biblical imperative, or else it is easy to opt for a less relational style. Theologically convinced of the importance of genuine relationships and a family feel, we cultivate relationships characterised by genuine affection, respect, honesty, trust and fun.
4. Recognised leadership: Leadership is a gift from God to help any group of people to move together, whether a family, a church or a movement of churches. We use the phrase recognised leadership in terms of the biblical principle of leaders being gifted by God and then these gifts being recognised by people, and on that basis these people being appointed to leadership positions. This approach enables us to unify behind leadership in a God-honouring way.

We are sometimes asked what will prevent Advance deteriorating into the woes sometimes associated with networks and denominations. We believe that we will avoid such woes by ensuring our partnership remains based around these four biblical aspects of partnership. Because all four are the New Testament ideal, churches that do not feel sufficient connection with their denomination or network at all four levels will usually begin to feel uncomfortable in that denomination or network. If they feel that one or more element is lacking altogether or significantly deficient, they need to either remedy that within their network or try to find another network where these components are sufficiently in play.

As an aside, these four elements of partnership are a helpful grid to understand the purpose of all manner of groups. For example, a minister’s fraternal in a town would usually be based exclusively around No.3, and will probably disintegrate if they try to integrate any of the other three aspects of connection! A resourcing network (e.g. Willow Creek Association) might be based exclusively around an aspect of No.1 such as leadership, and will enjoy widespread acceptance across the Body of Christ because they are not trying to do any of the other three aspects. Other groups might partner around a combination of two or three of these elements. Each to their own. But Pauline ambitions, and ours, run much higher, namely partnership around all four of these elements.

The fourth standout feature of the Book of Acts is the message of the Gospel. The gospel refers to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the resulting benefits accruing to those who believe in Him. The Gospel is the metanarrative of the Bible spanning creation, the fall, redemption and ultimately, restoration. Jesus is the One who holds this narrative together. Who He is and what He has done is the nucleus of Scripture. This is why Jesus, the Gospel (Mk 1:1), enjoyed unrivalled centrality in the 28 chapters of Book of Acts changing lives, creating new churches and turning cities up side down.

The fifth standout feature of the Book of Acts is the on-going commitment to plant churches. Although other teams were planting churches at the same time, the New Testament focuses mostly on Paul’s church planting endeavours. He personally planted churches on his early missionary journeys, and planted others indirectly through provoking the churches that he worked with to do the same. Paul even defined his own ministry in terms of seeing people come to faith, which happened as churches were planted. 

The sixth standout feature of the Book of Acts is the on-going commitment to strengthen churches. The same Astle who planted churches in Iconium, Derbe and Lystra returned twice to strengthen them, and also sent delegates and epistles to do the same. The same apostle who urged the church in Rome to engage with church planting in “regions beyond” did so on the back of fifteen strengthening chapters. As much as he longed to preach Christ where He had not been preached[15] Paul also longed for Christ to be properly formed in them.[16]

These six “stand outs” from the Book of Acts give us our vision statement:

Advance is a movement of churches partnering together to advance the Gospel through planting and strengthening churches.

2. The imperative of the Great Commission

Our commission from Jesus is to take the gospel to both the neighbourhoods and the nations, to both “Jerusalem” and the “ends of the earth”. Our commission is both local and global - glocal. And note that we don’t get to choose the scope of the Great Commission – that is Jesus’ prerogative alone. And, Jesus says that every church should be meaningfully involved in taking the gospel to both neighbourhoods and nations. We need partnership to maximise our potential in our neighbourhoods, and even more to take the gospel to the nations. Seriously, who could do it alone?

3. The basics about Hubs

Hubs seemed to be a New Testament reality, with the places like Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus and Thessalonica emerging as centres for gospel advance. We refer to a Hub as a group of Advance churches partnering together to plant and strengthen churches around leadership, usually in a geographical area such as a town, city, state, or nation. 

Churches in a Hub will work to plant and strengthen churches together through doing things such as training elders and leaders, collaborating on certain ministries, gathering for high moments, pooling finance for the Hub mission, and serving society together. Some hubs may even collaborate for a preaching series every now and again to help train preachers and speak to their town/city with one voice for a few weeks.

We look at Hubs in more details in Document 5: Hubs, Leadership, And Finance.

4. Our Planting And Strengthening Strategy

Our planting and strengthening strategy is outlined in Document 3: Planting and Strengthening.

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