Read the Academic Article: Partnership in the Gospel

The summer of 1987 provided a new opportunity for ministry and our young family moved to a small community in western Nebraska to pastor a rural church. Several men in the small-town church worked on area ranches, providing opportunity for time with ranchers cowboys and recapturing a childhood enjoyment of horses. After a couple years, I purchased two untrained horses, but they needed the diligent work of training. The horses taught me important life lessons while responding to the riding and training process. Looking back at the experience, I learned far more than the horses I attempted to teach. The process of developing a horse into a good partner involved more than I understood but that began an interest to study horse training.

A video with a trainer, Shana Terry (Down Under Horsemanship 2017), and her trained American Quarter Horse, Marty, demonstrates an amazing partnership of performance and difficult maneuvers.[1] Marty performed flawlessly while Terry gave instructions from a distance without halter, bridle, or lead line touching the horse. The horse ran, made difficult spins, jumps and maneuvers from cues that he learned from Shana. One exercise demonstrated a partnership of trust and communication where Marty backed down a slope across a body of water and then trotted back to Shana on cue. The relationship, trust, and performance of Shana and Marty should pale in comparison to the partnership of believers to accomplish God’s will for His kingdom, exceeding the best partnership with a well-trained horse.

[1] Liberty Down Under Horsemanship. Shana Terry and Marty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYeHIQqDo2I  Accessed December 2019.

The maneuvers that Shana trained Mary to do truly make a person horse partnership look easy.  The level of communication between trainer and horse required a unity and understanding rarely found.  If a horse trainer can find that level of partnership, how much more should the servants of the Lord establish partnership.

Partnership requires unity and togetherness to build relational bonds fulfilling God’s great mission. Creation unfolds with the first example of partnership. God said, “Let us make man in our own image” (Gen. 1:26). The doctrine of the trinity, some refer to the tri-unity of God gives insight in partnership (Evans 2016). Charles Hodge (1981, 445) gave insight into this unity. “According to the scriptures, the Father created the world, the Son Created the world, and the Spirit created the world: The Father preserves all things; the Son upholds all things; and the Spirit is the source of all life.” The unity and partnership of the trinity, beginning from the account of creation and continuing throughout scripture, paint a picture of the potential of partnership according to God’s design.

The work of partnership in God’s relationship with man continues in the New Testament primarily through the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Jimmie Evans III (2016, 2) noted the teaching of Jesus where he expressed the necessity of sending the Holy Spirit:

While with His disciples, Jesus was a present helper and teacher, but following His departure the Holy Spirit takes on those roles (John 14:26). He will also remind them of Jesus’ words, and He will testify about Jesus through the disciples (John 14:26; 15:26). Not only do these verses indicate His role, they also reveal His identity in terms of the progression of who sends Him. In 14:16, He will ask the Father to send the helper. In 14:26, the Father will send the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name. Then in 15:26, Jesus refers to Himself sending the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father. Each of these instances of sending reveals a unity and bond between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whereby the three comprising the Trinity are displayed working in cooperation.

This work of the Holy Spirit finds greater expression through the New Testament but especially in Acts where Luke identifies the Holy Spirit as the primary source and partner who leads and guides the church.

The first chapters of Acts set the stage for the remainder of the New Testament modeling reliance on the Holy Spirit to direct and guide the church. (Acts 1:8, 4:31, 5:32, 6:3 6:19) The disciples trusted the Savior who baptized in the Holy Spirit and His partnership to lead the New Testament Church. (Acts 15:28) The birth of the church came with an expectation of partnership with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1:8) This continued with varying intensity from the days of the early church on. A refreshing and intensifying of this recognition of the Holy Spirit in the church occurred in the early Twentieth Century with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a continued revival on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, CA. This Spirit led revival brought deep spiritual connections removing the classes separating people and released the power of partnership. (Miller 2015, 11-21) The spiritual renewal possessed similarities to the early church on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit led people to love, celebrate, preach, plant, share and send people out with a transformational and redeeming message (Miller 2015, 15-20). These Spirit empowered believers became a discipling, multiplying community of faith without regard to race, class or gender and sent people out to plant churches, ministries, and missionaries throughout the world. This level of partnership continued through the following decades of the Pentecostal movement and remains in place to present times.[1]

That season brought significant partnerships from pastor to pastor, church to church and pastor to church. The culture of working and playing together reflected strong relationships where pastors worked together on churches, summer camps, church buildings, and other projects. They often celebrated together, hunted together, and some vacationed together.[2] The cooperation and collaboration, common both in decades past with the rural church and community, finds a less common place in rural life today; yet partnership continues to give blessing and life to all those who access it.

[1] The Pentecostal movement experienced and continues to experience a struggle to maintain partnership, however observations of four decades of ministry indicates seasons of refreshing tend to remove this tendency toward division and brings unity in the church.

My years sitting with older pastors allowed me to hear multiple stories of the partnership between pastors, churches, missionaries, and districts. The urgency of kingdom service and their sense of eschatology reflecting the soon return of Christ caused many leaders to see every person who worked diligently for the kingdom as a ministry partner. This level of partnership drove church multiplication and cooperation in ministry. They expressed a praxis of ‘one in the Spirit and one in mission.’ This did not represent all but many in the rural area where I first experienced church and the Pentecostal message.

Read the Academic Article Partnership in the Gospel

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By Ronald L. Masten

Partnership on purpose, spiritual fervency, and intentional outreach into the community will characterize the church in the future, and the future begins now. Developing leaders for ministry rural churches necessities relevant ministry that includes, spiritual fervency, authenticity, community outreach, and partnership.

The current state of ministry in rural Sandhills of Nebraska struggles with the following questions: “How will relevant ministry survive as the church moves into the future? What will the ministry look like? Who will lead outreach? How will missions be supported moving forward?” Rural communities face many struggles in these times; they experienced a decline and loss of families over the past several decades, which resulted in smaller churches. World Population Review reports Thomas County Population in 1980 at 973 people and 2018 numbers at 720.1 Many trends ignored or thought small rural ministry as less than larger metro churches. Karl Vaters stated in, The Grasshopper Myth, “Half of all Christians in America and far more than half of Christians worldwide attend a Small Church.”2 This study researched the challenges and issues of current ministry, and the opportunity for churches to partner and cooperate together ensuring productive ministry and evangelism for the future. 

The research included interviews of pastors, lay leaders, members and adherents, and small-town residents using a questionnaire designed to provide answers to focused questions with persons involved in the rural ministry context and community. What percentage of pastors serve in bi-vocational roles? What level of education and experience do they have? What role do laypeople play in leadership? What level of cooperation between area churches ensures successful ministry in the future? This research gathered responses from diverse groups in the churches and ministries engaged multiple viewpoints ensuring good research data from interviews from current ministries and those engaged in evangelism whether clergy or lay leadership. 

The church must recognize that collaboration and partnership will not just evolve on its own. This new paradigm engages the church in a sense of urgency rooted in seeking God to give direction and guidance moving forward. God will lead the changes, partnerships, spiritual renewal, and missional evangelism through contextualization and intentional evangelism.

This research project survey demonstrated that the rural churches in the Sandhills of Nebraska and around America still have life; however, there is a sense of urgency in the church to find ministry answers to go forward. In a rural ministry context, authenticity became a key to influence and leading change in people’s lives and the converse remained true.

People in the rural context desire authenticity, in ministry, and in outreach.  In small communities, genuine ministry becomes immediately apparent, so the lack of genuine concern and compassion compels the rural community to appraise the messenger as irrelevant. Sandhills people ignore the inauthentic rather than accepting them as a true missionary. Rural people immediately recognized inauthentic life and any opportunity to lead them in change will become lost.

Relevant ministries will not only survive in the future, but it will also thrive. Small-town rural pastors and laypeople exhibit optimism and hope. We can rejoice in the knowledge that we are in the midst of mission, guided by the Holy Spirit, that will lead this revival and breathe new life into the backroads of our state, country, and world.

1 WorldPopulationReview.com; Nebraska, February 17, 2020. (accessed 2020-5-28).

2 Karl Vaters, The Grasshopper Myth (New Small Church, New Song Media, 2012), 41.

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