by: Kate Borders | Sr Director of Operations
Can you imagine the surprise, when a member of one of our international churches is talking with a US-based team member (whose church has been partnering for many years but he was visiting for the first time) and they find themselves in a deep conversation through the help of a skilled and gracious translator? Not only are they surprised to be having a significant conversation through a translator, but they find that a piece of their stories share a very specific overlap. With commonality in a painful detail from a difficult loss, they are able to genuinely understand how one another feels. Empathy and a willingness to be vulnerable touch them deeply. They offer words of encouragement and pray together. God’s work is so evident.
This story strikes me as one of those times when it feels hard to wrap your mind around how God orchestrated a moment that had been placed in motion years and years before with the start of a cross-cultural church partnership.
In 1 John 4:11-12 it says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (ESV, emphasis added) The fruit of abiding in the Lord is that not only do we see his tender love and care through small details, but by loving one another, mysteriously we get to be a part of those moments where we see his love for us reflected and played out among one another!
In spite of, and even in the midst of, the great potential for hurt in this broken world, God’s redemption is on display as people love one another well.
While the formal ministry programs of World Orphans are implemented through churches outside of the US, it is our deep desire that our US church partners will be inspired by their international church partners to work through their churches and the infrastructure of their communities to increasingly care for vulnerable children and families. After a trip at the end of 2023, one of our team members went through the process to become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer (https://nationalcasagal.org/). By January, she was introduced to a child who she would have the opportunity to walk with and advocate for in the midst of a very difficult situation. The fruit of abiding in Christ through a willingness to take a bold step and give time and energy for the chance to reflect God’s love and the hope of Christ to a hurting child.
It’s stories like these and many others that capture why we are so committed to true partnership and why our short-term trips are always in the context of long-term relationships.
Recently, I told my colleagues in Guatemala that the church in the US needs the church in Guatemala. As we watch the church decline (numerically) in the US and grow in the rest of the world, the fruit of abiding in Christ looks like the humility to lean into our brothers and sisters around the world and learn from them. Two of our values of church partnership that we talk about a lot here at World Orphans are relationship over resources and equality over superiority. The gift of pursuing mutual partnership is the give and take of sharing and receiving; serving and learning. The fruit of abiding in Christ is getting a deeper understanding of what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 12 that we are all members of one body. We need each other.
This article was originally published in the World Orphans Spring Insight Magazine 2024.