Vision

To see the global Body of Christ engage in God’s mission together through:

Interconnection

New ways of creating lasting bonds between Christian communities across the world

Insight

Rigorous, cutting edge research from people with experience in church partnerships

Impact

A global Body of Christ that is better connected to each other and better equipped for service at home

About Us

Church-to-church partnership, sister churches, parish twinning; Christian communities of all traditions are finding new ways of directly engaging fellow Christians around the world. These new connections present a powerful opportunity for ministry, as well as many potentially disastrous pitfalls. Our aim is to better understand the different ways churches engage in international partnerships so that we can maximize the transformative potential of these relationships.

The Global Congregational Survey

Our Research

Findings from the GCS

Goals

We want to help churches form healthy relationships with their global partners; relationships that will last and have transformational impact on the churches and their communities. To better understand how churches are working together in the 21st century, we plan to survey 400 congregations currently engaged in partnership with other congregations in different parts of the world.

Method

It all starts with an email.

All of the participants in the Congregational Partnership Survey are randomly selected. After opting-in and confirming that they meet the requirements, each church is sent an invitation to our first-of-its-kind survey.

The survey should take about 20 minutes. All responses are confidential and will be fed into a database to look for patterns in how churches create partnerships and what kind of outcomes they are having.

Expectations

There are a lot of theories out there about what makes for a good partnership between churches. A lot. And surprisingly there is a good deal of agreement about what kind of structures, expectations, and practices should be employed. What is less clear is (1) how many churches are putting these theories into practice and (2) whether those theories are leading to better partnerships. This study is all about checking out those two areas. We expect to find that churches who employ the latest research findings in their partnerships enjoy healthier and more impactful relationships. But we will have to wait for the results to come in.

Scope

A partnership takes (at least) two. Many of the studies of congregational partnerships focus almost entirely on one of the partners in a partnership. While there are understandable reasons to do so; we want to study the relationship. So, we are sending surveys to churches who meet the following criteria:

  • The congregation has a relationship with another congregation as part of its missional engagement. Multi-site churches will be considered a “congregation,” but not a diocese, NGO, denomination, or mission agency. It must be a partnership between two local, “grass-roots” level entities.
  • One of the congregations in the partnership is located in the continental United States.
  • The non-US partner is able to communicate in English or Spanish.
  • Leadership of both congregations formally recognize the partnership.
  • The duration of the relationship is at least two years as of 3/31/19.

Our Team

Danny Hunter
Lead Researcher
Steve Offutt
Research Advisor
Have questions?

Get in touch

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU

If you have any questions about us or our research please just click on the link below.



Contact info

info@globalchurchpartnerships.org