By Andrew Gale, Executive Director of Global Strategy

You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. —Ephesians 4:4; MSG

I walk quickly. I don’t say as a point of pride but as a fact. I am tall, and the length of my stride is certainly a major factor in my pace. Sometimes I will be talking with someone while I am walking and realize the person is a block behind me. Take, for example, my wife, who is a foot shorter than I am and so our gaits are quite different. But I love walking with her, which means I must be aware of my natural tendency to plow ahead when I want to travel with her.

Choosing to travel together means choosing to understand each other. It means making changes to the way we might naturally function to stay together – to work together. It means that neither of us is walking in the exact way that is most comfortable to us. My wife has to walk a little faster and I have to walk a little slower, but we get to walk together.

It means changing not only the way we walk, surely, but also changing the way we think about how we walk. As the passage in Ephesians reminds us, we are called to stay together both inwardly and outwardly.

We, at Global Strategy, have the joy of walking alongside the local church globally. We get to partner with them in ministry. But that means that we also get to learn from the global church. As we walk, we each have to listen to one another, neither of us pushing our own cultural agendas, but seeking together what God is calling us to do in partnership. And the work we get to participate in with each church and in each country is different and that is one of the challenges and joys of choosing to walk together.

We partner with our global churches to help them become locally led and sustained by raising up local leadership and becoming locally supported. We help connect churches with one another on national, regional, and global levels. And we support the unique missional calling of these churches as they care for the communities where they are planted. We have, after all, been “called to travel on the same road and in the same direction,” to “stay together, both outwardly and inwardly.”

We believe God has called every church, every person, around the world, to serve as Jesus did and we partner with churches to help make that happen.

Will you join us as we join them?