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REACT Services Partnering Minute - June 2006
18 June 2006

Dear Friends:

Here is the latest "Partnering Minute" communication from REACT Services. As you might remember, the PM is our attempt by to communicate to you on a more regular basis about the world of ministry partnering. Please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.

One of the key words we try and communicate about partnering is that relationships and trust are the foundation to effective working together. Too often, we don't realize that we have a need for each other in the Body of Christ. This story about a mousetrap illustrates that our lives are perhaps more intertwined that we might think.

The Mousetrap

A small mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. He asked himself, "I wonder what food might this contain?"

He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house."

The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow. She said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I am so sorry for you, but it is not a worry to me."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught.

In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught and the snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

Unfortunately, the farmer's wife did not get well and she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you,-- remember --when one of us is threatened, we are all somehow at risk.

We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another. Each of us is a vital thread in another person's tapestry -- our lives are woven together for a reason! 

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In the teaching and coaching that REACT Services offers on making partnerships work, we explore in detail how to develop greater trust in relationships. It is through this trust that all partnering becomes more effective.

A new friend of mine works in business development, primarily using his profits to fund outreach and evangelism.  As we were talking one day, he told me a strategy he has to create "space" for relationship and trust. He regularly parks his car on the complete other side of one of manufacturing plants he manages so that he can walk through and have opportunity to talk with all of the people working there. "It builds relationship and allows my employees to feel a stronger part of the team," he explained. "When I ask them for their opinion of how to perhaps do things better there's a trust we have that allows them to be honest. That in turn leads to greater effectiveness." He truly understands the principle that we have need for each other!!

In REACT's work, we model and teach how to build better relationships in the community to make a greater impact for the Kingdom. Here's a picture from our initiative in Indonesia where my colleagues and I meeting with Muslim community leaders about a possible joint water treatment project -- just beginning the relationship process.

 

Blessings,

Brian

To financially assist the continuing efforts of REACT to be involved in these kinds of projects -- click here.

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