Church-Mission Agency Partnership Project – Complied Survey Results

The Church-Mission Agency Partnership Project was conducted to gain an understanding of the state of relationships between mission agencies and churches; and to investigate how churches and mission agencies can better partner together in the future.

There were two surveys; one for churches and one for mission agencies. Only twenty churches completed the church survey which is too small a sample for an accurate statistical analysis, however the results still present a picture of the state of church-mission agency partnerships. The survey for mission agencies only received four responses.

I won’t read into the survey results too much due to the small sample size, however there are a few comments I would like to make. The respondents appear to be in two camps; those who are fairly happy with current partnerships and then those who are not. I guess that is no surprise yet what is of concern is that just as many churches are unhappy with their mission agency partnerships as those who are happy with them. If we were talking about customer satisfaction in a business survey then anything under a 90% satisfaction level would be alarming. Overall, churches need to have a greater sense of partnership with mission agencies than they do at present.

Many mission agencies are aware of this and continually trying to improve, perhaps to some degree of success, as 39% of the churches surveyed felt their sense of partnership was stronger than it was 10 years ago.

Improved communication and feedback from mission agencies (and missionaries) to churches is needed to see a stronger partnership. While some churches are happy with current levels of communication many are not. It is particularly important for mission agencies (and missionaries) to give that feedback to churches at some point after a church has provided funding or a specific prayer effort. Some churches would like to see more ‘personalised’ updates for their church rather than only receiving a general newsletter.

One church pointed out that when they have a rep or contact for an agency as part of their church it results in a closer connection with the agency. There is certainly some merit in having a champion within the congregation. I would suggest that every partnership should have an in-house (church) champion or partner team leader who is effectively the go between for the church-mission agency partnership.

It was disappointing to have so few replies to the survey as I would like to have been able to provide a more conclusive finding on how churches and mission agencies can better partner together. The bulk of the replies are included the document you can download from here. I welcome any feedback on the topic.