Partnerships

I'm playing in the Young Life golf tournament tomorrow morning here in Fort Worth (barring rain). I love playing golf on my days off, and really love playing golf when it benefits a great organization.

Our church enjoys a partnership with several parachurch ministries in Fort Worth, and I think it's one of the better things we do.

We're not able to reach everyone, and we know that. We're a church that sits inside the loop, and are surrounded by homes that range in price from $400,000 to more than $1,000,000. As a result, we're probably not going to have a lot of opportunities to directly touch the lives of Fort Worth's homeless population. We're probably not going to be able to have a direct influence in the lives of teenagers who live on the North side of Fort Worth, though we certainly have a heart for teenagers all over the metroplex.

We could spin our wheels trying to figure out a way to bus all the homeless people here, or we could figure out a way to invest in the people who are already there. We've chosen the second option. They know that culture better than us. They can have a laser focus better than us, and can drill down into the lives of the people they serve on an everyday basis better than we'll ever be able to do.

McKinney strives to be a church where everyone feels welcome, whether a person is a homeless person or a gazillionaire. But when it comes to the focus of our ministry we focus primarily on the people in our neighborhood, and invest a significant portion of our resources in ministries who serve elsewhere.

And the investment is paying off. McKinney had an influence in the lives of almost 5000 girls last year in crisis pregnancies. We fed somewhere around 50,000 meals to homeless people. We ensured that almost 100 inner-city boys have something to go home to other than gangs and violence. We reached out to thousands of college students and high school students through the ministries of Campus Crusade and Young Life.

They don't steal our people... they're an extension of our people. As we invest our time, talents, and treasure in what God is doing in our city and around the world, we're serving alongside what's happening in those ministries. And we're more interested in building the Church with a big "C" than we are building our church with a little "c."