Ep. 364: Bridging The Church/Para-Church Divide A conversation with Scott Harris of Mission Increase

A couple of months ago I came across an article that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. It’s called “The End and Future of the Church/”Para-Church” Relationship: A Call for Generous Partnership.” The article was written by two people I have come to respect a great deal in the past few years. One of them is Amy Sherman, who has written a number of important books on the Christian response to poverty. Her co-author is my guest today, Scott Harris. Scott is the Vice President of Church and Global Engagement for an organization called Mission Increase. Mission Increase exists to equip donors, nonprofits and churches fulfill their God-given mission and increase their Kingdom impact through training, and coaching. Scott’s specific role is to help churches and nonprofits work better together to reach their neighbors and nations. It’s hard to find a mission statement more in line with the goals of MinistryWatch than that one, and that may be why I’ve been running into Scott all over the place in the past few years, including at the most recent True Charity conference, which we’ve written several stories about in the past few months. Some of you might also remember that MinistryWatch did a short series of articles on generous churches, churches that are doing outsized projects with their missions dollars. Scott was instrumental in helping us identify those churches and helped us make contact with them. In the article we discuss today, Scott and Amy say that the current state of church/parachurch relationships is a major hindrance to the effective work of the Body of Christ in Jesus’ Kingdom Mission in our day. They explain why and how this is so, and what we can do about it. To read for yourself the article we discussed, click here: https://missionincrease.org/churches/#para-church To read more about Mission Increase, see a 2020 article we did on this ministry: https://ministrywatch.com/teach-a-ministry-to-fish/ The producer for today’s program is Jeff McIntosh. Until next time, may God bless you.