Better Together Through Healthy Biblical Interdependency

by Jeff Finley

Spiritual hunger and thirst should include the pursuit of biblically based cross-cultural collaboration.

That was one of the key takeaways from the National Prayer Summit Online 2022 as Free Methodist World Missions leaders joined Bishop Linda Adams and National Prayer Ministry team members to discuss and pray for “Hunger and Thirst for Healthy Biblical Interdependency.”

Asia Area Director Eric said 1 Corinthians 12 offers a picture of the healthy body of Christ.

“It’s less about global and local and more about membership in the body of Christ because of our mutual trust in Jesus,” Eric said. “By interdependence, I think about healthy, mutual, supportive interaction between members of the body of Christ. Those relationships in one sense are reflective of the Holy Trinity.”

Despite their differences, Christians have much in common regardless of their backgrounds or where they live.

“As members of the body of Christ, we have a shared identity. We all bear the image of Christ,” said Eric, who advised that we can “accelerate and accomplish much more if we recognize the value and strength of being better together.”

Eric said that members of the body of Christ have a shared destiny: “Through this interdependent relationship, we remind ourselves not to be distracted by temporal things but to keep our mind and our heart on things above.”

Prayer helps Christians avoid distractions while focusing on heavenly things.

“I think interdependence is expressed within prayer,” Eric said. “We’re praying for one another. We’re interceding where we’re expressing and surrendering to the Father. He’s invited us to prayer and to bring our worship to Him.”

Ending Spiritual Arrogance

Strategic Catalyst for Global Collaboration Gerry Coates suggested that Western Christians may be guilty of spiritual arrogance that lingers from the centuries in which the majority of Christians were in the West. That arrogance, however, is baseless as the situation is now reversed with Christianity spreading rapidly around the world in recent decades.

“Today 70% of the Christians are in the majority world,” Gerry said. “In the Free Methodist Church, only about 7 to 8% of Free Methodists are in the Western world, and over 90% are in the majority world.”

Healing from our spiritual arrogance may come as we realize “the answer’s in the body of Christ. The head can’t say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ It’s in this shared mission,” said Gerry, who noted that U.S. Christians can learn many things from their counterparts around the world. “In order to receive them, we have to be in a position of humility rather than superiority.”

What are some of the things we can learn from the global church?

“In the majority world church, they have a clear commitment to the authority of Scripture, and the Western world needs that. The majority church is morally and ethically conservative. The majority church is sensitive to the issues of poverty and justice, because they’ve lived in it all the time. They’re adept at contextualizing the gospel in a culture of religious pluralism,” Gerry said. “They come from cultures that are, in general, far less individualistic, so they understand the cooperative aspects of the gospel so much better than we do.”

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“We need a posture of humility, learning from one another and growing together, enduring together, encouraging one another…”

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To inform our prayer for the rest of the world, Gerry advised, we can “get our news sources from outside the United States,” “connect with international people both inside the U.S. and outside the U.S.” and “be with people who are not like ourselves.”

Jan Coates, the communications content coordinator for Free Methodist World Missions, read Romans 15:1–7 aloud. She then reflected that we need “a posture of humility, learning from one another and growing together, enduring together, encouraging one another, and being able to come together with one voice and one mind to glorify God.”

Jan recommended “praying specifically for the Lord to open up relationships in your own life, or even specifically for a church to pray for relationships within their community. … My constant prayer is just that the Lord will give me those relationships and give me eyes to see those people that I pass by every day, because I’m amazed at how people are moving all over the world these days.” She shared her “hope that we won’t be fearful but that we’ll take advantage of the opportunity to learn and to share the good news.”

‘Truly Family’

Bishop Linda Adams said the next chapter, Romans 16, includes “this wonderful list of all kinds of people that remind us that the Apostle Paul didn’t only collaborate with one or two whose names we know. … I love to see that whole list of names that we might think of as the also-rans, but it reminds us that the whole church was interdependent.”

The bishop shared that she had just returned from Colombia where she met with 46 leaders from 16 Latin American countries at a leadership summit organized by Latin America Area Director Ricardo Gómez.

“Most of these leaders have only known each other over Zoom. During the pandemic, we’ve upped the amount of corporate prayer together, and testimonies, and mutual support, and reports of baptisms and church plants,” she said. “I feel so thankful for the collaboration that happens across Latin America but also with Free Methodist World Missions and with the U.S. church. … We certainly are better together, and we are truly family.”

The Sierra Pacific Conference and the Bishops’ Fund for Leadership Development funded the leadership summit. Adams celebrated the opportunity for the Latin American leaders to meet and worship together in person.

She linked corporate worship to spiritual hunger and thirst. “In the process of the body raising up praises before the Lord, those whose spiritual temperature might be a little cold are warmed up,” she said.

In closing comments after the prayer time, the bishop shared her excitement about seeing how God is working through humble servants in different global areas.

“As I have been able to come to know people from several parts of the world, it’s just such an incredible joy and privilege to belong together,” said Adams, who added that as we connect with others and educate ourselves with the international church, “the better off we’ll be. We’ll have a better picture of the kingdom of God, and, of course, it’s much bigger than the Free Methodist Church, but we are one small part of it, and we’re grateful to belong together.”

Click here for the video of the discussion and prayer time.+