August 5, 2002

CBF enters partnerships with World Vision and Habitat
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___ATLANTA (ABP)--Seeking to maximize the impact of its 127 global missionaries, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has announced new strategic partnerships with World Vision and Habitat for Humanity International.
___Gary Baldridge, co-coordinator for global missions at the Atlanta-based CBF--joined by Habitat founder Millard Fuller and World Vision's Randy Strash--announced the still-evolving arrangement at a press conference in late June.
___World Vision and Habitat both bring vast resources to bolster the CBF's global-missions program, which concentrates on ministry to the world's least-evangelized and most-neglected peoples.
___And while both para-church organizations dwarf the 1,800-church Fellowship in size, Habitat and World Vision also believe working with CBF personnel located in strategic areas can help their organizations accomplish things they could not do alone.
___Cooperation with para-church and other organizations is a key component of missions strategy for the CBF, Baldridge said. "Our impact is far beyond our size and age because of how we work. I would guess that our field personnel around the world, at any given locale, are partnering with three dozen partners.
___World Vision and Habitat for Humanity also value collaboration, Fuller and Strash said.
___"A key word in the history of Habitat for Humanity, from the very beginning, has been 'partnership,'" Fuller said. "I am thrilled about the partnership between Habitat and CBF."
___Like CBF, Strash said, World Vision has a mission statement that calls for developing strategic partnerships for strengthening churches.
___"How can partnering with CBF help World Vision?" he asked. "One of our mission statements is to develop strategic partnerships for growth of the church worldwide. That is in your mission statement as well."
___One of 24 new missionaries appointed at the CBF's General Assembly in June, Stacey Schultz, will pioneer a Global Service Corps partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
___Schultz, who is from Wisconsin, goes to Africa early next year as church-relations director for Habitat for Humanity in Kenya. She will work as liaison between local Habitat affiliates and churches in Kenya and other countries.
___Fuller said he hopes the arrangement becomes a model for other places. "From the very inception of Habitat for Humanity, we have seen this ministry as a new frontier in Christian missions, a creative new way to share the gospel and the love of Jesus."
___CBF missionary John Derrick will lead Habitat's first "Sing and Build" project next June in Australia. A choir of between 80 and 150 voices recruited from CBF churches will perform concerts to build enthusiasm for Habitat for Humanity at night and build houses by day.
___World Vision already has placed a CBF volunteer in its relief program in Afghanistan.
___"That's sort of a foretaste of the future," Strash said. "We are also exploring other ways of collaborating. I think the sky is the limit as long as we are true to our own missions, and it makes good sense in terms of stewardship."
___At the news conference, Tommy Speed of Buckner Children and Family Services in Texas described how partnering with the CBF solved a problem with Buckner's Progresso Community Center in the Rio Grande Valley.
___Before the partnership, few people used the center, which serves 22 colonias. But since a CBF worker came as director, the Progresso Center has served more than 5,000 people with health, food, clothing and other community programs, Speed said.
___"Our partnership with CBF is very significant in the lives it touches on a month-to-month basis," he said.

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