Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.
Philippians 1:4-5
Partnership is the ability to accomplish more together than apart. It recognizes that a team is stronger than a lone individual. A group committed to each other will help the struggling and the fallen.
Mother Teresa said, “You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together, we can do great things.” An anonymous author wrote, “It is better to have one person working with you, than three working for you.” Andrew Carnegie confessed, “I owe whatever success I have attained, by and large, to my ability to surround myself with people who are smarter than I am.” John Wooden, perhaps the greatest basketball coach of all time, reminded his team, “The man who puts the ball through the hoop has ten hands.”
Call it whatever you want–teamwork, association, synergy–partnership is the remarkable ability of two or more people working together to accomplish more than what each could do alone.
This truth is a fit reminder to God’s people that when we are working together in harmony, the talents and gifts of the body minimize the weaknesses and shortcomings of the body, thereby making a stronger unit. Just as a baseball team needs nine players on the field or the game is forfeited, the local church needs everyone participating, or the strength of the body is weakened and the advancement of the gospel is threatened. If you took away one musician from an orchestra, the symphony would be incomplete. So, too, if one member of the family of God is missing, the church is incomplete.
We need each other. You need someone, and someone needs you.
