In every area of life, effective partnerships multiply impact. Some ideas are good on their own, but they can become great if we find the right partners to help us. Let me give two examples.

Several years ago, our church founded The Oaks School of Leadership, a discipleship program for college-age students. We had a gifted faculty and a great program, but we hit a brick wall because parents didn’t want their kids to attend a school without getting academic credit. As we searched for a solution, we realized an excellent and accredited school, Southwestern Assemblies of God University, was only a few miles down the road. I approached them about partnership, and a year later we had a fully accredited leadership school. In three years, our enrollment has almost tripled because of our partnership.

The second example also demonstrates the power of a partnership. I had the pleasure of connecting with William Vanderbloemen in August of 2009. It was a classic email introduction from Sam Chand that simply said, “You two should connect…Synergize.”

At the time Help Staff Me was only a couple of months old, but we were growing fast. I was eager to talk to William and learn the best practices of staff search. Our two companies were competitors, but William and I instantly developed a relationship of trust and friendship. From the beginning, I could tell God was up to something with this new connection.

After a year, it became clear that William and I were offering two very different products. Help Staff Me had found its niche in doing search for mid-level church staff positions (youth, children’s, worship, etc.), and Vanderbloemen Search Group was primarily high-level church staff positions (senior/lead pastor, executive pastor). When we begin to realize our uniqueness, we began to talk about how we could maximize our efforts. Those talks led us to what we are excited to announce today.

Help Staff Me will be joining forces with Vanderbloemen Search Group. This means that we will be combining the vast network of the Vanderbloemen Search Group and Help Staff Me. This gives us an even greater ability to meet every staffing need a church may have.

We’re excited about the plans God has unfolded for us so far, and we look forward to a powerful partnership in the future. There are many more details to come but we wanted to let everyone know the exciting news in the meanwhile.