The way forward in the 21st century, for the UMJC and organizations like us, is through cooperative efforts and partnerships. Our Young Leaders Retreat in 2009 was co-sponsored by Jewish Voice Ministries, as well as Messianic Literature Outreach and two of our member congregations. We have worked with Chosen People Ministries on other projects, and actively partner with Messianic Jewish Theological Institute to provide leadership training. This approach is often the most efficient way to get things done, and it goes beyond talking about unity to actually doing unity.

Networking in this sense is very up to date. One of the outcomes of the digital age, for good and for ill, is that it is has become difficult to establish and maintain ownership of anything. I don’t follow the current music world as much as I’d like to, but I know that there have been battles in recent years over the ownership of music that is posted on the internet and made available for downloading. Who gets the royalties? Who gets paid? How about ideas—intellectual property—that are disseminated online and as hard to monitor as leaves blowing in the breeze?

Such erosion of boundaries is not always a good thing, of course, but in one realm it makes sense—building and propagating spiritual community. The good news of Messiah doesn’t belong to any one person (except Messiah himself), but ministries and religious professionals often try to stake out a claim to part of it. Such insider jockeying for position has got to be a major turn-off to outsiders. It can also be a huge waste of resources. I realized this a few years back as the UMJC became more involved in aid to Israel. We could have developed and trademarked our own humanitarian project, raised funds, created an infrastructure (and overhead), and carved out a slice of the pie of good deeds in Israel. Instead, we’ve chosen to network with existing ministries, including Chevra USA, with which we have a particularly close relationship, and to focus on channeling funds especially to Messianic Jewish relief efforts in Israel. It’s not only more efficient, but it also makes a great spiritual statement, as we do unity instead of just talking about unity. The same applies to networking on the domestic level, as in the opening paragraph.

This approach seems particularly apt to the 21^st century digital age, and I believe it has potential to help expand the borders of the Messianic community, that is, to reach more Jewish people for Messiah. I’ll mention just two reasons for that potential:

1. Competition—the opposite of networking—looks unspiritual, especially to outsiders. Cooperation, on the other hand, is attractive. You can try for a neutral stance in which you neither compete nor actively cooperate, but that ends up looking pretty isolated (which leads to my point below). If we are propagating a message about the greatness of God and the broadness of his redemptive purposes, we have the opportunity to demonstrate the message through pursuing cooperative efforts.
2. Networking satisfies our need to connect. Most people have this need, but it is especially relevant to outsiders, who do not want to enter a religious community and become isolated from the rest of the world. No one wants to be added to the score sheet of some overly controlling religious leader. Instead, we want to be part of something bugger than our immediate surroundings. Networking allows a group to pursue its unique vision and to remain connected with the wider world at the same time.

Rav Shaul’s picture of the body of Messiah in Ephesians 4 reflects the sort of healthy networking that I hope to see in the UMJC and our relationship with other organizations:  “We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Messiah, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”