One afternoon when I was nine years old, my Mom came into my bedroom and announced we were having company for dinner. I knew what this meant. Mom would serve one of her fanciest specialties: Her award-winning macaroni and cheese or chicken and dumplings were not nearly fancy enough. They would not do when we had company. I would have to wear Sunday clothes — perhaps even a clip-on tie. We would eat in the dining room, which we never used unless we had company. We would eat off of real china and use real silver. I was quite clearly warned to be on my best behavior.

Having company was risky. Life was surely different when we had company. This particular afternoon was more amazing than most because of our guest. Now usually the guest was the new pastor of our small Baptist church in Palm Harbor, Fla. Sometimes, if we were lucky, the revival preacher would be invited for dinner. But tonight our company was going to be a real-life missionary! Wow. Here, in my own house, was a person who, as I understood at the time, we paid to go to a far-off exotic land and bring the good news to the people, those benighted people, over there. The good news was quite expansive: It included our expertise, our answers, our religion, our worldview. It was all very exciting, even if I did have to wear a clip-on tie and Mom seemed more uptight than usual.

That missionary represented the model for mission that I grew up with: Special people get sent to “do to” and to “do for.” But I grew up. Time moved forward. Thankfully new models for mission emerged, including the model for mission of the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance does not send selected missionaries to direct its prodigious mission work. Instead, we have mission partners all over the world: from Bethlehem to Brazil, from the Republic of Georgia to Atlanta, Ga. The partnership model champions humility over hubris: We seek first to understand our partners’ worldview and to honor it. We know that we lack complete expertise; we know we don’t have all the answers. But we do provide energy and commitment to the projects our partners deem most important.

Perhaps an example would be appropriate. Two years ago, I got the chance to go with a delegation from my church in Charlotte to visit our partner congregation in Carlos Rojas, Cuba. — a partnership made possible by the Alliance of Baptists’ partnership with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba. Now we are Americans, so we had to bring stuff. But it was stuff our partner said was needed: some medicine, some building supplies they could not get otherwise, some tools. (Entering Cuba with a suitcase of saw blades was quite an adventure.) We did a few fix-it-up projects around the church —mostly because our Cuban friends knew us well. Americans like to do things that show immediate visible results: Rake the yard, paint a wall, then take a picture. But most important we brought ourselves — to sit awhile with our partners and experience a bit of their lives, to feel the palpable sense of joy in their living that we sadly miss, to see firsthand that their church in a small town in rural Cuba had many of the same challenges and celebrations as our church in a big American city. We walk together down similar paths; we offer our experiences to each other as a gift.

As a part of our visit, we ate meals in the houses of church members. Our hosts took great pride in serving us their simple specialties, but no one dressed up. No clip-on ties. We ate at one small table. The good china and silver were somehow not available. No one felt the need to be on their best behavior. Our hosts weren’t uptight. Conversation was raucous and bilingual.  We laughed a lot. It didn’t feel like we were company at all — but we all knew that we were certainly in good company. Thanks be to God.