alongside the other. All of this can only be realized through the vulnerability, sacrifice and service of the incarnate one – Jesus Christ. This will mean playing a new tune, a new rhythm with its roots in the mission of God which is always new, always moving and always at work. It will mean taking part in the infinite and surprising nature of God’s Spirit at work in the world.
Notes
2 Presence and Prophecy, Introduction, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, Church House Publishing, 2002, p. ix.
3 Presence and Prophecy, p. ix.
4 This term is adopted by Andrew Walls, ‘The Ephesian Moment’, in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, Orbis Books, 2002, pp. 72–81.
5 Walls, ‘The Ephesian Moment’, pp. 72–81.
6 Presence and Prophecy, Introduction, p. 27.
7 Foreign missions were often viewed separately from home missions by those who were less involved in them but not by the founders of such missions. The work of the Clapham Sect and the Oxford Movement, to name but two, is witness to this fact.
8 The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been established in 1698 and 1701 respectively.
9 The term ‘Majority World’ is used in preference to Global South or Third World because most of the materially poor people of the world live in the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America and this term does not imply inferiority as the term ‘Third World’ had tended to do.
10 See Kim, Joining in with the Spirit, Connecting World Church and Local Mission, Epworth, 2009.
11 A concept developed by Andrew Walls which is based on the cultural context of the Epistle to the Ephesians which describes the short time in the first century when the two Christian cultures, Jewish and Hellenistic, came together. See n. 4 above.
12 Warren, Building Missionary Congregations, Church House Publishing, 1994.
13 Mission-shaped Church, Church House Publishing, 2004, p. x.
14 Winter and Hawthorne (eds), The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission, Paternoster Press, 1999, pp. 220–9.
15 Extensive work has been done in this area by Dr George Lings of the Church Army.
16 Genesis 1.28.
17 Sharing God’s Planet, Church House Publishing, 2005, GS 1558, p. 21.
18 Ephesians 1.10.
19 Sharing God’s Planet, p. vii.
20 June 2010.
21 Living Thankfully, House of Bishops, 2010, p. 23.
22 Anne Richards with the Mission Theology Advisory Group, CTBI, 2011.
23 The Five Marks of Mission originated from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC 6), 1984, Bonds of Affection, p. 49.
24 For a discussion of mission and worship see Presence and Prophecy, Chapter 10, p. 133.
25 The Micah Declaration on Integral Mission, www.micahnetwork.org.
26 The Commitment agreed at the Cape Town 2010 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization Conference, October 2010.
Chapter 2: Partnership, Participation and Hospitality
Summary
This chapter describes the emergence of partnership as a concept in mission discourse and critiques its use. It highlights the relationship between partnership and missio dei and argues that partnership needs development and refreshing if it is to provide a mission theology for today. Participation and hospitality are suggested as conceptual developments that enhance partnership.
Introduction
2.1 The governing principle for the Church of England concerning world mission relationships since the mid-1960s has been partnership. While this concept has opened up possibilities for new shapes of relationships in the immediate post-colonial social climate, it has also proved to be difficult to grasp and implement as relationships have progressed. This chapter will explore the theology of partnership and how partnership has been exercised in and through the Mission Agencies and the Diocesan Companion Links. It will assess the benefits of this approach as well as outlining its enduring challenges. It will argue that partnership needs further articulation and the adoption of a deeper level of understanding and practice through concepts such as participation and hospitality. While not rejecting partnership, it will be argued that this was essentially a language of the post-colonial era and a new language for new times is needed. The language of mission today is often expressed in terms of ‘community’, ‘relationship’ and ‘encounter’. These represent a wider understanding of mission beyond the more formal understandings of partnership.
2.2 Partnership is a multi-faceted concept that is difficult to define with any accuracy. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of partner is
‘a person who takes on an undertaking with another or others especially in a business or firm with shared risks and profits’.27
Partnership holds notions both of difference and shared concerns. It implies a coming together of people of difference in a shared enterprise. One of the most common uses of the word is with business relationships involving financial arrangements. For example, a partner in a firm of solicitors or accountants has reached a level of seniority that involves a substantial level of ownership. Likewise a product may be produced ‘in partnership with’. The term ‘partner’ also works in modern usage to denote a relationship of intimacy and depth that does not have the legally binding nature of marriage. Partnership is a word or concept denoting a closeness of working together that entails some element of commitment even if this is only aspirational. Another example would be the use of the word
