Health Service and Social Services in England. A new partnership is hailed as a deepening in working relationships that can be represented by a Memorandum of Understanding or working agreement. To summarize: one prominent missiologist has described the word ‘partnership’ as
‘this deceptively simple term masks a complex reality’.28
2.3 Partnership in the context of the Christian faith is a deeper expression of relationship involving relationship with the Trinitarian God and each other. It also reflects the nature of God as Three in One. The biblical word used to denote partnership is koinonia translated partnership or communion. Another term closely related to partnership is companion. Dioceses have ‘Companion Links’ not partnership links. This has a strong sense of those who eat bread together, which includes encounter, friendship and mutuality rooted in a eucharistic relationship.
History of partnership in the Anglican Communion and the Church of England
2.4 The history of the concept of partnership in theological and ecclesial use can be traced back to the Edinburgh 1910 World Mission Conference. It was the young Anglican priest from India, the Revd V. S. Azariah who stated in an impassioned speech,
‘The exceeding riches of the glory of Christ can be fully realized not by the Englishman, the American and the Continental alone, nor by the Japanese, the Chinese and the Indians by themselves – but by all working together, worshipping together and learning together the Perfect Image of our Lord and Christ, it is only “with all the Saints” that we can “comprehend the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God … We ought to be willing to learn from one another and to help one another.
Through all the ages to come the Indian church will rise up in gratitude to attest the heroism and self-denying labours of the missionary body. You have given your goods to feed the poor. You have given your bodies to be burned. We also ask for love. Give us friends!’29
This extensive quotation summarizes the essence of partnership in the Christian sense – being together under the Lordship of Christ – even though the word was not used at this time. It highlights one of the essential characteristics of equal partnership – friendship.
2.5 The word partnership can be identified first in ecumenical discussions on world mission before it emerged in Anglican discourse. The term ‘partnership’ emerged into the foreground of mission thinking as ‘partners in obedience’ at the 1947 Conference of the International Missionary Conference at Whitby, Ontario, Canada. While the issue of mission relationships had long been on the agenda of previous mission conferences of the International Missionary Council in Jerusalem and Tambaram it was at Whitby that the concept of partnership began to take shape. Some of the key issues concerned the relationship of the younger and older churches and how and when autonomy in governance could be given to the younger churches. This was heightened by the early independence movements particularly in India. Canon Max Warren, then General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, attended the Whitby meeting where he led the worship and where it is likely that discussions contributed to his thinking about partnership which found expression in his 1955 book entitled Partnership. This short but important book has had greater effect on partnership thinking than any official church report and is widely acknowledged as a formative text. Attention will be given to it in the theological section of this chapter.
2.6 In Anglican thinking partnership emerged at the 1963 Third Congress of the Anglican Communion held in Toronto. This Congress adopted the highly significant report ‘Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence’ (MRI) which led to the establishment of the early Companion Links across the Communion. The Missio document Patterns of International Mission Structures in the Anglican Communion describes this process,
‘Since 1963 the Anglican Communion has initiated two Communion-wide programmes to encourage mutual participation and support in the mission of the church – Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) and Partners in Mission (PIM).
The Communion as a whole began its journey from paternalism to partnership in its mission relations in the 1960s. In 1963, just prior to the Anglican Congress in Toronto, the Primates and Metropolitans of the Communion issued a ‘manifesto’ entitled Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ – MRI. Their proposal was essentially to look at needs (for people, finance, skills and infrastructure) across the Communion and to gather and distribute resources to meet those needs. It was a challenge to break out of the donor/recipient mindset of the colonial era and move into new relationships of equality and mutuality, not just in financial sharing but in personnel and other aspects of Christian discipleship. A call was made for a fund of five million pounds to assist the new provinces. A priority was theological education to encourage self-reliance in leadership. MRI increased awareness of the Communion, the need for partnership, and the principles on which it should be based. The final part of the manifesto reads as follows:
We are aware that such a programme as we propose, if it is seen in its true size and accepted, will mean the death of much that is familiar about our churches now. It will mean radical change in our priorities – even leading us to share with others as much as we spend on ourselves. It means the death of old isolations and inherited attitudes. It means a willingness to forgo many desirable things, in every church.
In substance what we are really asking is the rebirth of the Anglican Communion, which means the death of many old things but – infinitely more – the birth of entirely new relationships. We regard this as the essential task before the churches of the Anglican Communion now.30
2.7 The movement from ‘paternalism to partnership’ is indicative of the contemporary political situation where the rejection of colonial government and structures gave rise to new forms of indigenous government. The Anglican Communion had spread with the presence of British influence in its various forms and had been part of British exports abroad. In the light of this new ways of understanding relationships between churches needed to be explored.’
2.8 Apart from the development of the Companion Links, the Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence document gave rise to the Communion-wide process Partners in Mission. The purpose of PIM was to engage the churches of the Communion in a process of setting its mission priorities in which process they would be accompanied by partner churches selected by the host church. The Church of England took part in this process in 1981. The effect of the PIM Consultation upon the Church of England was marginal. The process included a debate in General Synod where Standing Orders were suspended and while many appreciative comments were made on the contributions of the external partners, there was no real process established for the integration of the ideas generated to become part of the lifeblood of the Church of England. The General Synod debate reveals that, at times, the process was difficult and painful for those from the Church of England31 and the central message of the external partners was that it lacked a vitality of vision for the gospel. Salient points were also raised about the lack of partnership working between the voluntary agencies and the central structures of the Church of England and about the number of voluntary agencies working in world mission though the newly established Partnership for World Mission was applauded by the external partners as a necessary and welcome development. Reading the General Synod debate 29 years later showed its prophetic nature. Many of the things regarding the need for mission to form the life of the Church of England have, or are being, fulfilled. However, there seems to be little evidence of a process to assess and receive what was brought to the Church of England from its external partners. As Philip Groves concludes on the PIM process as a whole,
‘there was as clear a distinction between giving and receiving churches at the end of the process as at the beginning. The giving churches were offered the chance to receive but were unable or unwilling to do so. The churches regarded as receiving had little opportunity to offer themselves to the younger churches and the giving church did not value their resources.’32
2.9
