to any significant degree and an opportunity was missed. The Revd Canon Humphrey Taylor, then General Secretary of USPG, described the process at the 1986 Mission Agencies Conference,
‘The Church of England still has no formal mechanism whereby General Synod members who have represented it at PIM Consultations elsewhere can report back to it, let alone allowing external partners to contribute to its own deliberations … After the external partners, politely heard or even treated like oracles, have departed, the Church carries on its business much as it did before.’33
2.10 Since 1986 mechanisms have been put in place for a stronger relationship between the Mission Agencies and the central structures of the Church of England. Just prior to the PIM process in 1981 came the establishment of Partnership for World Mission (PWM) in 1978 which provided such a loose structure established in line with the Partners in Mission process. The Working Party which recommended the establishment of PWM said,
‘For the first time in the area of world mission, which includes the church in England as much as the church in other lands, there would exist a specific co-ordinating organ for mission to which all the parties involve can relate in a way which visibly demonstrates the Church of England’s determination to play her share in the world task.’34
2.11 Such a body as PWM was designed to bridge the gap between the central structures and the Mission Agencies and, it was hoped, would bring world mission closer to the central decision-making structures. It was hoped that through PWM there would be a strengthening of relationships and partnership between the synodical structure including the House of Bishops, the Mission Agencies and the dioceses. Such partnership was necessary at home as well as between partner churches in the world church.
2.12 Partnership in World Mission has continued to exercise these functions under four secretaries and now under the World Mission Policy Adviser as it faces another period of transition and development. One of the most significant events of its life was the signing of the Covenant for Common Mission and Co-operation by all the General Secretaries of the Mission Agencies in 2003. The governing body of PWM is now the World Mission and Anglican Communion Panel which brings together representatives of the Mission Agencies, the Companion Links, representatives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Anglican Consultative Council, the network of Diocesan Development Advisers and the General Synod under an Episcopal Chair appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The Panel takes responsibility through the Secretary of PWM for the Annual World Mission Conference. Beginning its life as a Diocesan Companion Links Conference, it is now emerging as the central point at which all the various components of the Church of England’s relationships in world mission come together. An essential part of that process is hearing and receiving from our partners from the global church.
2.13 Apart from Partners in Mission the other Communion-wide initiative was the Decade of Evangelism called for by the 1998 Lambeth Conference following an initiative of His Holiness John Paul II. While the Decade had many detractors, what it did was to focus the Anglican Communion on the essential nature of evangelism in God’s Kingdom. For many of the churches in the global north, including the Church of England, it was a call to recover the energy, life and vitality of the gospel that was all too evident in the churches of the South. Though its outcomes were limited it raised questions in the Church of England about its lack of zeal for evangelism and at parish level it encouraged many Christians to engage with and explore their faith through courses such as Alpha, Emmaus and others. The hallmark of the Decade in the Church of England became ‘from maintenance to mission’. The Anglican Communion joined together at the Kanuga Conference in 1995 to mark the Mid-term of the Decade of Evangelism where it affirmed the distinctive contribution of Anglicans to evangelism as respectful listening and proclamation within the context of incarnational presence and pastoral care.35
2.14 In 2006 the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism published its report entitled Communion in Mission.36 In reviewing current trends and developments in Anglican world mission it picks up a number of themes raised in the 1999 report of Missio37 notably questions surrounding the use of the word ‘partnership’. This had been brought into sharp focus by the vastly changed situation where the growing churches in the Communion are in the global South, and were showing a life and vitality quite alien to the churches in the North. It was also recognized that it was all too easy for partnership to fall quickly into old patterns of the colonial mindset. Missio suggests the movement from the use of the word ‘partnership’ to ‘companionship’ as they had noticed a
‘significant narrowing of the meaning of the term partnership in the 1990s. The word is increasingly used to describe specific programmes or collaborative activity between agencies or diocese’.38
Companionship, they advocate, better describes a broader relationship of trust, listening and learning.
2.15 The 2006 report calls the churches of the Communion to deepen their understanding of partnership and to adopt a new or alternative word for the relationships that go across cultural boundaries. The report also suggests ‘companion’ as well as ‘Brother-Sister’ and ‘friend’. There is also the word ‘hospitality’.
2.16 This brief historical summary has focused on the development of the idea of partnership in the Ecumenical Councils and the Anglican Communion and how that impacted the Church of England. This part of the story reveals how a movement or weaving of ideas across Councils and Communion has brought the idea of partnership into the workings of the Church of England and how such bodies can assist the churches as a whole to critique and develop their common life as the worldwide Body of Christ. There is interconnectedness as the churches search for unity in their common mission in the world expressed with different emphases but each needing the other. It raises the question ‘whither partnership?’ What is the future for this idea that Warren described as
‘an idea whose time has not yet fully come’?39
Is the Church of England now called to look at partnership in a different way? Can she move from being predominantly the giver to become the receiver as the changing shape of the Anglican Communion shows growth and vitality in the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America rather than the North and West? How the Church of England receives the gifts of the world church has been a common focus of discussion in mission discourse for many years. Does there need to be an assessment of current practices in world mission concerning the giving of money? When large amounts of money pass from the Church of England to our partners in other parts of the global church whose needs are being met? How do we build relationships of equal partnership or, to use a well-used phrase, ‘mutual responsibility and interdependence’? Does there need to be a change in the way we use language to describe world mission? Or will this merely mask the subtle but significant changes in attitude that need to occur at a deeper level? These, and other questions, will form the basis of this discussion for the development of world mission in the Church of England. The overall aim is to ask how we can deepen our understanding and practice of partnership for the sake of God’s Kingdom in God’s world today.
Theology of partnership
Partnership and the missio dei
2.17 The most significant development in mission theology in the second half of the twentieth century was the emergence of the concept of the missio dei, the mission of God. The missio dei emphasizes that the origin of mission is found in the God the Holy Trinity. This was a significant movement away from the understanding of mission as the task of the church. God the Trinity is the one who sends the church (John 20.21). Mission is the expression of God’s unfolding purposes as they reveal God’s nature and purpose. God’s church is sent following in the way of Christ and as sign and foretaste of the Kingdom. The role of the church is to discern where God is at work and to follow in obedience. Hartenstein as one of the earliest commentators on the missio dei said,
‘mission is not just the conversion of the individual, not just obedience to the
