Kingdom Partnerships for Synergy in Missions William D. Taylor, Editor William Carey Library Pasadena, California, USA Editor: William D. Taylor Technical Editor: Susan Peterson Cover Design: Jeff Northway © 1994 World Evangelical Fellowship Missions Commission All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo- copying and recording, for any purpose, without the express written consent of the publisher. Published by: William Carey Library P.O. Box 40129 Pasadena, CA 91114 USA Telephone: (818) 798-0819 ISBN 0-87808-249-2 Printed in the United States of America Table of Contents Preface Michael Griffiths . vii The World Evangelical Fellowship Missions Commission William D. Taylor . xiii 1 Introduction: Setting the Partnership Stage William D. Taylor . 1 PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS OF PARTNERSHIP 2 Kingdom Partnerships in the 90s: Is There a New Way Forward? Phillip Butler . 9 3 Responding to Butler: Mission in Partnership R. Theodore Srinivasagam . 31 4 Responding to Butler: Reflections From Europe Stanley Davies . 43 PART TWO: CRITICAL ISSUES IN PARTNERSHIPS 5 Cultural Issues in Partnership in Mission Patrick Sookhdeo . 49 6 A North American Response to Patrick Sookhdeo Paul McKaughan . 67 7 A Nigerian Response to Patrick Sookhdeo Maikudi Kure . 89 8 A Latin American Response to Patrick Sookhdeo Federico Bertuzzi . 93 9 Control in Church/Missions Relationship and Partnership Jun Vencer . 101 10 Confidence Factors: Accountability in Christian Partnerships Alexandre Araujo . 119 iii PART THREE: INTERNATIONALIZING AGENCIES 11 Challenges of Partnership: Interserves History, Positives and Negatives James Tebbe and Robin Thomson . 131 12 Internationalizing Agency Membership as a Model of Partnership Ronald Wiebe . 153 13 Tensions in an International Mission Brian Butler . 163 14 The Benefits and Problems of Internationalizing Missions Joshua K. Ogawa . 173 PART FOUR: MODELS OF PARTNERSHIP 15 Partnership in Mission: OMF in a Unique China Partnership David Pickard . 187 16 COMIBAM: Three Interdependent Partnerships in Latin America Rodolfo Rudy Girón . 197 17 Some Aspects of Partnership in the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Wycliffe Bible Translators David Cummings . 205 18 Mission Kanuri: A Plan of Action for Northern Nigeria Reuben Ezemadu . 209 19 Towards Interdependent Partnership: WEC in Multiple Partnerships Dietrich Kuhl . 217 20 An Indian Missions Partnership Model Ebe Sunder Raj . 225 21 OC International in an Indian Partnership Larry Keyes . 229 CONCLUSIONS 22 Partners Into the Next Millennium William D. Taylor . 237 iv APPENDICES 1 Definition of Terms . 243 2 Agreement for Cooperative Work Between a New Partner Ministry and Partners International (PI) . 249 3 Missions Standards in India: An Appeal to All Overseas Partners . 255 4 Consultation Participants . 257 5 Bibliography . 263 Index . 265 v Preface Dr. Michael Griffiths I am excited about this book, because it speaks to a most significant missionary issue. Men and women of God have always been stirred up by Him to get things done: they are always dissatisfied with God’s people as they are. Old Testa- ment prophets were angrily disturbed, expressing God’s own distress that His people were not the way He wanted them to be. The Apostles Paul, Peter, and John wrote because they were disenchanted with the way the church was, and they expressed God’s own disappointment with His church. It is therefore thoroughly biblical for us also to be somewhat frustrated with the church! Most missionary societies, including denominational ones, were started by individuals (Hudson Taylor, C. T. Studd) or small groups of stirrers (CMS, SIM, BEM, WUMS) frustrated with the inertia of the churches of their day, getting others to join them in fresh initiatives to preach Christ, save souls, and plant churches. Men and women have their eyes opened to unreached continents (so David Livingstone goes to Africa) or countries (so Hudson Taylor goes to China, the Melbourne Trio to Borneo in 1928, and others into Nepal in 1953). Most of us, like me, became conscious of the significant sodalities during student days. Urbana’s circular corridor once paraded a choice vii viii Kingdom Partnerships for Synergy in Missions of mission booths from Andes to the Zambesi. Currently the Mission Handbook of US/Canada Protestant Ministries Over- seas lists around 800 agencies. In a country like Japan, there were some 140 foreign mission agencies listed from North America and Europe, and perhaps 190 indigenous Japanese denominations. Today we have a different scenario, as more and more countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (I agree with Patrick Sookhdeo that we should stop talking about the First, Second, Third, and even Two Thirds World—it seems unlikely that God makes such distinctions between us!) have started sending missionaries. The Philippines boasted (is that the right word?) at least seven different Baptist Missions from North America. Korea seems to specialize in multiplying Presbyterian denominations. In these marvelous days when missionaries are no longer exclusively Caucasian “palefaces,” it is a joy to meet colleagues who are Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino. But the prospect of each one of the denominations in each country developing its own separate missionary society, intent on reproducing its own denomina- tional “tribalism” in several other countries opens up mind- boggling prospects of proliferation. If all these groups are to start and jealously preserve their own denominational and interdenominational churches, exporting their own church histories instead of allowing fellow Christians to develop their own, the resulting chaos will be multiplied ad nauseam. Division of organization, duplication of effort, dissipation of energies, and escalation of operating costs are increasing astronomically. Western individualism multiplies organiza- tions as a carcinoma multiplies cells—and with not altogether dissimilar pathological effect upon the Christian body. In some ways, it mirrors the inefficient bureaucracies and corrupted distribution in secular agencies. Fortunately, there have al- ways been those sensible souls who just got on with the simple task of saving souls, baptizing bodies, and planting churches. This book shows that godly men (sadly there are no women contributors; the participants include three women and 90 men!) now sense the folly of following indefinitely multiplied Preface ix individual exercise to its ultimate absurdity! (The New Testa- ment gives us no models for this: the writers seem to have embraced this One Church, One Lord idea—extraordinary lack of appreciation of the value of competition and private enter- prise!) And while I am sure there is much laughter in heaven every time a conference reports its findings, this one seems to offer us real hope of turning the tide of proliferation. It is significant that it is non-Western fellow Christians who think so much less individualistically and selfishly, who are pressing us all to act corporately and more responsibly, as Joshua Ogawa reminds us. The idea is simple: we should never struggle to do something alone, that we can do better if we cooperate with others in “partnerships.” While we all rejoice in our jubilees and centen- nials, we begin to realize that our human organizations and divisions, and even our origins, have no permanent validity or divine sanction to continue until the Lord’s return. None of our existing mandates are written in stone. Many of our traditional societies show evidence of corporate Parkinson’s and even organizational Alzheimer’s. It will take some time to change all our mindsets—“partnerships” are already being classified into convenient subgroupings! But this book points us in the right direction. Differences among evangelicals are rarely doctrinal; they are usually little more than the accident of which group we belong to. Most of us could work equally well within other similar Bible-believing missions. This is certainly the way ahead, but there are difficulties, which are well expressed in the book: Firstly, that it is always easier to go it alone, whereas even a bilateral “partnership” takes time to arrange. Paul McKaughan, in a superbly sensitive and spiritual contribution, deeply conscious of God’s sovereignty, wrestles with the time, energy, and expense of arranging for even two agencies to work together temporarily, let alone for any kind of multilateral partnership among several disparate groups. Theo Srinivasa- gam (IEM) speaks of the value of “networks” as the contempo- rary way of relating. x Kingdom Partnerships for Synergy in Missions Secondly, there is a tension between flexibility and mobility of response on the one hand, and the need to see that there is agreement over goals and methods. Some want as much freedom as possible, while others know there is safety in having it all carefully spelled out beforehand. Frontiers’ flexible ap- proach whereby teams designated to particular areas work out their own diverse Memoranda of Working Agreement under the flexible umbrella of the mother organization may have a lot to teach us. The comment, “If you can do it by consensus, don’t write a constitution,” is a helpful one. If constitutions were so important, the Bible would have provided them. Over-organiz- ing is a cultural kink of some Western societies! Thirdly, there is the question of how far mobile, activist innovators of outreach are wise to tie themselves afresh to the inertia of the cumbersome, slow-moving, self-obsessed, de- nominational churches (“like a mighty tortoise” syndrome). Carey was first called a “miserable enthusiast” to propose the use of “means” by church leaders, and later the BMS withdrew their support from Serampore. The Church Missionary Society may be a respectable Anglican society today, but it began with a group of evangelical laymen and ministers, whom the church establishment would have labeled as “maverick.” We cannot forget that most of our mission organizations came into exist- ence in order to overcome church inertia, in spite of the denominational church rather than because of it.