C. van Engen PRESENT-DAY MISSION Dr. C. van Engen, Arthur F. Glasser Professor Emeritus of PARTNERSHIPS Biblical Theology of Mission and Senior Professor of Biblical ABSTRACT Theology of Mission, Fuller Theological The centre of gravity of the church and of Seminary (SIS/FTS), mission-sending has shifted from the North and USA. West to the South and East. Currently, as many E-mail: cvanengen@ full-time cross-cultural missionaries are sent and lacmin.org ORCID: https://orcid. supported by churches in Asia, Africa and Latin org/0000-0003-3868- America as those sent from Europe and North 6426 America. In this new reality, there is an urgent need to discover and create new patterns of missionary DOI: http://dx.doi. partnership among Christians worldwide. It is org/10.18820/23099089/ urgent that church leaders, mission executives, actat.Sup28.4 and mission practitioners talk together, analyse, ISSN 1015-8758 (Print) critique, and articulate the possibilities and pitfalls ISSN 2309-9089 (Online) of partnership in mission in the 21st century. Acta Theologica 2019 This article reflects on three aspects of present- Suppl 28:53-71 day mission partnership, namely the broad contexts of mission partnerships; issues related to the structures for mission partnerships, particularly Date Published: the modality-sodality mission relationships, and 6 December 2019 some pitfalls of paternalism facing all those in mission partnerships. 1. INTRODUCTION It is an honour to be invited to contribute a chapter in the Festschrift for my friend, Prof. Dr Pieter Verster. I have known Pieter for a number of years. We have partnered together in leadership formation, particularly with the Published by the UFS formation of a new generation of theologians and http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/at missiologists in Latin America. Pieter’s irenic spirit, © Creative Commons commitment to cooperation and collaboration With Attribution (CC-BY) in mission, love of the Scriptures, and deep appreciation of people have been an inspiration to me. Some years ago, I had the joy of being 53 Van Engen Present-day mission partnerships with Pieter and the Faculty of Theology of the University of the Free State. I visited several classes that Pieter was teaching at the time and had an opportunity to watch first-hand his joy in teaching, his love for the Bible, his deep faith in Jesus Christ, and his commitment to listen, accompany, and appreciate personally each student in his classes. A consummate teacher, mentor, and missiologist, it has been a privilege to know and work with Pieter. These experiences with Dr Verster reminded me of discussions in which I have been involved, over many years, regarding mission partnerships. That led to the topic of this chapter. During our times together, Pieter and I often talked about mission partnerships, particularly as that issue impacts on the praxis of mission in Africa. I write from a North American and Latin American perspective, but I believe that our struggles in developing healthy mission partnerships are parallel to those experienced by many in Africa and Asia. I will discuss three matters in this chapter: • Set a broad context of present-day mission partnerships. • Remind us of issues related to the structures for mission partnerships, particularly the modality-sodality mission relationships. • Suggest some pitfalls of paternalism that we all face in mission partnerships. We are aware of the fact that over 1.5 billion people worldwide profess themselves to be in some way Christian followers of Jesus, and that roughly two-thirds of all Christians now live in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania. The center of gravity of the church and of mission-sending has shifted from the North and West to the South and East. Currently, as many full-time cross-cultural missionaries are sent and supported by churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America as those sent from Europe and North America. In this new reality, there is an urgent need to discover and create new patterns of missionary partnership among Christians worldwide. On a global scale, with missionary activities moving from everywhere to everywhere and from everyone to everyone, partnership in mission in the 21st century will involve combinations of the following: • Church-with-church. • Mission-with-mission. • Sending-mission with receiving church. • Sending-church with receiving mission. • Formerly receiving church, now a mission sender, partnering to serve a new receiving church or mission. 54 Acta Theologica Supplementum 28 2019 • Multicultural teams that draw support from, and are accountable to persons, churches or mission agencies worldwide. • Local congregations (especially mega-churches) that send their own missionaries, cooperating with older or newer receiving churches or mission agencies. • Global, multilateral cooperative mission endeavours. Patterns of partnership are increasingly complex. It is difficult for • Local congregations to partner with denominational and/or sodality structures; • Mission sodalities to partner with congregations within a modality tradition; • Mission sodalities or missionary orders to partner with other sodalities, or with denominational structures or church hierarchies, and • Mission agencies or denominational mission groups (sodalities) to partner with NGOs or other agencies made up of members of churches even within the same tradition. Across the globe, we all need to examine the “beam in our own eye” (Matt. 7:3) and listen and learn from each other to find new ways of partnering together in world evangelisation. Recently, Lederleitner (2010:34) wrote In order to work together well we need to listen to one another. We need to not only deeply grasp how our partners feel and what they believe but also take the additional step to understand why such feelings and beliefs are wholly logical within a given context. If we can see the logic of a person’s worldview, if we can value it as being wholly reasonable given a unique cultural heritage and history, from that place of mutual respect and dignity we can find new and creative ways to overcome obstacles and work together. If we never take that step, at some level within our hearts we will continue to demean how others think and function in the world. From a Latin American perspective, Cueva (2015:xvii) suggested the need to “replace the old concept of partnership with what we shall call reciprocal contextual collaboration”. In this article, I focus on international, long-term, cross-cultural missionary activity. Many of the issues I will mention also impact on short-term and local mission praxis, but the dynamics differ. During my years of missionary service in southern Mexico, I was involved in mission partnerships with the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico, 55 Van Engen Present-day mission partnerships in partnership with the Reformed Church in America. I have personally experienced every one of the pitfalls of paternalism that I will mention in the last section of this chapter. In the interest of space, I will simply describe nine syndromes of paternalism. Before considering some pitfalls in mission partnerships, it is important to review and remember some of the issues that have faced the Christian church in terms of the diverse missionary structures that have emerged over time. 2. MISSION STRUCTURES, A BRIEF HISTORICAL SUMMARY It is beyond the scope of this chapter to trace the history of Christian mission structures. That could be the topic of a fascinating and much- needed Ph.D. dissertation in Missiology. Allow me to simply mention some of the salient points regarding mission structures that have influenced the assumptions and patterns of missionary partnerships. 2.1 Paul and Barnabas – and their missionary teams One of the first mission structures involved the mission team created by Paul and Barnabas for their first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-3). Their new mission structure included John Mark and possibly other men and women. There was a problem with John Mark. However, due to the family relationship between Barnabas and John Mark and to Paul’s lack of patience and tolerance for John Mark’s having left them during the first missionary journey (Acts 15:36-41), Luke (Acts 15:39) tells us that “[t]hey had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company”. One mission structure thus became two or more. This sounds rather familiar nowadays. 2.2 Diaspora and dispersion mission during the first several centuries In a general sense, we could summarise the mission structures of the first three centuries of the Christian era as mission through diaspora and dispersion. The Nestorians went east, probably all the way to China; tradition has it that some disciples headed south to India; other followers of Jesus went west all the way to Ireland; some disciples went north to what is today Lebanon. Mission structures involved persons, groups, and families who migrated to new places where they testified concerning their faith, evangelised those living around them, and contributed to the growth and geographic expansion of the church. Mission partnership, if it could be called such, was informal, collaborative, and somewhat unplanned. 56 Acta Theologica Supplementum 28 2019 2.3 “Cuius regio eius religio” of the Holy Roman Empire, and after the Reformation After Constantine (c. 272AD-337CE) and during the next nearly thousand years, Christian mission was essentially the work of the pope, emperors and kings who expanded their rule both politically and religiously throughout what became known as the “Holy Roman Empire”. Church, government, and the military combined to expand the power of both the Western and Eastern churches. Mission structures were essentially church and political structures. The rule of the day was that “whose reign” determined “their religion”. 3. ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONARY ORDERS, MONASTICISM AND CHURCH HIERARCHY With the discovery of new lands beyond the boundaries of Europe, missionary orders emerged as a new kind of mission structure.