HOW CAN WESTERN CHRISTIANS LEARN FROM PARTNERS IN THE WORLD CHURCH?1

Abstract

parish of St Michael's, Heighington, in which I live and work, has an informal partnership link with St Michael and All Angels Church, in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Recently, we invited the church's rector to England, and during his stay took him a few miles up the road to visit Hadrian's Wall. remains were a new experience for our Zimbabwean visitor. It became a demanding afternoon for his hosts, too, as we dredged our recollections of school history examinations: The significance of the occupation of Britain. Discuss. What became clearer, as we talked, was the way in which what had once been an all-pervading influence over a large expanse of this island is now seen as just a temporary episode in its overall development. We touched on the resilience of occupied peoples, and the transitoriness of empire. We were able to show our guest archaeological remains, but the lasting influence of the period lay elsewhere. Institutions of law and administration, the influence of language and culture, feats of engineering, and even the first introduction of Christianity, had all been absorbed so thoroughly that, in time, they could hardly be described as Roman at all. Next day, in our parish eucharist, we had much of the conversation played back to us in the sermon the visiting rector preached. Unexpectedly, it became the lens through which we were invited to look at the situation in Zimbabwe as well. There, too, the few decades of British rule seemed all pervasive. artefacts of empire are still prominent in the cultural landscape of both the nation and the church, and it is too soon, yet, to view them dispassionately. In current circumstances it is difficult to consider them at all. But the eye of faith will look forward to a time when decades of imperial power will be seen as just a passing episode, and some of the good things that it brought, including Christianity, are absorbed into African life and made its own. Partnership links as a learning exchange I have begun with this anecdote because it shows that partnership links do not have to be very sophisticated to be fruitful. Over the thirty years since the Anglican Communion adopted the Partners in Mission (PIM) initiatives, a whole variety of partnership (or, better now, companionship) links have been set up. (2) In my own diocese of Durham, we have links with a church in Lubeck in northern Germany, which is largely a relationship between the cathedrals, and with an Orthodox diocese in Romania, which involves clergy exchanges. There is also a well-developed link between Durham and Lesotho, in southern Africa. It is this last partnership which has alerted me to the potential of church-to-church engagements, but our low-key inter-play with a parish in Zimbabwe has shown that any meeting with fellow Christians in the world church holds the potential to become a learning exchange. A lot of attention is usually given to the preparations for such encounters, but how much time is made for de-briefing afterwards? What is the lasting benefit of the project? To learn from any experience, it is necessary to reflect on it. Such reflection may not be comfortable. It is interesting to hear other people's stories. It is not so easy to recognize ourselves when we appear in them. Some members of our congregation on that Sunday morning when we listened to our Zimbabwean preacher were troubled by his sermon. It is one thing to meet our partners and to be thanked for any small material assistance that we might have been able to offer. It is quite another thing to be challenged by our partners to look at our own situation from a different point of view. Engagement with the world church has the potential to force us to reinterpret familiar experiences, and begin to see our place in the whole scheme of things in a new way. Such a transaction should not apply just to individuals or local congregations. Ideally, the process is also meant to involve whole dioceses, and to influence the total culture of what it means to be the church in a particular place. …