Whither partnership? Reflections on the history of mutuality in mission

Abstract

Despite the fact that partnership has been a pronounced goal in ecumenical relationships for over eighty years, the realization of mutuality, solidarity, and koinonia has, even until present times, proven to be elusive. In seeking to find reasons for this, a review of the history of the modern Protestant missionary movement, as well as the resultant ecumenical movement, reveals four key themes or issues that continually make the attainment of equitable relationships impossible to realize, namely the home base, humanitarianism and development, authority, and rhetoric and reality. Lamin Sanneh’s typology of churches as either Global (the churches of the North or Western World, also formerly known as ‘sending’ or ‘older’ churches) or World (the churches of the South and East, formerly known as ‘receiving’ or ‘younger’ churches) will provide the critical lens through which this history is understood, for if ecumenical partnerships are to have any chance of overcoming these themes, the churches of Global Christianity must stop seeing mission as expansion and lose the desire to remake others in their image; in short, they must become, in their worldview and ethos, World churches.