PRESENT-DAY MISSION PARTNERSHIPS

Abstract

The centre 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. It is urgent that church leaders, mission executives, and mission practitioners talk together, analyse, critique, and articulate the possibilities and pitfalls of partnership in mission in the 21st century. This article reflects on three aspects of present-day mission partnership, namely the broad contexts of mission partnerships; issues related to the structures for mission partnerships, particularly the modality-sodality mission relationships, and some pitfalls of paternalism facing all those in mission partnerships.