This is a fruitful conversation in search of new wineskins for our denomination. While affirming the move to the local congregation as the primary agent in mission today, we all struggle to continue our practice of mutual partnership implicit in being presbyterian.

Our focus of late has been on affirming the role of the 3 GA recognized validated mission support groups, TOF, PFF, and MBF. Maybe now that that recognition is secure, we need to concentrate on the relationships (partnership) between these 3 VMSGs and WMPU. A key for WMPU is relating to all the VM (presbyteries, synods, congregations, etc) and in defining the emerging new role of WMPU today.

I affirm and applaud your suggestion of a great consultation and agree with Don that the new director of WMPU would be the appropriate convenor (if not Linda or Tom). I too am praying especifically for them daily.

Tim, I didn’t mention my great appreciation for the list along the right side of your page with all the organizations. I tried to do a diagram including all this in my article in Missiology (April 2000) on Local-Global Mission. I continue to try to develop my thinking about all of these partners/participants in God’s local-global mission.

May the star guide us.

Sherron

Yes, we need an expanded understanding of partnership, as Sherron so clearly articulated at the conference in St. Louis. I think that TOF/PFF will help with that.

I am not worried about taking money away from GA because it is not going there anyway. Hopefully the TOF/PFF initiative will return some mission money to PC(USA) mission.

Which raises an interesting question. Appendix A of the 1983 reunion plan defined “validated mission” as that done by presbytery, synod and GA. Then someone asked why “validated mission” is limited to 3 governing bodies and not four (the session) which actually supplies the money.

I have believed for some time that this is the crux of the problem. We have ignored the many historical acknowledgements that (as Marian McClure put it in St. Louis) “congregations do mission and they need partners.” St. Louis was a real turning point but there are many who have not gotten the message – as is evident in the annual reports where “validated mission” is still limited to 3 governing bodies.

The funding system is still a major problem. It reveals our real institutional convictions. As Jesus told us that what we do with our money reveals what we really believe.

Thanks for what both of you are doing.

I, too, see much of the partnership on various levels already happening and an increasing sensitivity on the part of WMPU to dialogue with partners on all levels. If I remember correctly, some years ago, WMPU’s predecessor, Worldwide Ministries Division, was giving some recognition (I believe there was a specific mission personnel category) for members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) who were doing mission through an organization other than our own national mission structure, such as Presbyterians working through Wycliffe, World Vision, OC Ministries, etc. If that is the case, I think this would be similar to the concept of doing “PCUSA” mission through alliances that PFF/TOF may form with other organizations. That may indeed have the effect of reducing funds to WMPU, but I do not see that as necessarily detrimental in the broadest perspective. Simply the forms and structures by which Presbyterians do mission are changing, much like the work local congregations do in mission through structures other than PCUSA governing bodies, is nonetheless, in a very real sense, PCUSA mission.

You have put your finger on a crucial issue that we all need to carefully consider and exchange ideas about. Let’s keep the conversation going.

When I wrote “Called as Partners in Christ’s Service,” one of my constant pleas was that we need to do what educator Parker Palmer advocates, “the practice begins in the classroom.” Hence, I always insist that the practice of partnership begins within WMD (now WMPU), within the 3 divisions (maybe that is a plus of the new restructure), within the PCUSA, partnership between denominational staff, presbytery, synod, congregations, networks, validated mission agencies, and expands to other Presbyterian groups, then to ecumenical connections locally, regionally, and globally and on to NGOs and other religions. But it does begin at home.

One of my concerns is that as TOF-PFF form their strategic alliance and sending agency, while they will continue to collaborate with WMPU, the other funds they will raise from the PCUSA and direct to other agencies and their own will simply take those funds away from our denominational mission program and cause us to have to suffer further reductions, thus becoming counterproductive and making worse the problem it has been created to help.

I think our national staff started waking up to the need for changed roles in light of the new focus on local congregations in mission when the first Congregations conference was held in St. Louis and that it has been growing into and seeking the new roles which it must have. This new restructure will certainly nudge (maybe not so gently) the staff to continue in the pursuit of the new roles and shapes.

One of your comments in response to my article which is coming out in Presbyterians Today has caused me to want to work on a second piece this year, along with a first one on Holistic Mission as Evangelism, Compassion, and Justice. Participants in Holistic Mission –the whole range of mission agents (all subjects, no objects) which takes me to the words ecumenical, catholic.

Enough for now.

Last month I had a conversation with the director of World Mission for the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. They have taken some wonderful new initiatives in response to the changing culture of the 21st century. (I would echo Rob’s mention of Scott Sunnquist’s address, which was given at NWMC and can be downloaded from the website.) He described the key to their responsive changes as an attitude of collaboration.

Like Rob, I also hope the GA mandated consultation will be the occasion to accomplish what you propose. The new director of World Mission is the one who is in the best position to orchestrate such a gathering. Facilitating such an inclusive meeting will win that person points with many who are skeptical.

In the meantime we need to daily lift Linda Valentine and Tom Taylor before the Lord. May they be led by the Spirit as they select the new World Mission Director.

It’s good to see some of this conversation occurring online.

I just want to encourage people to take a look at Tim Carriker’s thoughts on the changing structure of

I just discovered Tim Carriker has begun blogging about the church and mission . While I don’t know Tim

I agree with you. It is time to rethink the role of a national structure for global witness. And as a Zulu proverb puts it: “The future is not coming toward us; it is running away from us.” The national structure has changed and is changing. The question seems to me to be one of whether those changes will simply be driven by environmental factors or whether the PCUSA leadership can engage stakeholders in a meaningful way to try to shape creatively the structure’s future. (You will want to be sure to read the essay by Scott Sunquist on “Presbyterian Mission in a Flat World” now being serialized in Presbyterian Outlook.)

With you, I celebrate the openness of many on the national staff to exploring how they can collaborate more effectively in this era of multiple centers of influence. I do sense a new openness and believe it reflects more than just utilitarian concerns.

Your observations about intra-church partnerships are on target. But more could be said about our Presbyterian approach to inter-church partnerships.

At points in the past, as you know, our emphasis on partnership degenerated to the point where mission became a function of ecumenical relations, a focus primarily on ecclesiastical relationships rather than dynamic ground-level partnerships that build mission capacity in reciprocal ways with a heart for those who do not know the Lord and may never have heard the Gospel. That is a legacy that we still live with. I think it was Faulkner who said, “In the South the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” That’s often true in the church as well.

At times, even still, partnership has meant a shift from patterns of dominance to deference. Ken Bailey has written and speaks eloquently of how each party in a partnership must retain the prerogative of determining the path of their servanthood. Initiative may be taken by either partner. At one level, this hearkens back to what D.T. Niles wrote in 1962: “There must be some way provided for a due disobedience to that [autonomous Church] authority where the Church is not true to its mission” — including here in the U.S. I would hasten to emphasize!

But I do concur with your call for a commitment on the part of Presbyterian mission entities for cooperation and collaboration. That certainly is the spirit in which Outreach and PFF are undertaking our new strategic alliance for the sending of Presbyterians in mission service. And it is the spirit in which Worldwide Ministries (now World Mission) is seeking to catalyze mission networks across the church.

The recent G.A. approved Commissioner’s Resolution 08-17: On the Moderator Convening a Meeting Regarding Worldwide Mission Work of the PC(USA), calling for a high level conversation on mission, to include at least the Moderator, Stated Clerk, GAC Executive Director, and the validated mission support groups. Although the commissioner introduced his resolution in protest of the PFF/TOF announcement about the alliance, we eagerly await the conversation. Perhaps it could be expanded along the lines that you propose in your call for a kind of mission summit on the future of the PCUSA mission structures.

Sadly, the General Assembly Council has developed the habit of trying to answer these kinds of questions internally, without broad conversation and consultation. Worldwide Ministries has done the best job of engaging others in strategic reflection during the past decade, and I pray that Linda Valentine and Tom Taylor will build upon that example and those efforts.

Grace and peace in the Lord.

Rob Weingartner
The Outreach Foundation