Pain and Joy in Relational Networks
You may recognise this situation. I have sat next to Clive (not his real name) at many meetings over the years and we talked a lot about ministry. He died last month. Suddenly I realise that I have no idea whether he was married, had children, or where he lived. Did he enjoy music? Where did he worship? Had he experienced serious loss in his life? What were his passions – his temptations? So much I do not know. Sure, Clive was a colleague in mission but I never knew him as a brother in Christ. John (his real name) is an Orthodox priest with whom I have spent very little time over the years but we did spend a night together camping in a rocky field in Alaska and catching salmon on a raging torrent of a river. He really is a brother in Christ.
When Jesus put his team together he was not looking for functionaries who filled person specifications, he called sisters and brothers to follow him into places where ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’. He was into relationship building, shared lives, intimacy and self-sacrifice.
“The centrality of relationships is rooted in the personal nature of a triune God... in His mission we see the collaboration of three persons with one objective
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No one sat down in 2000 and said we need a global network of mission agencies to focus on issues of discipleship but that was the year that Faith2Share was born. The birth was rather unexpected – six mission executives gathered to celebrate a bicentenary (of CMS, founded in 1799) and out of that fairly intimate union a new life emerged, un-named for four years, but now a strapping teenager named Faith2Share.
The movement was born out of relationships, relationships that mattered, people who liked being with each other and had time to give to each other. It seems crazy now, but at one stage we flew eight CEOs in one small MAF plane to northern Kenya: risk assessment – not a thought, bonding – by the ton, especially as the pilot abandoned his first landing attempt.
Four years into the growth of this relational network we entered a discernment process seeking to discover why God had drawn us together in this way – by this time Africans, Indians, Americans, Brits and others, from Anglican, Evangelical and Independent backgrounds. That process took us two years but gave us firm foundations on which we still stand today. We discovered three things:
We were together because we shared a passion for seeing children, women and men following Jesus more closely every day – our ‘glue’ was discipleship
We knew we needed each other, none of us was self-sufficient in mission, we believed that mission is by its very nature collaborative – collaboration was our life.
Together we were excited to see God raising up new mission movements around the world – in Bhutan, in Canada, in DR Congo – and we wanted to stand with these movements of the Spirit and learn from them.
Today Faith2Share has grown to 39 member agencies relating to around 600 mission leaders every month and supporting over 7,000 mission workers, but those three foundations remain. Even more importantly, we remain a relational network. Your family, your struggle with sickness, your child’s exam, are just as important to other members as your ministry or your organisational finances.
“ Jesus ... was into relationship building, shared lives, intimacy and self-sacrifice.”
What about the pain? Genuine relationships not only embrace joy and pain, they also cause them both, and the relationships within Faith2Share are no different. Together we are committed to struggling with some of the hardest issues in mission today. Financial disparity, especially between our Global North and Global South members is painful, but we try to find ways of dealing with this – with dependency, with the power that attaches to money, with accountability. Different hermeneutical processes ensure that our theological outlooks, and spiritual disciples, often clash – we must deal with that within the family of Faith2Share, with respect, humility and trust. Models of mission which have worked well for two hundred years in Europe and North America fail to enable others to flourish in mission today – must we face the pain of abandoning old models? By building strong relationships we create a place where it is safe to face hard questions, every to be angry and to be hurt.
To be honest, Faith2Share did not start with theology, but as we have gone on we have come to see that there are very strong theological roots to our commitments to relationality, collaboration and embracing new mission movements (and of course to an over-riding commitment to discipleship). The centrality of relationships is rooted in the personal nature of a triune God and in His mission we first see the collaboration of three persons with one objective – the redemption of all creation. When we add a pneumatological perspective to the missio Dei we begin the grasp the importance of moving with the Holy Spirit who is not constrained by our organisational tidiness but constantly enlivens the People of God into new, missional, movements. Our struggle is often to keep up with the movement of God’s Spirit in His world.
As I have written these words I have been sadly aware that it will be read by some of you who are “Clives” in my life – for that I seek your forgiveness. If you are a “John” to me, I thank you for the pain and the joy and I anticipate with hope the mission journey we continue together, shaped by the relational, collaborative, discipling God who goes ahead of us, constantly raising up new movements by His Spirit.
Mark Oxbrow, International Director, Faith2Share (www.faith2share.net)