What does being ‘global-local’ mean?

Global-local symposium participants (Photo: Gill Poole/CMS)

Tim Morgan, Andy Wheeler and parishioners of St Patrick’s Church, Wallington, share how participating in a CMS ‘mission accompaniment’ process can widen church horizons.

Tim Morgan writes: We are very good at compartmentalising our lives, putting things in ‘boxes’, keeping them separate from one another — work and leisure, private and public, sacred and secular.  We do it in church too — Ancient and Modern, hymns and songs, adults and children, priest and people.

Tim Morgan chatting to John Gooding and Rachel Megoran at the symposium (Photo: Gill Poole/CMS)

One sphere of church life where we have a particular penchant for such ‘dis-integration’ is the area of mission.  Commonly, this disjointedness manifests itself in three ways.

First, ‘mission’ is put in a box by itself; separated from the rest of church life, mission is the preserve of ‘the Mission Committee’ while the PCC runs the church.

Secondly, ‘world mission’ (or ‘missions’) is put in one box and ‘home mission’ in another, as though one were essentially different from the other.

Symposium participants in Woking (Photo: Gill Poole/CMS)

Finally, there is the classic ’divide’ between evangelism and social action, the ‘words’ and the ‘works’ of the Gospel.

But this has to stop!  In a world of multiple connections, rapid communications, global travel, and especially the explosive growth of the world-wide Church, such divisions are anachronistic and irrelevant to the way in which God is at work in the world today.  Why think outside the box when you can throw it away altogether?

Archbishop Temple famously stated that “the Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members” the Church is a mission body, the Body of Christ on earth.   Church and mission are one.

Participant Eileen Routh (Photo: Gill Poole/CMS)

The term ‘world mission’ appears to suggest that it happens ‘somewhere else’, but of course all mission happens ‘somewhere’ — all mission is local.   Moreover, all mission is part of God’s global activity, so, equally, all mission is global.  Global and local mission are one.

In Jesus’ ministry it is very difficult to distinguish between what he said and what he did — indeed the Hebrew word for ‘word’, dabar, also means ‘action’.  Evangelism and social action, words and works, are one.

Over the past 18 months a CMS ‘mission accompaniment’ process has been pioneered, helping churches to explore ways of re-integrating church and mission, ‘global’ and ‘local’, words and works — seeing mission not so much as a separate activity as as a way of doing and seeing everything locally and globally.

Seven churches and one diocese have piloted the ‘journey’, finding out what this might mean for them and answering the “so what?” question.  It has been an exciting journey of discovery for all involved, including CMS, and one that we are happy to explore with a wider group of churches nationwide.

One of the churches on the journey is St Saviour’s Church, Guildford.

Andy Wheeler writes from St Saviour’s: Ours has been a ‘mission-minded’ church for many years, supporting many mission partners and agencies in many parts of the world.

However, a few years ago, it became plain that our multitude of activities and connections had little meaning for us as a church involved in evangelism and mission locally in Guildford.  We didn’t know very much about our connections, we had no strategy for our giving and involvement, we certainly learnt very little from them, and they didn’t alter our sense of who we are as a local community within the world-wide Body of Christ very much.

We started over.  We stopped giving to a vast range of ministries and agencies without much thought or accountability and, over an 18-month period, sought to discern the relationships and partnerships into which the Lord was leading us relationships of affection, mutuality, learning, and inspiration to involvement in more creative ways in our local mission task.

We reduced our church partnerships to just 12 roughly divided between ’local’, ‘national’ and ‘world-wide’.  Simultaneously, we encouraged people at St Saviour’s to keep up with, and continue supporting, their ‘private passions’ in mission.

This was a step forward.  Some of these partnerships have flourished and are becoming the kind of mutual partnerships in friendship and the Gospel that we anticipated.   Such have been our local partnerships with the YMCA and a youth networking organisation called Matrix, and internationally with CMS, the Diocese of Egypt and the Amos Trust in particular.

At this point we became involved more closely with issues of mission strategy with the Diocese of Guildford and with CMS’ Global-Local mission initiative.

This helped because we realised that others were on the same journey and wrestling with the same questions.

As we have teased this exploration out with others, we have become aware that this is not an easy journey and we are still challenged by such questions as:

What and how do we learn from the global Church through our partnerships?

How does what we learn impact and shape our worship, community life and witness in Guildford?

How can we actually share life and ministry in a real, face-to-face way? How does the life and witness of the Church in Egypt, for example, refresh and shape our priorities and practice in mission in Guildford?

How do we conduct this dialogue in the context of cultural, language and economic differences and imbalances?

We have only begun, but it’s a truly significant journey to discover more of what it means to be part of God’s multi-coloured and multi-gifted family around the world, and to begin to live and function more as one Body.

Members of St Patrick’s Church, Wallington, which also participated in the process, write:

As a result of the global-local process, we realised that we had a very old-fashioned view of mission. Ours was the traditional view that any mission worth its salt had to be done overseas by ‘professional missionaries’!  We realise now that, actually, everything we do has a global dimension to it and there’s no such thing as ‘overseas’ mission.   We have had our eyes opened to the possibilities of receiving from (instead of just giving to) the global community, amid which we live, not just parts of it.

We are taking practical steps to implement global-local values. We are seeking to make our District Church Council (DCC) the mission hub of the church.  Rather than a few dedicated people waving the mission flag periodically, our desire is for every decision made by the DCC to be made with the global-local dimensions in mind.

We are in the process of creating some questions/criteria that can be applied to every relevant decision to test the outcome.  If it is not sufficiently ‘global-local’, we won’t embark on that project or take the decision further.   This will, I’m sure, prove to be challenging for us.

At our DCC meetings we’re currently working through the Five Marks of Mission produced by the Anglican Consultative Committee and applying them to what we do at St Patrick’s.  It is also an opportunity for us to ask the question, “What more could we do?”  Hopefully, in time we should become a more missional church as a result.

In addition, we are going to be reviewing the way we currently support our 10 mission partners.   We will probably arrange them into different tiers, indicating various levels of support.  One step towards this, which is currently being worked on, is for every LIFE group (home bible-study group) to adopt a mission partner with a view to developing a relationship with them.

In 2007, we shall also be exploring the possibility of setting up a partnership, based on relationship and not on money, with another church in a different country.  The hope is that we shall be able to receive people from that church, and go to visit them, in order for us to grow and develop together in our following of Jesus.

This global-local journey has certainly put mission back at the top of the church agenda, which can only be a good thing.  We may have a long way to go, but it is better to be on an exciting journey to a destination than not having set out on foot at all.  Watch this space!

As to ongoing issues, there are some regarding money: how we support our current mission partners financially and how we make use of the church tithe.  What might a sustainable partnership with another church based on relationships look like?  Can the DCC truly be the mission hub of the church? How can we enthuse our members to become passionate about mission?  These are just some of the issues with which we need to deal in the coming months.

If you believe your church or diocese would be interested in exploring the Global-Local Programme with CMS, please contact Tim Morgan on 01227 752 691 or James Price on 0113 268 2105.