Through my research, I\u2019m coming to the conclusion that missionaries will thrive and bear fruit when they are intentional about working collaboratively with national partners. But this conclusion is based on faith, not sight. I can\u2019t point to examples where this approach has proven effective, I can only stand by what I know to be true about God and God\u2019s Kingdom. God calls us to a place of mutual love and mutual submission, and it is in the context of such a place that the Kingdom of God grows. This strategy, however, it goes against our human desire to conquer and control or even business models of authority and delegation. It defies our understanding of power and undermines what we think to be true about leadership. For collaboration to happen, power must be shared.<\/p>\n
In the book, What Clergy Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, <\/em>Emma Percy explains why collaboration is impossible without the sharing of power:<\/p>\n Power does not exist in and of itself, like strength, but arises out of human relationships. Arendt writes that power \u2018can be divided without decreasing it. And the interplay of power can generate more power. Thus, the sharing of power does not mean apportioning set amounts, as if it were a cake being cut up, where the more people involved the less there is to go around. Sharing power, like sharing love, can generate more power for all. This is what we mean by empowerment. When interdependence and mutuality are valued, then collaboration, a proper sharing of power, becomes a possibility. The complexity is that this power sharing is not neatly controllable. Collaboration, unlike delegation, leaves options open and does not control the outcomes. This involves negotiation and cooperation, moving forward into patterns of relationships and growth that are creative and open-ended. The virtues of humility, trust, and forgiveness make true collaboration a possibility.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I quoted Percy at length because there are so many things that apply to missionaries learning to work collaboratively with national partners. To begin, there is the question of power. In the past century, much missionary work has been done alongside colonization efforts; and, even when the missionaries were against the oppression that came with colonization, many were remiss to realize that they, too, where imposing their own power structures by establishing western models of churches, music, and preaching. Feeling an urgency to save lost sinners, they failed to contextualize their mean of sharing the Gospel. In the parlance of Friedman, they were \u201cfocused on symptom relief rather than on fundamental change.\u201d[2]<\/a> While those days are long past, missionaries still come as teachers, pastors, coaches, and evangelists\u2014all of which are roles that also come with power.<\/p>\n Furthermore, every missionary sending agency has a vision and mission statement which its missionaries are required to pursue. While this makes sense for a business model, where one decides what they are going to do and then makes a plan and implements it; this is not a model that favors collaboration. What if a mission agency decides that it is going to be all about church planting, and the sends missionaries out to plant churches in a country, only to discover that the national partners in that country have discerned together that their focus needs to be on theological education? Mission agencies who are loathe to deviate from their vision and mission statements will often fail to work collaboratively with national partners. Percy also writes about the value of \u201cchatter,\u201d[3]<\/a> and all the things we learn through simple, everyday conversations. Such conversations are critical to being able to work collaboratively, but the conversations must be truly open ended and not efforts to control the other. As Glaser reminded us, \u201cWhen we create conversational rituals that enable us to honor and respect others\u2019 views of the world\u2014especially when these views are very different from our own\u2014we create a space for better conversations and for new ideas to emerge.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Finally, Percy mention the needed virtues for collaboration. While Percy writes compellingly about the virtue of humility, among many others, I wonder if the spirit of collaboration is not a virtue in and of itself, given Percy\u2019s own definition. \u00a0Percy refers to Aristotle\u2019s understanding of virtue \u201cnot as an opposite of a vice but as a balance between an excess and a deficiency.\u201d[5]<\/a> The excess would be consummation, where there are no longer distinct partners, but they have blended into one. The deficiency would be isolation, where the two have no interaction at all.<\/p>\n I\u2019m finding this idea of collaboration is a hard sell, at least here in France. Mission agencies are unwilling to compromise on their own vision (a lack of the virtue of humility). National partners are unwilling to welcome outsiders into their inner circles (a lack of the virtue of trust.) But there are a few people on both sides that get it, and together we are working to make a difference. It\u2019s slow going, and like I said, I don\u2019t have any results. Mission work, like church work, it hard to measure. But I know my God, and I know how he works, and this certainly seems like the Kingdom way.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Emma Percy, What Clergy Do: Especially When It Looks like Nothing<\/em>, 2014, 78.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Edwin H. Friedman, Margaret M. Treadwell, and Edward W. Beal, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em>, 10th anniversary revised edition (New York: Church Publishing, 2017), 84.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Percy, What Clergy Do<\/em>, 57.<\/p>\n