Ten Principles for Partnership

The Anglican Communion has a Partners in Mission programme which enables the sharing of experience and resources across the Communion. Some years ago the concept of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) was developed, and has been a constant theme at meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council for many years. The following Ten Principles are seen as essential to any meaningful or healthy partnership in mission process. They can be applied to partnerships at all levels of Church life.
This is only a summary of the text. The full text can be seen here on the website of the Anglican Communion.

1. Local Initiative: "The responsibility for mission in any place belongs primarily to the church in that place." Thus the initiative for establishing a new missionary venture in any given place belongs to the local church. Partnership therefore implies respect for the authority of the local church.
   
   
2. Mutuality: Mutuality means "to be open to one another as friends on the basis of a common commitment, mutual trust, confession and forgiveness, keeping one another informed of all plans and programmes and submitting ourselves to mutual accountability and correction." In a mutual relationship, each person and community is recognised, valued, affirmed and respected. In decision making, mutuality means sharing power, and this implies full consultation on all matters.
   
   
3. Responsible Stewardship: This implies that partners see their resources as jointly owned and held in trust by each member for the common good (1 Cor 12:7). It also implies that no mission agency, diocese, province or national Church "owns" its resources. Rather, they belong to the universal Church.
   
   
4. Interdependence: "Interdependence means to represent to one another our needs and problems in relationships where there are no absolute donors, or absolute recipients, but all have needs to be met and gifts to give" (WCC). We need each other. We are incomplete and cannot be called the Church of God if the diversity implicit in our catholicity is overtaken by a parochial, cultural or racial homogeneity.
   
   
5. Cross-Fertilisation: Cross-fertilisation required a willingness to learn from one another. It produces an enrichment that results from being open to one another's ideas and experiences, and respecting one another's cultural and contextual peculiarities in a process of give and take.
   
   
6. Integrity: A healthy partnership calls for integrity at all levels, a recognition that all partners are essentially equal. A healthy partnership requires that we take each other seriously, raising creative and loving challenges that could lead to positive re-evaluation of long-held traditions and assumptions. This includes both listening to each other, and being willing to repent and change where we have been in error.
   
   
7. Transparency: Transparency involves openness and honesty with one other. This involves risks: the risks of being hurt, misunderstood, and being taken advantage of. Information about ourselves must be shared fully with our partners, and especially the disclosure of financial information.
   
   
8. Solidarity: We are part of each other, we are committed to each other in the Body of Christ. What touches one member touches the others - "No man is an island entire to himself..." In many non-western cultures, group cohesion and solidarity are thought to be central to existence and crucial to the progress and survival of society.
   
   
9. Meeting together: the concept of mutual responsibility and interdependence implies that the Church in every place should find a forum for periodic evaluation, self-assessment and cross-cultural fertilisation.
   
   
10. Acting ecumenically: We need the stimulation, the critique and the encouragement of sisters and brothers in Christ of other traditions. A constant question before us must be, to what extent are those of other traditions invited to participate in advising and working with us in our outreach?