wfn.org | Why Partnership?-Partners as Mentors

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2-March-1999 
99088 
 
    Why Partnership?-Partners as Mentors 
 
    by Hunter S. Farrell 
    Presbyterian Mission Co-worker in Peru 
 
LIMA-In these days of neoliberal economics, where invisible, impersonal 
market forces instantly determine prices and decree feast or famine for 
millions around the globe, some people would say that a missiology of 
partnership is far too cumbersome. 
 
    Working in partnership takes too much time; rather than "doing mission" 
immediately, partnership forces us to involve ourselves in the difficult, 
laborious and sometimes messy task of being in relationship: first 
understanding, then valuing, and then trusting the insights of our 
neighbor.  "We appreciated getting to know folks from the local church," 
summarized one work team, "but our group could have gotten the health 
clinic built in four days if we didn't have to wait for them to contribute 
the bricks...." 
 
    Partnership makes us dependent on other members of the Body of Christ - 
their schedules, their priorities, their organizational weak points, their 
values.  In the international context of PC(USA) mission relationships, 
partnership often pushes us into relationship with poor and oppressed 
members of the body of Christ - and that is a feeling I do not enjoy. 
Embracing my insurance policies, second helpings at mealtime, and 
comfortable home, I prefer not to be reminded that many of my partners 
(read: "brothers and sisters") are experiencing, even today, the sharp ache 
of hunger, another night of homelessness, or the long wait for refugee 
processing. 
 
    And yet this intentional binding of ourselves to particular members of 
the body of Christ is proving to be a vehicle of God's saving grace to our 
church - a church considered one of the wealthiest in the world partnered 
with some of the materially poorest partners, a church of declining 
membership partnered with some of the fastest growing churches in the 
world, a church rent by theological divisions partnered with some churches 
that have discovered remarkable unity around issues of mission, service, 
liberation and evangelization. 
 
    To work in partnership is to bind oneself to persons who may know much 
more than we do about what it means to share sacrificially, to rest fully 
in God's provision, and to persevere in faith through suffering.  On a 
personal note, I think it's fair to say that I've very rarely been 
"out-given" in my relationship with partner Christians in the "Two-Thirds 
World."  I am almost always given the best seat, the first choice, the 
biggest say, and the largest portion.  On more than one occasion I have 
eaten a feast prepared with the last chicken or measure of corn flour that 
the hosting community had left. 
 
    And while I often calculate exactly how much I should put in my local 
church's offering plate (so as not to create unhealthy "dependency" on my 
contribution), I am daily confronted with extremely poor Christians who, 
like the widow of Luke 21:1ff, give out of their own poverty with what 
seems to me to be sheer reckless abandon.  This sense of abandonment into 
God's hands is not a natural, but rather, a learned response. 
 
    Two weeks ago, I took a trip to Ayachucho, a region in Peru's Andean 
highlands characterized by extreme poverty, 42 percent illiteracy, and deep 
and festering wounds from the 15 years of the political violence that raged 
between the Peruvian government and the Shining Path Liberation Movement. 
In the town of Callqui (Quechua for rocky, unproductive soil), I had a long 
and intense evening conversation with a group of mothers, many of them 
single or widowed, who are deeply concerned about helping their children 
live a more abundant life than they themselves have experienced. 
 
    I am learning not to seek these kinds of meetings unless I am prepared 
for deep and painful personal transformation.  Perhaps it was in order not 
to hear fully the pain that these women had experienced from the years of 
dehumanizing poverty at the hands of both government soldiers and 
terrorists that i busied my mind with the details of development planning - 
what a quality children's education or water well project might look like, 
how much it would cost, which donor agencies we might contact for support, 
etc. 
 
    As the meeting ended late that night, an older woman with long braids 
who had slipped out at the end of the meeting came up to me with tears in 
her tired eyes: "Thank you for coming," she said simply, and gave me a 
carefully wrapped package.  A local friend later explained to me that Ana's 
husband had been murdered 12 years ago when Peruvian government troops, 
acting on an erroneous tip-off, arrived suddenly during a worship service 
of the Callqui Presbyterian Church and rounded up and shot seven men.  They 
were accused of terrorism, but no charges were made or proven.  No 
questions were asked.  Ana's husband, a farmer and long-time Presbyterian 
elder, was among those executed. 
 
    Ana now makes her living by embroidering and selling three or four 
white cotton tablecloths each month.  Ana's gift to us was a beautiful 
white tablecloth with the words "His Love Makes Us Whole" embroidered on it 
in bright red, blue and yellow thread.  And though her gift represented 
perhaps a fourth of her monthly income, she arose from a late night meeting 
and walked all the way home to bring to me a gift from the heart.  A token 
of gratitude for the past and hope for the future.  I later learned that 
Ana has been a pillar of support in that grieving community, organizing the 
widows, encouraging single mothers, even cajoling the Presbyterian session 
into action to help the children of the rocky, yet now productive soil. 
 
    Ana represents to me a kind of person that I have met often on my own 
path of discipleship with Jesus Christ.  A person who knows what really 
matters in this incredibly complex, yet remarkable simple world of ours and 
can give out of her own poverty because all she is giving is love, which 
miraculously multiplies when given freely.  Ana has learned, as a more 
faithful follower of Calvin than perhaps I will ever be, to rest fully in 
her faith in God's providence and provision.  She knows what it means to 
persevere in faith, even when human wisdom can offer no reason to continue 
to believe. 
 
    Perhaps Ana is one of the reasons that brought me to work in Peru - 
because by God's grace, I have become aware of the hole in my own soul that 
is being filled daily by God's love and forgiveness and grace extended to 
me through the ministry of persons living in extreme poverty of possessions 
but extreme wealth of the spirit.  Persons whose love, together with 
Christ's, makes me whole.  Persons I am privileged to consider as partners 
on this road toward personal and societal transformation. 

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