Introducing the Co-Mission Partner Initiative

By Rosie Fyfe
NZCMS National Director 

Co-Sending Mission Part­ners with AsiaCMS

This year, NZCMS started a new ini­ti­at­ive with Asia CMS to ‘co-send’ Mission Part­ners together. AsiaCMS is part of the global CMS network. They were founded 10 years ago with the inten­tion of part­ner­ing with and support indi­gen­ous mission move­ments in Asia. Their vision of mission is indi­gen­ously Asia, with a focus to engage the least-reached people groups in Asia with the Gospel, and engage in stra­tegic spheres of mission.

One way they do this is sending ‘Co-Mission Part­ners’ to stra­tegic mission roles in their own or near culture con­texts. The term ‘Co-Mission Partner’ describes the vision of sending together in part­ner­ship. AsiaCMS is respons­ible for the dis­cern­ment, appoint­ment, and pas­toral over­sight, while NZCMS con­trib­utes funding and commits to prayer.

Why is NZCMS sup­port­ing Co-Mission Partners?

NZCMS con­tin­ues to send Mission Part­ners from New Zealand to serve glob­ally. However, we know that mission is no longer a one-way venture, but mission is ‘from every­where to every­where.’ The global CMS Network seeks to live this out by working together in mission.

Jay Mātenga, head of Mis­sions Inter­link in New Zealand, writes about the import­ance of the church co-cre­at­ing together.

“I fun­da­ment­ally believe God does not change, but our cir­cum­stances do, and our global context and the global Church is very dif­fer­ent than it was even at the turn of the century. The prob­lems have changed. When I was new to mis­sions, the problem was the lack of workers willing to serve “unreached” peoples…If we switch per­spect­ives and view God’s purpose from the per­spect­ive of World Chris­tian­ity, we sud­denly see bil­lions of ‘workers’ already in the harvest, in every geo­pol­it­ical nation in the world, along­side pockets where the Gospel is not yet ger­min­at­ing. I say ger­min­at­ing rather than planted because the seed may well already be avail­able through mass media or hearsay, but just not con­tex­tu­ally com­pre­hens­ible in the minds of the people.

By holding on to traditional perspectives of missions (which are, in actuality, less than 230 years old), I think we are at serious risk of missing the marvel that the Spirit of God is doing in our lifetime.

World Chris­tian­ity is larger and more culturally/​ethnically diverse than it ever has been in the history of the Church and that changes things. Expat­ri­ate roles (whether from the West or new sending nations) are chan­ging. The way we col­lab­or­ate with local believ­ers needs to change. What we com­mu­nic­ate about our faith needs to be even more sens­it­ive to con­tex­tual influences.

The problem, as I am start­ing to see it, is not so much that we need more believ­ers to go cross-cul­tur­ally but that we need to be willing to co-create more effect­ively with those already there. The problem is a lack of true unity within the global Church. If we invest deeply in co-cre­at­ive rela­tion­ships with believ­ers in places where the Gospel is ready to sprout indi­gen­ously in the hearts and minds of people, we will see deep out­comes. The solu­tion to a lack of Gospel emer­gence is working along­side fellow dis­ciples already there or nearby. Deeper out­comes for God’s pur­poses await if we will humbly commit to co-cre­at­ing together” (sourced from Decem­ber Mis­sions Inter­link Bulletin)

Who are the Co-Mission Part­ners NZCMS support now?

We are cur­rently sup­port­ing a couple who have estab­lished a pion­eer­ing min­istry in South Asia. The centre equips and mentors leaders and facil­it­ates ini­ti­at­ives for com­munity trans­form­a­tion. Both have extens­ive study in this area.

What we’re invit­ing you into

We praise God that he has provided the funding neces­sary to support this work. There­fore we invite you to join us in prayer for this new ini­ti­at­ive. Pray that it will bear much fruit and would con­tinue to grow in impact and in the number of Co-Mission Part­ners we support.

Because much of our Co-Mission Part­ner’s inform­a­tion cannot be pub­lished online, we are sharing their prayer requests via our bi-monthly print pub­lic­a­tion Prayer Fuel. You can sub­scribe to this here.