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“Our love has been restored:“ Marriage retreat in Kenya, June 12-17 COSIM conference brings partnership practioners together to learn Mission ONE 15th Anniversary Banquet October 27 in Arizona Interview with Pastor Severino Church planting and equipping to serve persecuted believers in southeast Asia Persecuted bishop returns home Pray for persecuted church in Laos Report from India: One year after the tsunami of December 26, 2004 Operation WorldView is video training for 750 “short-termers”
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COSIM conference brings partnership practioners together to learn 
The Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries (COSIM)— conducted its 10th annual conference, June 12-14 in Wheaton, Illinois. The sessions were held at the Billy Graham Center. Seventy-three missions enthusiasts attended to learn how to have better partnerships. Recordings are available of all plenary sessions and workshops via the COSIM web site: www.cosimnet.org. Werner Mischke, the COSIM conference chairman and vice president of Mission ONE said, “We believe the global missions community will find the partnership principles and practices which COSIM advocates to be increasingly valuable.” The 2007 conference is scheduled for June 11–13 in Wheaton, Illinois. Full report below, by COSIM steering committee member, John Lindner “Partnerships That Transform—Here and There” was the theme of the missions conference that marked the 10th anniversary of COSIM—Coalition On the Support of Indigenous Ministries, held in Wheaton, Illinois, June 12-14. The sessions were held in the Billy Graham Center, the same place the first COSIM conference was held in 1996. Seventy-three missions enthusiasts attended this year’s conference both to share their experiences and learn how to have better partnerships. At least 14 represented churches, and for the first time a denominational mission board was represented (with six attendees). According to its website, COSIM is “a fellowship of evangelical organizations with a common interest in the support and capacity building of developing-world ministries,” though some member agencies also support or send out American missionaries as well. It has no central office and all work is done by volunteers from member agencies. It was formed in 1996 through the cooperative efforts of John Bennett from the Overseas Council, Chuck Bennett, then president of Partners International, Bernie May of The Seed Company (a branch of Wycliffe), Daniel Rickett, then of Salt and Light (now with Partners International), and Ken Gill from the Billy Graham Center. Some agencies have been pioneering partnerships with indigenous missions for over 50 years. The plenary speakers represented all dimensions of the partnership movement: East and West (or North and South as it is now called), as well as mission agencies and partnering churches. Key speakers were Gary Edmonds, senior partner for Breakthrough Partners and former general secretary for the World Evangelical Alliance, Dick Robinson, senior associate pastor for Outreach at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, David Kasali, founder and president of the Christian Bilingual University of Congo, and an Indonesian brother known only as Faisal, who spoke about a village transformed after the tsunami of 2004. Planners of the conference wanted to make sure participants heard from representatives of indigenous missions in the majority world as well as from mission agencies in North America. Dr. David Kasali pointed out that even though the majority of sub-Sahara Africa is Christian—and evangelical in orientation—encroaching western values are displacing much of what is uniquely African culture. Meanwhile, economic progress is passing it by while the media focuses on other parts of the world. He said the three biggest challenges facing the church in Africa today are war, AIDS and Islam. He said the African church must raise up its own sons and daughters to deal with these, and affirmed that partnership with the North will help make it happen. At the same time, he suggested the African church can teach the western churches contentment, dependence on God, and humility, among other things. Faisal shared how an American church got him treatment in America when he came down with leukemia. That led to contact with Partners International, which took him on as a partner. That, in turn, led to the raising up of 120 incarnational workers in Malaysia and Indonesia. He said that the secret to effective partnerships is taking time to build trust in relationships, jointly planning the agenda, and not handing it to a national mission on a western platter. He said in Aceh the emphasis is on three things (in this priority): being, doing, saying. In the West, it is often turned around. “We must reduce the pace to create the space,” he said. Ramesh Landge, director of Cooperative Outreach of India based in Delhi, conducted a workshop on “How Developing-World Christians Can Bless the Western Church.” Johan Gous, African director for Hope Builders International, shared how ministries in southern Africa, with financial help from American partners, are seeing exponential growth in rural areas using a “hub” model to spark a church planting movement. The conference also heard from leaders of western mission agencies and U.S. churches. Gary Edmonds gave two messages on the theme, “From Missions TO to Missions WITH.” His basic premise was that we can no longer go as missionaries to do something for a people; we must do mission with the on-site Christian community. He pointed out that former mission-field countries are now mission sending agents. “Most people know that Korea ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of missionaries sent (13,000 in 2005), and will pass us by 2010,” he said. “But fewer realize that in 2005 Albania had 168 evangelical churches and 22,000 baptized believers, and was sending missionaries to Cambodia, Turkey, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.” He corroborated Kasali and Faisal’s theme that “mission with” is based on a relationship of trust that evolves through three stages: exploration, formation and operation. Jack Nelson, president of WorldLink, International, addressed the oft-maligned issue of accountability. He said one should “be” the right partner before one can “choose” the right partner. “Clarity is king,” he said. “State your expectations in writing. The purpose is not to enforce compliance, but to avoid misunderstanding.” Representing the church side of the partnership equation, Pastor Dick Robinson shared how Elmbrook Church grew from a small parish to a worldwide outreach. Robinson said the small congregation was sparked to worldwide interest when Stuart Briscoe, a young British itinerant Bible teacher, became its pastor in the early 1970s. His international experience propelled the church to think globally. The people responded and faith promise giving grew exponentially: From $60,000 one year to $128,000 the next, $250,000 the next, and a half million the fourth year. Today Elmbrook has a mission budget of around $2.5 million that supports about 100 traditional missionaries and eight partnerships with indigenous mission groups. While the church began by taking on any and all missionaries who knocked on its doors for support, the church has since begun to catch the vision for indigenous partnerships, as well. That kind involvement made them sensitive to the needs of expatriates in their region, and they helped Lao immigrants form their own church in Milwaukee. Today the church engages in partnerships with mission agencies reaching unreached peoples in geographical distant places like northern Kenya or Tajikistan. They take ministry teams to central Africa, Brazil, Bolivia and China. “We are on a journey,” Robinson said. “We do mission through listening to, learning from, and serving with God’s people in other communities and cultures to extend the kingdom of God.” Werner Mischke, the conference chairman and vice president of Mission ONE in Scottsdale, Arizona, said, “Partnership is not our idea. It is God’s. We expect that the partnership principles and practices which COSIM advocates to become increasingly valuable to the global missions community.” “I’ve been working with indigenous missions for 20 years, yet this year’s COSIM conference had the most stimulating thinking on partnership that I’ve seen,” said Bob Savage, international operations director of Partners International and participant in the first COSIM conference of 1996. “There was a good mix of the voices from the South and the North, and people who were not just pushing the envelope on what partnership means, but who were doing it.” Several participants said they appreciated the openness of the conference and opportunity to ask questions and exchange ideas. “I liked the exceptional speakers, amazing networking, brass tacks useful info, a wealth of resources set before us and I now know how to tell a black bear from a grizzly bear,” said Susan Choquette of Berkshire Missions. Pastor Robinson had given the gathering this counsel: “If you see a bear and climb a tree and he shakes the tree till you fall to the ground and he eats you and spits out the bones, he’s a grizzly bear. But if you climb the tree and he climbs up after you and eats you and spits out the bones, he’s a black bear.” |
