This chart outlines and compares old and new models of mission.
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Older Missionary Partnership Model |
Newer Missionary Partnership Model |
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Focus on deficits (i.e. “lacks”: saving souls from evil, building churches and homes, food pantries, clothing banks, etc.) |
Focus on assets (i.e. identifying local materials, techniques, knowledge, problem solving skills, people, etc. as “resources”)
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Problem response (rapid relief, emergency aid, crisis oriented) |
Opportunity identification (systemic or policy changes, structural)
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Donation orientation (short-term, momentary)
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Investment orientation (long-term, strategic; not like a financial investment for any direct gain but to risk something of our’s and ourselves to witness global growth and empowerment of others)
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Grants, gifts, hand-outs |
Grants, gifts, loans, investment, contracts (programs of mutual accountability and trust; i.e. micro-loans, each-one-teach-one)
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More services (measurable quantitative results over qualitative) |
Less services/More coalition, networking (more qualitative)
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Focus on individual |
Focus on community or neighborhood
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Maintenance, e.g. status quo |
Development: empowering
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See people as “clients” (with the U.S. as the “patrons”) |
See people as “citizens (of the world)” & “(human) family”
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Aim to “fix” people (as victims rather than survivors) |
Aim to jointly develop or realize already existing potential
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Programs are the answer (people are ideally objectified as passive “oppressed” or as commodities of labor or are romantically dehumanized as the spiritually “pure” and “noble” exotic Other) |
People are the answer (both through their historical processes of appropriation and resistance and as moving from being others’ objects to their own subjects, as agents of transformation)
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Building objects (churches, schools, homes, etc.) |
Building relationships, partnerships (from which come joint projects and programs)
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Dependency (one-way, unilateral) both financially and intellectually |
Interdependency (mutual, multilateral) intellectually and spiritually
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Doing: giving, teaching (i.e. delegations from north to south) |
Being: receiving, listening, learning (an effort to reverse the imbalance of power and work jointly toward harmonious exchange)
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