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Purpose
The Faith2Share network exists to strengthen indigenous movements for the mission of God.
Ethos
The Faith2Share network is international, multi-cultural, evangelical (rooted in the Bible and Christ centred) and committed to partnership with local and national churches of many different backgrounds.
Network members have been inspired by 200 years of mission in the spirit of John Venn, the founder of the Church Mission Society (CMS), William Wilberforce, and other leaders of the Great Awakening in eighteenth century Europe. Our desire is to see God glorified as the peoples of all nations come to praise him.
Network members come from a wide range of Christian traditions and believe that our diversity of culture and tradition enriches our unity in evangelical faith and mission [i].
We believe this faith is to be shared.
Principles
We believe that it is God’s eternal plan to unite all things in the Lord Jesus Christ, liberating those divided and enslaved by sin, so that the domain and rule of God is established both on earth and in the heavenlies.
We acknowledge the uniqueness of Christ, the only Son of God, and desire to see God glorified as the whole creation is renewed through the transforming power of the Spirit. This requires humble but honest dialogue with all those who seek truth outside the way of Christ.
We believe that the Gospel of God’s love is enriched as it is inculturated and finds expression in diverse cultures and therefore value the fact that we have amongst us individuals, associations and communities from different cultures and contexts. We are committed to working together to discover the Christ of Scripture in, and transforming, every culture and tradition.
We believe in an holistic approach to mission, proclaiming and demonstrating the Gospel for the whole person, whilst maintaining the centrality of evangelism [ii].
We believe that it is God’s call to us to enable all Christian people (women and men [iii], young and old, able bodied and differently abled, lay and ordained) to respond to God’s call to mission across cultural barriers and geographical borders. We are a network of movements and societies who are deeply committed to sending and supporting people in mission.
We believe that in God’s economy every local church has both gifts to give and gifts to receive in mission. We are therefore deeply committed to the principle of ‘interchange’ in mission, demonstrating our oneness in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We seek to facilitate and serve the Church in every part of the world in God’s global vision of the His work in our midst.
We believe it is appropriate for our member movements and societies to develop culturally appropriate structures and methodologies for mission which do not rely too heavily on inherited patterns [iv] from the West or elsewhere.
Values
1. We put prayer first and depend wholly on the Spirit of God.
We value the fact that CMS has always followed five practical mission principles (as first enunciated by John Venn in 1799) and we seek to do likewise:
Follow God’s leading;
Begin on a small scale;
Put money in second place because money follows ministry; let prayer, study, and mutual converse precede its collection;
Success depends on sending out people of the highest calibre;
Depend wholly upon the Spirit of God.
2. We are Evangelistic, rooted in the Bible, and centred on Jesus Christ in our daily discipleship.
We value and hold to our evangelical faith as we draw together Christians of many traditions who share a desire to see the gospel of the reign of God proclaimed in word and deed. We have no particular or novel doctrines of our own; we believe those things commonly shared by the Church universal. Being evangelical means that we:
Proclaim the Uniqueness and Centrality of Jesus Christ: Salvation comes only through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ through whom the world was created and will be recreated.
Are Bible-based: We affirm the inspiration, sufficiency, and authority of the Christian Scriptures and we aspire to read and study them daily in a deliberate and planned way.
Are committed to making disciples: We proclaim and teach the gospel so that all people everywhere have opportunity to become obedient followers of Jesus Christ in his mission.
Are expecting transformation: We live in the context of the eschatological hope that all things will be fulfilled in Christ and expect to see individuals, communities and societies transformed by the power of His Spirit.
3. We are a Global Community, a network of movements, called to share in the Church’s participation in the mission of God.
As a community ‘Faith2Share people’ aspire to a pattern of life which includes:
Commending Christ to others;
Fostering vision, faith and sacrifice for mission;
Living with simplicity;
Giving generously;
Praying fervently, systematically and regularly;
Building up detailed knowledge of one or more aspects of mission, at home and internationally;
Gaining at least some understanding of, and engagement with, another culture.
We acknowledge the importance of Christian values lived out in Christian community [v].
As a global community we place high value on working collaboratively through formal and informal partnerships, whilst valuing aspects of independence and the freedom which each movement or society has to follow its particular calling under God.
4. We believe in the missional church. God desires to form his people as community motivated by His mission as revealed in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. This will be expressed both locally and trans-locally as His one church.
As a network we seek to be ‘church-serving’ and a blessing to the local church. We are committed to church planting and church growth, the formation of missional leadership for churches, and facilitating interchange (the exchange of people and resources) between churches for mission.
5. We value the fact that we represent ‘every nation, tribe, peoples and tongues as we stand before the throne and before the Lamb’ as we come from different spiritual heritages and mission experience of different Christian traditions – historic, new and emerging.
6. We are committed to serious reflection, under the authority of Scripture, on our contextual mission practice and to missiological research in all spheres. We seek to continue the significant scholarly ethos within many of our member societies and movements.
Network Foundations
Within the wider movement of God’s people in mission the Faith2Share network is a family of movements, associations and communities with different histories, and in some cases different origins, who share a set of common values and a convergent ethos.
In God’s economy new movements in mission are rarely the product of human endeavour but rather the sign of the Spirit’s moving in ways that impact the spiritual and social life of particular communities. Such ‘awakenings’ are often closely linked to social change and demonstrate the power of the Gospel to transform human society.
Some members of the Faith2Share Network are held together by the shared history of one of these movements which began amongst Anglicans in England during the ‘Evangelical Awakening’ of the 18th Century. Others find their origins in other awakenings (in India after Independence, and during the East African Revival, for example) and have, at a later stage, come to embrace something of the spirituality of CMS, their way of being in mission under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This has led to a desire to work more closely together.
The Network had its genesis within Anglicanism [vi] and a meeting of CMS General Secretaries (to celebrate the bicentenary of CMS Britain) in 1999. The name Faith2Share was adopted after the fifth meeting in Bangalore in 2004.
CMS was founded under the “church principle” and retains its ecclesial nature as an expression of the universal church, the Body of Christ – in fellowship with all other expressions of the one church of God. This commitment to missional church is shared by Faith2Share network members from different Christian traditions.
Adopted : Ambridge, USA 15 October 2007
Notes
[i] Part of our commitment to being together in mission is our belief that the Glory of God can never be fully reflected in His Church until that Church, Christ’s Body on earth, has welcomed into its midst, through conversion, all cultures, traditions, genders, and conditions of humankind. The worship of God by all His creation is the goal and fulfillment of the
mission we share together.
[ii] We maintain that there is a crucial distinction between Christian development, aid and relief work and the holistic mission of the church with its primary focus on the transformation of individual lives, communities and nations through the radical impact of the gospel of God’s love.
[iii] Network members affirm the teaching of Scripture as the normative ethical framework and guideline in human relationships, upholding faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and abstinence for those not called to such marriage.
[iv] We accept the Anglican heritage of many of our members as formative for our ‘basis for belief’ rather than our structures for mission or church.
[v] We note that the values of CMS(B) are (in relation to God, the world, and each other), to be: faithful; evangelistic; pioneering; and relational.
[vi] Whilst CMS is rooted in Anglicanism we also recognise that the worldwide Anglican Communion is also, in a sense, rooted in the mission movement of which CMS was a significant part.
The Faith2Share network is just one example of collaboration in mission.
To read recent documents on how evangelical Christians seek to collaborate in mission click here.