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Feb 13, 2015 | Matthew Davies

Episcopal Missionaries Nurture Global Partnerships, Deepen Communion

[Episcopal News Service] As The Episcopal Church prepares to observe World Mission Sunday on February 15, the following article looks at some of the treasures of its missionary program.The purpose of World Mission Sunday is to focus on the global impact of the Baptismal Covenant’s call to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 305), and to raise awareness of the many ways in which The Episcopal Church participates in God’s mission around the world. The recently released Report to the Church details the work of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society in coordinating and supporting Episcopal Church missionaries serving throughout the world.

 

Several years of serving as an Episcopal Church missionary taught Natalie Finstad that healing and change only really happen in the context of community and that “we cannot begin to recognize who we are in God without the presence of community.”

 

Relationships with one another “invite us into a deeper understanding of who we are,” she told ENS shortly after she’d returned to the U.S. after four years living in Kenya, where she established the Tatua Kenya program to develop leaders and community organizers in East Africa to become agents of change.

 

And for Finstad, 30, being a missionary is all about deepening partnerships, “being in right relationships … building up the Kingdom of God.”

 

Finstad is one of thousands of Episcopal missionaries who over several decades have chosen to embrace a life-changing experience of walking alongside a community often far removed – both geographically and culturally – from their own.

 

Although she has left Kenya, her missionary work lives on through Tatua Kenya, which is now managed locally by community leaders who are committed to a sustainable future.

 

Read more here.