GCE44 GS69 Global Partnership Program for November 2023

1. What is the issue?

The Global Partnership Program Review 2023 was undertaken to assess program alignment with the church’s Call, Vision, and Strategic Plan 2023-2025, and to inform and have an impact on the 2024 budget and beyond by providing recommendations related to program shape, structure, and priorities. With the decision made to reduce the number of partners and the percentage of budget, it is necessary to approve the structure of the program going forward.

2. Why is this issue important?

The Review recommends a deep, bold, and daring Global Partnership program of five integrated components, within a Framework for Radical Accompaniment. The Framework directs the church towards decolonizing and deepening The United Church’s ongoing relationships, with a reduced number of global partners, through implementing specific mechanisms understood as part of efforts to disrupt the “narratives of decline and despair” in the denomination. Using principle-based criteria, the Review explores how the United Church can live into this proposed program in the reality of reduced available financial resources within the period of the current Strategic Plan, and as the denomination goes forward into its second century post-2025.

3. How might the General Council Executive respond to the issue?

The General Secretary recommends that the General Council Executive

1. affirm “Radical Accompaniment” with its objectives and components (see appendix) as the framework for the United Church’s Global Partnership Program in the current Strategic Planning cycle; and
2. direct the General Secretary to
   1. begin implementation in 2024, withing the constraint of the budget; and
   2. initiate a consultation process building on this review and recommendations, led by elected members to envision and propose a global partnership framework to guide the witness of The United Church of Canada into its second century.

4. How does the proposal help us live into the commitments on equity?

Not for the first time, this understanding of mission was expressed powerfully in the United Church’s 2008 Review of Partnership in a time of Empire: ‘Right Relations’ are at the heart of God’s Mission. The church believes that right relationships flow from an understanding that relationship is central to the nature of God and that the Spirit calls us to live relationships that reflect Christ’s character of justice and love.”

Other defining statements echo this call to relationship and deepen its implications to involve engagement with others for fullness of life for all, and actively resist all forces, powers, and systems which deny, destroy, and reduce life. “Intercultural Ministries: Living into Transformation" (2009) and “A Justice Seeking/ Justice Living Church,” (2012) both offer a vision of the church as an intercultural, mutually transformative, equitable, justice-seeking and justice-living community.