EPGM was inaugurated in April 2000 with the participation of over fifty mission-related organizations in the Episcopal Church. It builds on the work of the former Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission by drawing diverse mission efforts into a recognized relationship with General Convention and Executive Council. Affirming a shared theology of mission, the partnership implements tested covenants, carries out defined functions, fosters crucial relationships in the Church and the Anglican Communion, and operates as a collaborative and non-hierarchical network.

FUNCTIONS OF THE PARTNERSHIP

EPGM fulfills its purpose through a number of specific initiatives:

1. Recognize and celebrate all Episcopalians serving as missionaries throughout the world.
   
2. Assist and encourage the receiving of missionaries to the Episcopal Church USA from partner churches in the Anglican Communion.
   
3. Promote and coordinate mission education throughout the Episcopal Church.
   
4. Convene those working in particular geographic areas or people groups in order to develop coherent long-range mission strategies.
   
5. Advance new missionary approaches.
   
6. Facilitate the global mission outreach carried out through congregations, dioceses and voluntary societies.
   
7. Be a resource for the Standing Commission on World Mission in its task of proposing world mission policy for the General Convention.
   
8. Increase funding for global mission.
   
9. Facilitate ecumenical partnerships in the one world mission of Christ.

EPGM'S THEOLOGY OF MISSION

This statement, developed by EPGM's diverse organizations, has been circulated widely and endorsed by the 2000 General Convention.

God has lovingly and joyfully created heaven and earth. Human beings, however, have become alienated from the Triune God, turning away from God and one another. God, in love, seeks to heal the divisions that drive us apart. In the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God provides the way by which all creation can be reunited with our loving and merciful Creator. In dying for us, Jesus Christ redeems us to new life. In him the Reign of God is made real and accessible for all. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ present in the world today proclaims and lives out Jesus' work of reconciliation and redemption. The mission of the church is thus to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ (Catechism, Book of Common Prayer, page 855). As God sent Jesus into the world, we too are sent into the world.

The history of salvation from creation to the present day demonstrates that God is a sender. The Holy Scriptures are the definitive chronicles of the work of the sending Triune God. They tell of prophets and apostles, women and men of faith, impelled to speak and act in God's mission. The truth of Scripture is that from the Triune God, Creator of all, God the Word is sent and made human to accomplish reconciliation and redemption, and God the Holy Spirit is sent to empower God's people to participate in and bear witness to God's reign.

God's mission of reconciliation and redemption is the work of the church. In mission God the Holy Trinity takes God's believing people as a partner. Commissioned in baptism, and enabled by the Holy Spirit, Christians are invited to be recipients and channels of God's transforming grace. We do this through: prayer and worship, repentance and forgiveness, the proclamation of the Good News of God in Christ, loving service, and struggles for justice and peace (Baptismal Covenant, Book of Common Prayer, pages 304-305).

God's mission carries us across frontiers to encounter the new and the unfamiliar in our own communities and beyond. Every Episcopalian is called to cross frontiers, local or global. Mission is both "domestic" and "foreign." We thus participate in God's mission in the Episcopal Church, in the United States, within the Anglican Communion, and beyond. As we are called to go, so are others called to come and bear witness to Christ among us. We are both givers and receivers in God's mission.

As missionaries, Christians are nourished by God's Word and sacraments, and sent into the world in God's name to bring hope, healing and justice to a sinful, divided and broken world. The God who is known in the Old and New Covenant works both through the established and through the surprising and unpredictable. The variable strategies and structures of the church have always been a response to new circumstances. As the world and its cultures change, so too should the vehicles by which God's people present the Gospel at home and to the ends of the earth.

THE EPGM COVENANTS

Each member organization formally endorses these four covenants:

Partnership in Mission - In a spirit of respect and cooperation within the Body of Christ, we covenant to accept as a norm the receiving of appropriate invitation or permission from the relevant Anglican ecclesiastical authority, before engaging in a program or sending persons into an area where an Anglican body exists.

Theological Diversity - Desiring to avoid untested assumptions about one another, we will seek to understand our various mission theologies by committing time and resources to listen and talk together with honesty and mutual respect.

Unreached Peoples - We want to promote a vision throughout the Anglican Communion to work for the extension of the Church among groups where the gospel of Christ is not known, both within Anglican dioceses and beyond Anglican dioceses.

Information Sharing - We covenant to share mission information on projects and procedures relative to recruiting, screening, selecting, training and placing missionaries. We further covenant to explore ways of coordinating our activities in order to encourage cooperation and discourage unhealthy competitive attitudes in the world mission field.

EPGM'S STRUCTURE AND OPERATING PRINCIPLES

EPGM operates as a collaborative network. Major initiatives are developed through discussion at the EPGM Annual Meeting, and other initiatives arise through collaborations among members responding to emerging needs. EPGM leadership is non-hierarchical, and decision-making is by consensus rather than voting.

The EPGM Annual Meeting, held in the spring of each year, includes two representatives of each member organization. A mission companion from outside the Episcopal Church is invited to foster our dialogue in the Anglican Communion.

EPGM is guided by an eight-member Steering Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the network's operations and unity, encouraging member organizations, reviewing membership applications, ensuring maintenance of standards, and implementing new ventures. Each year, four Steering Committee members are chosen by lot from among member representatives attending the EPGM Annual Meeting. They serve for two years. The Convenor, Co-Convenor and Treasurer are chosen by the Steering Committee from among its own members, and the Co-Convenor succeeds the Convenor in the following year. As a network, EPGM exists through its members and is not permanently centered in any location.

EPGM's budget is funded jointly by membership dues and by the General Convention program budget. The partnership is assisted by a paid Administrator, who implements directives of the Steering Committee and Convenor. EPGM is an unincorporated association recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a Section 501c3 organization. The Steering Committee accounts to the members and to Executive Council for the use of EPGM funds.

The full statement of the functions and structure of EPGM is found in The Plan for the Establishment of the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission, as approved by the Executive Council in 1999 and by the General Convention in 2000, available at www.episcopalchurch.org/epgm.

EPGM AND THE ANGLICAN AND GLOBAL RELATIONS CLUSTER

The Anglican and Global Relations Cluster at the Episcopal Church Center is the program office through which the missionary-sending and -receiving initiatives of the Presiding Bishop and Executive Council are implemented on behalf of General Convention. It implements mandates from General Convention, shares information and facilitates cooperation with the Anglican Communion. The AGR Cluster is a dues-paying member organization of EPGM, as are other Church Center groups such as Episcopal Relief and Development and the United Thank Offering.

CELEBRATING BLESSINGS PAST AND FUTURE

Inaugurated in 2000, EPGM celebrates and builds on the ten years of the Episcopal Council for Global Mission (ECGM). Established in 1990, ECGM had its roots in the annual World Mission Conferences held between 1980 and 1988 in Sewanee, Tennessee. During the 1990s, ECGM's member organizations experienced growth in mutual trust and in their knowledge of the full scope of Episcopal mission work. Annual meetings renewed relationships, fostered cooperation, nurtured new initiatives and offered spiritual refreshment. Specific ECGM initiatives included a conference in 1990 on reaching the least evangelized peoples in the world; Exposure to Mission, a two-week training in the Diocese of Panama in 1995; and Hear the Cry!, the national conference on persecuted Christians, in 1998. ECGM raised the visibility of global mission in the overall life of the Church.

In 1994, in response to a proposal that "missionary appointments will no longer be made and funded on a normative basis" by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS), ECGM drafted the resolutions that ensured the preservation of DFMS mission-sending and resulted in the 1994 General Convention's call for a comprehensive theology, strategy and structure for the Church's international mission work.

In 1997, the General Convention directed Executive Council to establish EPGM in order "to strengthen the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and its work with other mission groups to increase churchwide participation and cooperation in the sending and receiving of missionaries on an international basis." The shape of EPGM was developed over two triennia by drafting groups that included wide representation from the global mission community.

As EPGM replaced ECGM, it brought the networking among mission groups into a recognized relationship with General Convention and Executive Council. Executive Council's recognition of member organizations' missionary appointments unifies the Church's experience of sending missionaries. EPGM is accountable to Executive Council through the Steering Committee, which makes annual reports to the council. The council appoints two liaison members who communicate with the Steering Committee and attent the EPGM meetings.

EPGM embraces the diversity of mission visions within the Church and offers a model of groups cooperating in the midst of differences about other issues in the Church's life. The partnership makes the many global mission efforts within the Church more coherent, both for Episcopalians and for our international partners. Released are greater energy, more personnel and more funding for world mission. These developments empower the mission network to be more effective in enabling all Episcopalians to participate in God's global mission.