DCI Global Partnerships

DCI Global Partnerships is a community of friends, partners, projects and supporters that began in England, in 1985.[1] DCI Global Partnerships is the name given to the community of people working with these projects, while the legal side is run by UK charity DCI Trust. The name DCI originates from the Greek words Doulos Christo Iesous meaning "Servant of Jesus Christ", taken from Romans chapter 1, verse 1.

DCI Global Partnerships are responsible for several projects including the charity DCI Trust, Schools of Mission, the Christian World News Pages and a Banking for the Poorest project.

Contents

DCI Projects

DCI Trust

DCI Trust is an international, interdenominational charity committed to mobilising and training Christian leaders, providing micro-loans for the economically poor, networking a global Christian constituency and giving to bless the poor of the earth.

Its work includes:

Schools of Mission

Since 1987, DCI Global Partnerships has run a free diploma-level Internet training school. These studies, available in sixteen different languages, are in use worldwide and are to help people to learn and to teach others. The lessons are written by Dr. Les Norman, Th.D., M.Ph. and, since 1987, have been distributed free-of-charge to tens of thousands of students. The lessons are now taught in hundreds of free or low-cost Schools of Mission in homes and churches across the developing world.

A quote from the DCI World News website says that:

"Our training has no walls, no frontiers and no fees, never has had any, never will."[3]

Christian World News Pages

The Christian World News Pages

"provides believers and interested readers worldwide with a means of sharing their plans successes and needs. A voice for the lost, the last and the least and for all who are reaching out to them… The news provides communication, opens eyes, creates unity and provides fuel for prayer and intercession for the present move of God in the world."[2]

It is run in several languages, including:

All of these are edited by volunteer translators across the world.

Banking for the Poorest

Provides no-interest micro-loans of start-up capital or animals, for those who are poor, destitute, landless and the victims of loan sharks. They also provide for widows and the orphans, in order to create jobs…and hope.[2]

Missiological Analysis

Historical context

The work of DCI Trust began in the mid-1980s, on the backside of a period of history that Bosch describes as having “shaken Western civilisation to the core.”[4] Globalisation is in full stride; poverty and inequality have never been greater across the earth; modernity is giving way to post-modernity. Within its European heartlands, Christendom is giving way to a secular multiculturalism, whilst in Asia, Africa and South America, non-western Christianity is gaining new converts, energy and confidence at astonishing rates.[5][6][7]

Thus, the forging of DCI’s concerns and priorities has taken place in a period during which the world Christian mission movement has experienced both a growing urgency and awareness, as new technologies have allowed researchers and statisticians to investigate, analyse, assimilate and represent global trends with degrees of comprehension previously inaccessible — for example, in 1978 the global prayer-manual “Operation World,” was first published; following which the evangelistically-resistant belt of the “10/40 Window” was identified, focussed upon and targeted—making the world’s poorest, most neglected and most evangelistically unreached peoples reachable as never before.[8]

The social impact of DCI Global Partnerships

Against such a background, during the twenty-six years since its inception, DCI Trust has grown to represent an international, interdenominational community spanning five continents, touching people of over one-hundred different nationalities. Its vocational work—‘answering the call to the lost, the last and the least’—focuses mainly upon the poor within developing nations, empowering them through leadership-training, micro-loans, business-development and community-building projects.

Through networking with committed, indigenous, localised individuals who are proven, responsible leaders, DCI has contributed towards a vast, eclectic array of projects, including: “buildings for churches, schools and families; computers, camels…cars; farms, seeds…stock; medicines…operations; schools for children and adults; spectacles...tools…wheelchairs…workshops…bee-keeping…tree-planting…horticulture, home management, nutrition, HIV/AIDS training, fish farming, brick making, baking, disinfectant manufacture, tailoring courses, and skill training schools.” [2][9][10]

The mission praxis of DCI Global Partnerships

DCI World Christian Network revolves around the central hub of its global Internet site, which has recorded over 20 million ‘hits’, by over two million unique visitors, to its 2000 pages, presented, at least partially, in 17 languages, all of which is offered free of charge. This web portal is used to disseminate news submitted by subscribers and visitors to the website. Regular updates concerning profiled projects and people are disseminated to subscribers via email newsletter.

The website details the strategies towards which the resources of DCI Trust are devoted, namely: promoting and facilitating biblical training centres or “schools”; a range of “business for mission” projects and evangelistic support focussing upon unreached people groups and neglected members of society.[14]

The mission theory of DCI Global Partnerships

During its growth into a thriving network and movement, the Trust has developed a precise, post-modern, contextual theology of mission praxis, located within a series of instructions and teachings subtly scattered throughout the DCI website. This informal mission theory is supplemented by reference to developed, detailed teaching contained with the schools material. DCI stands firmly within the evangelical ‘faith mission’ heritage, with emphases upon faith; prayer; recognition and development of spiritual gifting; engagement in elements of ‘spiritual warfare’; motivation focussing upon God’s glory, rather than escape from hell and a cultural sensitivity that places a strong emphasis on indigenous leadership and strategy.[18][19][20]

An open, relationship-centred approach marks the DCI movement as essentially postmodern, as typified by this introduction to the ministry: “The movement has no formal leaders,[21] elders or written constitution other than the Bible. We work together in friendship, supporting each other in God's call to different kinds of lifestyle and mission.” [22] This practical ecumenism is echoed in the warm welcome provided to Catholic visitors to the website,[23] as well as the discreet place given to the formal statement of belief (Nicene Creed), but above all through the opportunities provided by the website, encouraging readers to act out their own faith, supplemented by the experience and resources offered by DCI.[24]

Nevertheless, inside this "velvet-gloved" approach is a firm hand insisting, above all, on biblical standards of responsibility or stewardship from those who are offered partnership: “We look for a woman or a man with proven honesty and with a vision for serving the poor, and who also has the necessary spiritual and administrative skills.” This focus upon leadership and community development through locally-initiated, -managed and -accountable training centres echoes a trend which Pocock describes as an essential counterbalance for ‘internetworking’ ministries powered by new technology, if they are to avoid “”the dehumanising tendency of globalisation.” Additionally, DCI’s concentration upon biblical education constitutes a vital step towards transforming cultures towards a biblical worldview, something Miller considers an essential precursor to sustainable development.[1][15][25][26]

In this context, DCI’s focus upon financial partnership and economic development is under-girded by a biblically-based philosophy that envisages the whole task of mission as broader than vocal evangelism.[27]

Missiological observation

The manner and format of DCI Trust’s work and growth represents many of the trends being increasingly discussed within Christian mission books, ‘blogs, newsletters and ministries, typifying the “new approaches to collaboration in training, funding and networking” increasingly required within a post-modern context. As such it represents an authentic, missiological, post-modern, intercultural Christian community involved in transforming the harsh reality of some of the world’s most deprived communities.[30]

References

  1. ^ a b c http://www.dci.org.uk/main/findout.htm
  2. ^ a b c d http://www.dci.org.uk/main/storehou.htm
  3. ^ a b http://www.dci.org.uk/main/listof.htm
  4. ^ David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission : Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2005—p. 363
  5. ^ Pocock, M., Van Rheenen, G., McConnell, D. (2000). "1". Changing Face of World Missions: Engaging Contemporary Issues & Trends'. Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan. p. 21ff. 
  6. ^ Escobar, S., The New Global Mission, The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone, Inter Varsity Press, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, 2000—Chapter 3, 54ff.; chapter 4, 70ff
  7. ^ Jenkins, P., The Next Christendom, The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003—Chapter 1, 1ff
  8. ^ Johnstone, P., The Church is Bigger Than You Think, Christian Focus Publications, Ross-shire / WEC, Gerrards Cross, 2000, 11-15
  9. ^ a b c d http://www.dci.org.uk/main/bankingprojects.htm
  10. ^ Bosch, pp. 400-08
  11. ^ http://www.dci.org.uk/main/business.htm
  12. ^ http://www.dci.org.uk/main/banking-goats.htm
  13. ^ http://www.dci.org.uk/main/aduku.htm
  14. ^ http://dci.org.uk/
  15. ^ a b http://www.dci.org.uk/zipped/bankingmanual.pdf
  16. ^ Pocock, p. 41
  17. ^ This statement representing DCI’s self-understanding as an organisation has largely been accepted uncritically: even though it is understood by the author that the Director of the DCI Trust is financially supported in his role, it is also understood to be neither in the form of an employment contract, nor guaranteed by the Trust—and thus not a salary in a typical sense. More significantly, the funding of central Trust staff is not especially relevant to the use of DCI as an example of a post-modern missionary organisation: the larger context in which this ‘statement of self-understanding’ finds itself is the movement spawned by DCI, rather than the central Trust itself. For example, the ‘movement’ clearly operates effectively in multiple cultural, overseas, non-Western settings, where no salaries are paid, where financial gifts are used for wealth-creation projects amongst the poor, as elucidated within the text and as compared to, say, financial remuneration for pastoral work or evangelistic outreach (as is typical of much aid ‘from the West to the Rest’). This is by far the more remarkable aspect.
  18. ^ Bosch, p. 447-57
  19. ^ Pocock et al, p. 34-6, 161
  20. ^ Miller, D. L., Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth To Transform Cultures, WYAM Publishing, Seattle, WA , 2000, p. 25-7
  21. ^ Whilst Dr Les Norman is clearly “in the lead” and responsible for setting the entire tone of the DCI Trust work via the website—and, in that sense, inarguably a leader—as noted above with respect to the issue of salaries, the wider context of the movement is the where the real point is made. For example: Bank-for-the-Poor projects and Mission Schools started entirely with DCI resources are not required (nor I believe, requested or encouraged) to incorporate the DCI name (except in providing credit as the source of teaching materials, for example). Local pastoral leaders, whilst being accountable to DCI for agreed use of resources received, remain entirely accountable to their own local leaders in respect to the detailed logistics of projects and certainly in all other regards of their lives and ministries. Thus, they are not encouraged to see themselves as ‘DCI leaders,’ only partners-with-DCI in shared project work.
  22. ^ Bosch, p. 467-74
  23. ^ Bosch, p. 457-467
  24. ^ http://www.worldchristians.org/main/openyour.htm
  25. ^ Pocock et al, pp. 43-4
  26. ^ Miller, Chapters 1- 2
  27. ^ Bosch, pp. 409-20
  28. ^ Miller, p. 67ff.
  29. ^ Escobar, p. 139
  30. ^ Pocock et al, p. 72; see also Pocock et al, Chapters 9 to 11, discussing ‘Beyond Individual Efforts to Networks of Collaboration’, ‘From Self-Support to International Partnership’ and ‘Life in the Virtual World and Beyond’.