ACCOMPANIMENT

Welcome to the ELCA's concept of mission work: Accompaniment!

Accompaniment is the ELCA’s central commitment in relation to our global companions. This commitment is illustrated by the image of walking alongside companions in respect and mutuality, together discerning future directions for shared mission. In other words, not converting or saving or fixing! Merely being and learning together.

I first learned this in mid-April, at the Young Adult in Global Mission (YAGM) Discernment, Interview, Placement weekend. The Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla, Executive Director of ELCA Global Mission, took time out of his busy schedule to speak to us at the event. He told us that the point of our mission is to Restore Community (and not necessarily in the us vs. them way that you might think). To highlight this point he told the Parable of the Lost Sheep, from Luke chapter 15:

So he told them this parable: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' 

The usual point of view in this story is that the one sheep who was lost really is lost. They need saving, rescuing from danger. But here was Rev. Padilla's spin on things: what if in fact, the sheep who were really lost were the ninety-nine? What if they were not complete because one of them had wandered off? Those of us in the fold have a responsibility to keep the group together; without diversity we are not complete.

A good reminder that during our year of service, we participants may very well find ourselves being the lost ones who need saving, not the other way around.