We were sitting in the crowded steamy airport at Mahajanga, waiting for a flight to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The person asking the question was a fellow American, working for a non-governmental agency. I hesitated, as I always did when answering that question.
Accompaniment literally means walking together side by side.
Usually that response allowed me to explain that there was an independent and autonomous Malagasy Lutheran Church at whose invitation I was here and to whom I was accountable. If the conversation continued, I would often admit that while I felt deeply called to this ministry and hoped I was being of some help to the Malagasy church, I realized it was really only a training ground. I would seek to integrate what I had been learning about mission and ministry from my Malagasy brothers and sisters. Unbeknownst to me, what I was articulating in my own imperfect way was a paradigm of global mission described by our ELCA Division for Global Mission as accompaniment . Walking together in God's mission implies mutuality, a companionship of equals.