The theme of this blog entry appears to be a no-brainer, and in a sense nobody in the Bible translation world would disagree with this statement, at least not in the sense as most people would read it at face value. Partnership is immensely important for Bible translation, and I am definitely not here to tell you that there are people out there who don't believe it.
In fact, the opposite is the case: partnership has been taken so seriously by Bible translation practitioners and decision makers in the past 20 years that many of them have gone overboard and have turned partnership into an end in itself, at the cost of almost everything else. And this is what I am writing about here, as I believe that partnership is not our goal, and pursuing it like a goal can get in the way of what we actually should have as a goal.
But let's begin with the basics, reassuring ourselves that indeed without strong partnerships with the right people every Bible translation effort would be doomed. This is almost forced on the whole endeavor by its very nature, with participants and players from very different backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, training, financial capacity, organizational structure, and even belief. In a successful translation project usually the following kinds of stakeholders are involved:
- local language community representatives,
- local churches,
- national churches,
- donors from overseas, both small and large,
- technical experts as advisors and consultants,
- government authorities,
- researchers and academic institutions,
- media,
- publishing houses and license holders,
- other mission agencies,
- philanthropic organizations,
- a network of organizations and various ad-hoc boards in which all these various stakeholders interact with each other.
So there can be no doubt that skillful alliance building and partnership development have an important role to play in the Bible translation movement, and that each Bible translation organization needs to invest heavily in their capacity to set up and maintain strong partnerships.
But what I have seen very often in the past 20 years is that partnership has been elevated from a crucial tool to the very end of what we want to accomplish. Telltale signs for this have been
- progress indicators that count the number of partnerships that an organization maintains,
- impact stories which make it clear that keeping a certain partnership alive is more important than accomplishing the stated purpose of the organization, for example by sacrificing quality in order to keep a partner on board,
- exhortations from higher levels that lower levels should bend over backwards to revive partnerships that have proven to be dysfunctional or that were driving the organization away from its stated purposes,
- strong expectations that an organization submits to a governance structure that is dominated by the various partners of the organization,
- funneling large amounts of resources into partnership structures that have not contributed much to the success of a project or program.
Admittedly, it is widely open to discussion whether a certain organizational effort to maintain a troublesome partnership may still be a strategic move from the perspective of a given bigger picture, and many things that I would criticize here could be carefully explained to me as a necessary means to advance the goal of Bible translation. But the way people nowadays speak about partnerships I get the impression that it has really become their main goal in life. Instead of belonging to the organization that produces the Bible translations of the highest quality, they'd prefer to work in the organization that everybody everywhere likes most to partner with.
What is the essence of partnership?
A partnership is defined by (at least) two actors working towards a common goal. There are probably a lot more factors that make a partnership successful, such as mutual trust, complementary strengths, availability of resources, time, etc. But for the most basic definition one only needs to have two players and a common goal. This common goal, though, is normally not the only goal of either of the players. I may partner up with you to push your car off the road when you have a breakdown. We both have the goal to get the car off the road, because you as the owner fear for its safety and don't want to cause an accident, and I as your helper want to get your car out of the way so that the road is clear for me.
So there can be no mistake: Although we are partners in the temporary project of getting your car out of the way, both of us have a number of different goals, some of them overlapping, others not. In fact, in some areas of life we might find ourselves working against each other's goals.
Bible translation organizations at least currently appear to be under the mistaken impression that any overlap of goals implies that any partner would by nature stand behind anything the organization does. Only with this kind of understanding would it make sense to hand over the governance of such an organization into the hands of the partners, trusting that their goals are so very much in sync with the organization's goals that any future decision making would be a matter of total mutual benefit. But the reality is different.
Whereas a Bible translation organization has ideally only one goal (quality Bible translations), any single one of the many partners sees Bible translation as a means to reach widely differing goals, such as growth of the church, increased standing of the language community, economic benefits, spiritual flourishing, jobs for people close to the leadership, increase of knowledge, a larger powerbase, access to larger sections of the donor community, a good press, and many more. Some of them we can enthusiastically support, others leave us indifferent, and some we would even object to. It is therefore rather naive to assume that involving our partners in our governance decision-making would get us anywhere else than into a mess of thorny goal conflicts.
Taking our partners seriously
If we realize our partners for what they are to us, we can start to approach them in a more realistic manner. No longer do we bother them with expectations that they need to see the world as we do, with the same kind of urgency and exclusiveness directed at our one defining goal. Instead, we allow them to pursue their own legitimate goals, and we strive hard that they realize that Bible translation and language development are in their best interest. If they do, they will be willing to join forces with us in ways that bring both them and us forward into a better future, while we allow each other to be very different in anything else we do.
This also enables us to evaluate partnerships, so that maintaining a given partnership does not turn into a motivation to go astray regarding our own goals. No partnership is so important that it can force us to leave parts or all of our DNA at the roadside. If a donor, partner organization or other stakeholder is only willing to partner with us if we agree to compromise on our own foundational values, then there needs to be a very open discussion inside the organization whether this is really worth doing, because it would turn it into a very different organization.
We can be better partners ourselves if we know what our DNA is as a Bible translation organization, where our values leave us open to align ourselves with other players, and where they and we have common goals that need accomplishing. We also need to know the boundaries of our openness, where compromise would lead us into abandoning our purpose as it has been set out for us. This will enable us to pursue strong partnerships that really bring Bible translation forward, while we no longer find ourselves in a partnership treadmill that pours time, energy and resources into maintaining relationships that may have turned stale and unproductive long before, if they haven't even pulled us away from what we should really do.
No, we won't get very far without strong and healthy partnerships, but partnerships are not our final goal.
No comments:
Post a Comment