By R. David Cox

A nearby parish cherishes its motto, "The church that lives to itself will die by itself."

Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey said that in Toronto in August, 1963. He was commending a document called "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ" to about 1,000 delegates representing each diocese from all 18 provinces at the second (and last) Pan-Anglican Congress. His words, like MRI, abide in the Communion's memory.

MRI, conceived by missionary leaders and blessed by the primates, called for "the rebirth of the Anglican Communion." This would mean "the death of many old things but - infinitely more - the birth of entirely new relationships" in which mission would be at the center. MRI proposed a Communion-wide survey of needs and of resources to meet them. It appealed for $15 million - then an eye-popping sum - over five years to train leadership, build churches and establish financially independent provinces. It urged developing human resources, especially clergy. It imagined improved inter-Anglican consultation. Finally, it declared that "each church [province] must radically study the form of its own obedience to mission and the needs it has to share in the single life and witness of our church everywhere." It added, "Mission is not only a giving to others, it is equally a sharing and receiving."

MRI sought to transform giver-receiver dependencies that typified earlier missions into a partnership in which each had something to offer, each had something to receive. Edmond Browning, as a priest in Okinawa, listened to the Primate of Japan explain the concept. "It was one of the most moving things that I have ever heard," the retired Presiding Bishop said. "The line that I shall never forget was, 'We are no longer a receiving church. We have something to contribute to the whole Communion'."

Critics dismissed MRI as "just a restatement of the New Testament" - which Bishop Stephen Bayne, Anglican executive officer and the paper's primary author, welcomed as a compliment. Yet that may help explain why, as MRI the document became MRI the program, it caught the imagination of laity and clergy around the world. MRI became Anglicanism's only concerted effort to explain and promote the mission of the church. Nearly every province, especially Westernized ones, developed materials and meetings which dioceses and parishes used in 1964-66. Filmstrips and classes, preaching missions and leaflets told of efforts around the world, as funds were given for mission projects requested by provinces.

In many respects MRI reflected its era. No longer an English club at prayer, Anglicanism was emerging as an international body of Christians. As new nations were born, so were new provinces. Churches were growing around the Communion, but Westerners were often preoccupied with their own booming attendance and finances. MRI asked them to reconsider priorities - whether, for example, a new organ in New York was more important than a seminary building in Lagos. It sought consciously to open the Communion to new realities in the life of Christ's body, and thereby its commitment to mission, ecumenism and each other.

Suddenly, it was gone. In the Episcopal Church, for one, by 1967 crises over race relations, cities and the Vietnam war began shifting attention from global concerns to those closer to home. MRI may have been not only a product of its time, but also a victim of it.

Inherent problems beset it too. By proposing raising funds, MRI struck some as a huge financial gimmick rather than an attempt to incarnate a new way of thinking and relating. By concentrating on new but existing provinces, it did not much consider where Christianity had not yet rooted. Western churches were asked to give, even if in different ways, but they resisted thinking they needed help themselves - including help on their own crises.

But ideas and imaginations had been set free in ways that still affect how the church does its work. Thus a young English engineer helps provide water for farmers in Kigezi, Uganda. A Kigezi priest works in an American parish while studying at seminary. The Anglican Consultative Council meets. New U.S. and British clergy share a training program. Lambeth approves the "Virginia Report" reiterating partnership among Anglicans. Southwestern Virginians share prayers, visits and efforts with companion dioceses in the Sudan and Bradford, England. The "Virginia Plan for Stewardship," of matching a dollar for work beyond the parish for every dollar spent within it, derives from Toronto.

In a different era, its challenge and hope persist. Bishop Munawar Rumalshah of Pakistan, the new general secretary of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, recently called for a genuine partnership in the gospel [TLC, June 6]. "It's so difficult for people in the West to believe they can receive, and so difficult for others to believe they have anything to offer," he said. "Some seem to feel they're trading material resources for spirituality, and vice versa."

So the old question abides: How in practice will Anglicans relate to each other? MRI proposed a genuine partnership in Christ's mission, by those on each level of the church's life. Its vision of mutuality remains - that as we're all in this gospel business together, let's share as best we possibly can - locally, internationally and at every level in between.

For instance, in its report to this year's General Convention (Blue Book, p. 38), the Standing Commission on the Church in Small Communities cites one of the many 1963 Toronto meetings, and it adapts MRI language for local concerns. "Mutual responsibility," it says, "is central to any understanding of Total Ministry." This is "the point of the Pauline teaching of the interdependence of the parts of the body," and it holds profound ramifications for how members of a congregation relate to each other in pursuing the mission they share.

So too with a Communion, as the Toronto congress perceived. How might the idea infuse controversies of our day? The concept calls everyone to remember that no Christian person or entity exists in isolation. So, then, our General Convention must contemplate with great seriousness the convictions and mission of those in other parts of the Communion relative to its own actions. Mutual responsibility obligates American debates over sexuality, for example, to consider opinions and responses worldwide. But interdependence demands those in other parts of the Communion to ponder the American situation with no less sensitivity and respect. For we are, in the end, one body.

In our fractious days, perhaps this is a vision to revisit, and to fulfill. o

The Rev. R. David Cox is the rector of R.E. Lee Memorial Church in Lexington, Va.