Building capacity through the ‘Third Space’

By Kirk Franklin | Wycliffe Today Autumn 2025 |

Vision 2025 marked a transformative shift in the Bible translation movement. It prioritised sustainability, capacity-building, and collaboration across the global church, emphasising humility before God and openness to the Holy Spirit.

This vision led to greater involvement from Majority World participants. Many from the African community within Wycliffe Global Alliance raised concerns about the old model of partnerships with Western organisations. These concerns included dependence on external funding resources, limited capacity-building, and the perception that Africans must appear ‘poor’ to remain relevant. Global Alliance leadership recognised these challenges and offered to facilitate a ‘Third Space’ where Africans and their Western partners engage in mutually beneficial ways.

In response, sixteen African leaders and nine Western leaders gathered in South Africa to try and improve partnership dynamics in global mission. Instead of African organisations operating with local knowledge but resource constraints, or Western partners offering resources with assumptions and priorities, the ‘Third Space’ was the positive, mutually beneficial model to emerge from discussions.

As the event finished, one facilitator reported: 

The two delegations expressed a vision for how they would like the partnership between them to look. The collection of potential benefits was exceptionally rich.