Partnership in Mission is at the heart of all relationships, both within the Anglican Communion and throughout the wider church. Companion Diocese Relationships offer dioceses in the Episcopal Church opportunities to engage in mission activity with dioceses internationally, as part of the Partners In Mission process throughout the Anglican Communion. CD Relationships exist to strengthen each participant in ministry and mission. Ideally, such relationships will involve the partners in increased awareness of the single mission to which all are called.

That mission includes:

• mutual encouragement and prayer for one-another;
• intensified knowledge of and concern for one-another; and
• the exchange of resources, both spiritual and material.

Companion Links are disciplined ways, agreed upon and shared in by the partners, to know from first-hand experience what it means to live inter-dependently. They recognize that the responsibility for mission in any one place belongs to the church in that place, and that each part of the world-wide church also carries responsibility for mission in every other place.

Companion Links are formally recognized by the Church's Executive Council at the request of the Episcopal Church dioceses involved, on the basis of the decision by both partners to enter such a relationship. The initial period can be as long as five years, with mutually agreed upon periods of extension.