by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Reed Hoppe
Arthur and Mary Alice Ivey are Mission Society missionaries who have served in Huancayo, Peru since 2001. Arthur graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering. He worked as an engineer for many years while he felt a growing call to serve cross-culturally. Mary Alice graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in early childhood education and taught school for several years. The Iveys participated in short-term mission trips for 13 years while praying about moving overseas.
What the Iveys discovered after they moved to Peru was that people would come to know Christ very quickly, but there was no structure in place to disciple these new Christians in their faith.
After spending several years learning the language and getting to know the culture, the Lord gave Arthur a formula for discipling new Jesus-followers.
Arthur leads four discipleship groups at a time, each comprised of eight-to-fifteen members. They meet for two hours each week to fellowship and study Scripture. Each group stays together for about two and a half years. Every person in the group commits to begin discipling someone else within six-to-twelve months. Many of the members start their own discipleship groups, which has led to 250 groups discipling more than 3,400 people at this time.
“The Western church model doesn’t work well in Peruvian culture,” said Arthur. “Most Peruvians are culturally Catholic, and 10-15 percent are evangelical. Many people are syncretistic. When people can’t find the answers they are looking for in church, they leave, and many of the churches are losing members.
“I think the discipleship model has worked so well in Peru because it met a deep need in the heart of the Peruvians. Peru is a very social culture, so the interactive Bible study works well. We have gone to the people with the gospel message and they have found the answers they were searching for in Jesus.”
The Iveys also run a Kids’ Club ministry. More than 1,000 children, ranging in age from two to fifteen years old, come to the Clubs each week. Mary Alice writes the curriculum and disciples many of the leaders who coordinate the 12 groups currently meeting.
The Iveys’ goal is to bring people to know Jesus as Lord and train them to be able to witness to and disciple others. They have seen a dramatic change in many people’s lives as they accept Jesus and seek to live a godly life.
Just this past Easter, Arthur accompanied three brothers to visit their father in prison. Flavio, a former pastor, is in prison for the murder of three people. He also sexually abused his two daughters when they were young. One of his sons, Benjamin, spent time in prison due to the fact that his father involved in him the murders.
Benjamin, Jose, and Moises had not seen their father in more than 15 years. During that time, Benjamin accepted Christ and has been discipled in one of Arthur’s small groups. Benjamin now wanted to tell his father that he had forgiven him. Flavio was thrilled to be reunited with his sons. He came to know Jesus several years ago through a discipleship group that one of Arthur’s colleagues started in the prison. Flavio now leads several discipleship groups in the prison.
After leaving the prison that Sunday, Jose decided to give his life to Jesus. Arthur said, “It was wonderful to spend Easter Sunday experiencing the Lord Jesus’ resurrection power working in the lives of persons to bring salvation and restoration.”
Lizbeth is one of Flavio’s daughters. “Lizbeth and her mother knocked on our door one day looking for help, and we connected her with one of our discipleship groups,” said Arthur. “She was just destroyed. Through the discipleship group, she came to know Christ. She was able to forgive her father and was set free from the pain she had carried throughout her life.”
Lizbeth is now a powerful witness for Jesus. She has traveled all over Peru, speaking about her abuse and how Jesus set her free. Most of Lizbeth’s family has now come to know Christ. They are responsible for personally starting 12 discipleship groups throughout the years, which have ministered to hundreds of people and helped others find freedom in Christ.
“There are so many similar stories,” said Arthur. “I see God moving among his people in Peru to set them free to be the Church he desires them to be—a Church that longs to know him more intimately and wants others to know him, too, a Church that disciples people,” says Arthur.
Reed Haigler Hoppe serves as an associate editor for The Mission Society and is an ordained deacon in the Alabama-West Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. You can make a donation to the Iveys’ ministry at www.themissionsociety.org/people/ivey.
by Good News | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
By Luciano Pereira da Silva –
For the sake of context, allow me to describe my own transformation story. I was born in the interior of Brazil. My family was impoverished and dysfunctional, with problems such as violence, alcohol addiction, and illness. As a child I had no future hopes, only thoughts of death. But the Lord had plans for my life. By his grace, I was invited to participate in a Methodist Youth meeting and my life began to change.
I met Jesus and discovered his mission. I experienced a spiritual call to ministry in a meeting with foreign missionaries. They were part of a group connected to Rick Bonfim Ministries. Pastor Rick is a well known Brazilian Methodist evangelist. Upon meeting this group and experiencing my call to ministry, I wanted to connect my life story with missionaries from abroad.
This desire was not without its challenges, however. Protestant missionaries from the United States and Europe have had many religious and political obstacles in establishing and expanding their mission in South America. They brought much hope to me and many people like me. They helped to build churches, schools and Bible societies; to spread the principles of the gospel; and to introduce the Kingdom of God. That work, which began in the 19th century, continues today. We also know, however, that their approach to the mission has often been problematic.
The idea of empowering indigenous leaders within the mission has proven especially challenging for many missionaries, often due to a lack of confidence in delegating leadership positions to them. Even today, this missionary model has several problems that are still prevalent, especially in traditional Protestant churches. Because of a model that often fails to raise up and equip indigenous leaders, a culture of dependency has been created. The result has been a Latin American church culture that has failed to thrive, grow, and live into its potential.
There is a significant contrast between the historical approach of traditional Protestant denominations and that of more recent Pentecostal movements. Pentecostal churches have arisen and grown exponentially in Latin America during the last century. Much of this growth is because they have a soft system of training indigenous workers, both clergy and laity, and they have demonstrated the ability to respond to the needs of common people.
We know that Latin America and the Caribbean continue to have many economic and political problems. But even with the challenges we can change for the better with the help of fully trained and empowered indigenous leaders. Especially with support for the training and deployment of indigenous Latin American mission leaders, we can make a difference for the advancement of the mission.
The generosity of the New Testament church serves as a prime example. “Let me tell you, my dear family, about the grace which God has given to the Macedonian churches. They have been sorely tested by suffering. But the abundance of grace which was given to them, and the depths of poverty they have endured, have overflowed in a wealth of sincere generosity on their part,” writes Paul. “I bear them witness that of their own accord, up to their ability and even beyond their ability, they begged us eagerly to let them have the privilege of sharing in the work of service for God’s people. They didn’t just do what we had hoped; they gave themselves, first to the Lord, and then to us as God willed it” (2 Corinthians 8:1-5).
The CIEMAL (Council of Methodist Evangelical Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean) seeks to empower potential Kingdom leaders through various training programs. The vision is to mobilize, train, and connect laity, clergy, bishops, and local churches to join Jesus in His mission, with the intention of awakening people to help each other with the gifts and talents that the Holy Spirit has given them.
We desire and envision a relationship with agencies and missionaries abroad as follows: the relationship must be cultivated, but from a vision of interdependence, not dependency. The mission’s agenda should never be imposed by outsiders, but rather be contextualized and mutually shared.
Dozens of Brazilians responded to serve in cross-cultural missions during the Amazonas Missions Conference in Porto Velho, Brazil. Held in March 2019, the event brought together churches from the Amazon Conference of the Methodist Church of Brazil. Shown speaking: the Rev. Luciano Pereira Da Silva. Photo courtesy of the Methodist Church of Brazil.
I believe that this is the moment when we need to mobilize workers and awaken them to engage with God’s mission in the world. The mission belongs to God and he has given us the privilege of participating in it. All God’s people are needed, and not just those from traditional sending nations.
The good news is that there exist some special characteristics of Latinos that can make a difference in the mission: their ability to adapt to any circumstance, to learn other languages and cultures, their enthusiasm, and their passion. I believe with all my heart that God is blazing a new path for global mission and he wants to awaken the Latin people to this passion.
We must concentrate our efforts on mobilizing the people of Latin America and the Caribbean and making them aware of this very strong and fundamental call from God. I know that many young people in our countries can see their lives transformed (like mine was) by the power of the gospel and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to serve God in many ways. May God continue to bless us in this way.
Luciano Pereira da Silva is the Secretary-General for CIEMAL, the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean. He has served as pastor in the Methodist Church of Brazil since 2002. In 2010 he and his family were sent as missionaries to Peru, where for four years he was the National Director of Discipleship. He currently lives in Panama, Central America, where he serves as a local church pastor and church planter. He has authored four books.
Since 2014, TMS Global has collaborated with CIEMAL in mobilizing Latin Americans in 19 countries for mission and ministry. This is the first of a series of articles provided by TMS Global to platform some important voices from the Global South.
by Steve | May 23, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May-June 2017
Many things have changed regarding the United Methodist understanding of missions since Good News launched the Evangelical Missions Council (EMC) in 1974. During those years, the Rev. Paul Morell, senior pastor of the Tyler Street United Methodist Church in Dallas, gave strong leadership to Good News’ EMC ministry, serving many years as the chair of the EMC board. His commitment to missions was evident in Tyler Street’s “We Go” missions program, which helped scores of persons serve as missionaries in the field. Good News recognized Morell’s extraordinary commitment by establishing the Paul L. Morell United Methodist Missions Award in his honor shortly after his death. The inaugural award was presented posthumously to his wife, Ann.
In 1976, Good News invited the Rev. Virgil Maybray to become the Executive Secretary of the EMC. For nearly ten years, he travelled around the nation holding missions conferences in nearly 350 local United Methodist churches and raising more than $3 million in second-mile missions giving. This was the passion of EMC and Good News.
At the same time, EMC faithfully held dialogues to discuss ministry and theology with United Methodism’s missions bureaucracy. The talks proved to be fruitless, but the call to missions message was being spread.
In those dire times, The Mission Society for United Methodists was independently formed and christened in 1984. There was a definite need for a supplemental mission-sending agency in that era. The Mission Society began because of a widely perceived movement of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) away from ministry that had a specific objective of helping people come to faith in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of missionaries being sent by the UM Church around the world.
In 1968, there were 1,650 missionaries serving outside the United States at the time of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) merger. Unfortunately, by the early 1980s, the GBGM slashed its missionary ranks to slightly over 500. Those numbers eventually dropped even further.
Looking back several decades later, the politically-charged era of the times and the inflexible progressivism of the GBGM are different today. Nevertheless, the pain that took place many years ago over missions within our denomination is indisputable and authentic. As Good News celebrates 50 years of ministry within The United Methodist Church, we share the following adapted report on the debate over missions within our denomination by Dr. Riley B. Case, author of Evangelical & Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). – Good News
By Riley Case-
The Rev. Paul Morell
At the time of the emergence of Good News, Methodist seminaries were caught up in the radicalism of the age and began redefining words such as “salvation,” “commitment,” and “evangelism.” Professors began stressing that the kingdom of God was this-worldly and was related to political and economic justice. There was cynicism and sometimes outright hostility toward local churches rooted in the thinking of the past. The seminaries became centers of criticism for those who stressed a “personal” rather than a “social” gospel. In the ensuing controversies, traditional evangelism was often pitted against social justice. These controversies carried over to the missionary outreach of the Church. The Church, it was maintained, needed to send out new and different kinds of missionaries, if it sent out missionaries at all.
Good News’s major concerns about missions in the early days of the movement were directed primarily to the lack of fervor in the local church.
As the chair of the Good News board, Dr. Philip Hinerman, senior pastor of Park Avenue Church in Minneapolis, attended the annual Board of Missions meeting. “I heard or read not one word about the need to reach men who are forever lost without Jesus Christ,” wrote an astonished Hinerman in a 1972 Good News magazine article entitled “Missions Without Salvation.”
In the following issue, Dr. David Seamands, senior pastor of the Wilmore United Methodist Church in Kentucky, wrote “Missions Without Salvation, Part II.” Seamands, part of a well-known missionary family, had spent sixteen years in India, was a member of the Good News board, and had been noting with alarm the seismic ideological shifts in mainline mission philosophy. He wrote, “A new concept of mission which, as far as we evangelicals are concerned, violates the very premises of the Gospel as found in the Scriptures.” Seamands delineated the ideology that accompanied the new concept of “mission”:
• The new concept of mission sees no relevance in reaching the unevangelized. God is most active in the sociopolitical revolutionary movements of our time.
• Salvation no longer means God reconciling sinners to himself, but in the overcoming of economic and political evil powers.
• Christ is not the atoning Son of God, but the one who started the whole process of secularizing and humanizing world history.
What Hinerman and Seamands articulated helped make sense out of the uneasy feelings evangelicals were having about the missions direction of the denomination. Of special concern was the claim that it was specifically evangelicals who were not being accepted as missionaries and evangelicals on the field who were not being returned.
After a period of prayer and searching, Seamands invited 70 pastors and laypersons to meet for a missions consortium. The February 1974 retreat brought together a large, diverse group that agreed the historic Methodist missions legacy should not be given over to alien ideology. Those in attendance formed themselves into the Evangelical Missions Council (EMC), pledged themselves to the cause of missions, and agreed to seek conversations with the newly formed General Board of Global Ministries.
Unfortunately, the first meeting was not a hopeful start for those who believed dialogue would aid understanding and working together by an alienated constituency. EMC representatives were disturbed at what appeared to be either deliberate obfuscation to avoid having to answer the issues or total ignorance of the issues being raised by evangelicals, all in a climate of hostility and condescension. It seemed as if the board had shifted to the view that “evangelism,” at least as traditionally understood as winning persons to Jesus Christ, was, in fact, a hindrance to the real work of the Church.
For evangelicals, “dialogues” with the board served as a reality check. GBGM leaders did not see Good News or the Evangelical Missions Council or evangelicals as having any legitimate contribution to make to the task that GBGM had outlined for itself in the world.
A June 27, 1975, editorial in The United Methodist Reporter, entitled “EMC Agency Is Dangerous Precedent,” commented with some dismay about what it saw as a possible independent missions-sending agency sponsored by EMC. The issue, according to the editorial, was not evangelism versus social action, but constructive versus destructive methods of making a group’s voice heard in the Church.
Numbers of moderate United Methodists including several bishops, were alarmed at the actions of the GBGM but were more alarmed at the possibility of an independent agency. EMC itself, while seeking publicly to say positive things about the “dialogues,” was growing impatient.
In 1976, Virgil E. Maybray, pastor of First Church, Irwin, Pennsylvania, was invited to become EMC’s first full-time staff person. Virgil would spend the next eight years in a job he dearly loved, traveling through the country to speak of reaching the lost for Christ. Virgil’s task was not to be embroiled in the ideological controversies related to missions but to build positive support for evangelical missionaries and evangelical causes that were functioning within the board.
Castro or Wesley
United Methodist evangelicals were frustrated at this time that the UM mission agency had abandoned the traditionally understood view of evangelism and missions. Instead, it seemed to be enthralled with politics and revolution. This focus was illustrated by the article by Dow Kirkpatrick in the July 22, 1977, issue of The United Methodist Reporter, “Castro and Wesley.” Kirkpatrick had been a friend of the GBGM for years and was given missionary status with the board and traveled mostly to Latin America with the responsibility of “interpreting issues” to North American churches. Speaking out of his exhilarating experience of being in Cuba on May Day, Kirkpatrick commented:
“Fidel and his people celebrate the revolution they caused; we (Wesleyans) commemorate the ones we prevent. Cubans believe their lives are vastly better because of their revolution. Hunger, poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination and illiteracy have been eliminated. Quality health care is universal. Slums are being replaced by new housing. Dignity has been given to every human being.”
Kirkpatrick continued: “Wesley’s movement improved the lot of depressed 18th century England. Cuban Christian Marxists say, however, it failed because it was not radical. Like all gradualist proposals it left the roots of injustice untouched.
“We can learn what evangelism is from Cuba,” Kirkpatrick concluded. “Why is Marx believed more adequate than Wesley by millions of people today? … The Cuban Revolution – in contrast to the Christian Church, [Castro] believes – is one ‘that is with the poor’ and ‘he who condemns a revolution like this one betrays Christ.’”
Kirkpatrick went on to argue that the clearest statement of evangelism in Cuba had been by Sergio Arce, rector of the Evangelical Seminary in Matanzas, who was quoted as saying: “The first task of evangelism is to confront Christians who are not atheists of the head, but are atheists of the heart. Marx was an atheist of the head, but not of the heart.”
The September 9, 1977, issue of The United Methodist Reporter quoted Arce again as he elaborated on evangelism: “It is more important today to be a Marxist than a Christian.” Arce argued that Christianity and Marxism are interchangeable and he had no interest in converting Marxists to Christianity.
Jessup Report
While the Marxist critique of Wesleyan revival went over well in some quarters, there were many United Methodists that believed their tithes and offerings were supporting wrongheaded political radicalism, rather than biblical revival.
It was at this era that David Jessup, a United Methodist layman working for the AFL-CIO, was astonished when his children brought home appeals for wheat shipments to the Marxist government of Vietnam. His dogged research unearthed a 27-page paper identifying grants and involvements by United Methodist agencies to far-left organizations, fronts, and political groups with communist links and revolutionary intentions.
Jessup’s explosive report was published in the September/October 1980 issue of Good News. Instead of investigating the misappropriation of church funds to Marxist causes, church leaders questioned Jessup’s motives and spoke darkly of a “McCarthyite witch hunt.” The denominational condescending response included: “As change swirls around us, some persons cling to an understanding of history and the role of our nation that seems to be fading. Such persons are deeply troubled by the shifting of power they see in the world and are fearful….”
The irony, of course, is that the Jessup family had been active in the Peace Corps in Peru, as well as involved in the civil rights and farm worker movements in California. Jessup’s research had further discovered a denomination with an off-kilter political barometer: church pronouncements in support of Ayatollah Khomeini and the “students” holding hostages in Iran; further discussion on the Cuba Resource Center, the Nicaraguan Literacy Program, and the North American Congress on Latin America (and their monthly newsletter devoted to Che Guevarra), groups that had been monitored closely by the State Department of a Democratic administration.
“Because my report has been publicly attacked as a ‘McCarthyite witch hunt’ by several Church officials, it is necessary to repeat that I am not questioning the right of any group or individual to speak out and organize for any cause, no matter how offensive it may be,” said Jessup. “The only question is whether the majority of churchgoers wish to foot the bill for such causes.… After many years of past and continuing involvement in pro-labor, liberal and civil rights causes, I am more than ever convinced that there is nothing ‘reactionary’ about trying to redirect Church resources toward a more consistent support of democracy in all societies, left and right.”
In December 1982, Reader’s Digest carried the article, “Do You Know Where Your Church Offerings Go?” On January 23, 1983, the CBS program 60 Minutes aired the segment, “The Gospel According to Whom?” Both the article and the TV program were sparked by David Jessup’s research into how church funds were being spent. Time magazine reported on controversy in its March 28, 1983, issue under the heading “Warring Over Where Donations Go.”
Drifted Astray
In the May/June 1983 issue of Good News, associate editor James S. Robb published a 20-page cover story expose entitled “Missions Derailed,” a special exposé on the UM General Board of Global Ministries. “If anything appeared sure during six months of study, it was that the board’s program seems badly, even dangerously out of balance. It has become obvious that the board has diverted its resources on a massive scale away from traditional missions projects located ‘on all six continents’ and toward political programs centered at 475 Riverside Drive in New York – GBGM’s headquarters,” wrote Robb.
At this same time, the Rev. Dr. Ira Gallaway’s book, Drifted Astray, served as an additional insight into evangelical unease about the direction of United Methodist missions. As pastor of First United Methodist Church Peoria, Illinois, the largest church in the North Central Jurisdiction, the book was a call to be faithful to Methodism’s orthodox heritage. It was only after a hundred pages of affirming that which was good in the Church that Gallaway finally approached the issue of “covenant trust” and the “credibility gap” between the grassroots church and the leadership and programs of the national boards and agencies.
Gallaway continually reminded the reader that the gospel should not be identified with any one form of government or economic order. As the former head of the Board of Evangelism of The Methodist Church, he charged the mission agency with an unbalanced ideology, in which the evangelistic call to make disciples of Jesus Christ had been eclipsed by leftist political advocacy.
In that same year, 1983, Bishop Ole Borgen from Norway, who had been one of the bishops participating in the dialogue between the EMC and GBGM, gave an address at the Good News Convocation at Anderson, Indiana, entitled “One Mission – One Missional Purpose.” “‘Salvation’ no longer indicates the new relationship with God, but just as much any kind of ‘salvation’ within the socio-political realm,” he said. “We have almost imperceptibly moved to a position which, drawn to its uttermost consequence, will end up in a socially defined humanism where faith concepts are used, but where man himself is the acting and redeeming agent.”
Bishop Borgen’s presentation lifted up a number of concerns that had already been expressed in the EMC and GBGM dialogue. The purpose of “dialogue” supposedly was to increase understanding, resolve differences, and find common ground for mission. Members of the evangelical dialogue team after ten years of sessions were not experiencing understanding, resolution, or common ground. The GBGM team was still challenging the use of the term “evangelical,” questioning whether EMC really spoke for any legitimate constituency, and defending board policies and actions as a faithful fulfillment of the Discipline. To make matters worse, there was no way of discussing the issues outside the dialogue meetings since there was an agreement of confidentiality about the substance of the talks.
On November 28, 1983, thirty-four persons gathered in St. Louis at the invitation of Gallaway and Dr. Bill Thomas, pastor of First United Methodist Church, Tulsa, and covenanted to form a supplemental mission-sending agency within The United Methodist Church. Among those present was Dr. Gerald Anderson, director of the Overseas Ministry Study Center, editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, and perhaps the foremost missiologist in the denomination. Dr. Anderson, just a month before, had presented a paper to a number of pastors in Dallas, Texas, entitled “Why We Need a Second Mission Agency.”
At the meeting in St. Louis, he commented: “[It is] difficult to discern that those who are now responsible really believe that it makes any difference whether or not one believes in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Further, that their programs do not reflect this belief.”
The main precipitating factor that led the group to believe that evangelical concerns were being ignored was the selection of Peggy Billings as a mission agency leader. The selection had been made just prior to the November 1983 meeting. Evangelicals considered Billings’s appointment as an in-your-face put-down of everything that had been discussed in the dialogues. Billings was an assistant general secretary with the Women’s Division, responsible for Social Concerns, and an outspoken critic of traditional United Methodist doctrine and of traditional missionary efforts.
Billings, a former missionary to Korea, had published mission study material on Korea entitled Fire Beneath the Frost, to which the Korean Church (which it supposedly covered) reacted to with dismay and anger. The study promoted “Minjung theology” – a kind of liberation theology so obscure that most Korean Christians had never heard of it – made almost no mention of the explosive growth and evangelism of the Korean Methodists, and was highly critical of the Korean government and the Korean churches. She was also highly critical of the EMC, labeled it divisive, and used her influence to cut off support to overseas churches that sought help from EMC.
With the Billings appointment it was apparent that GBGM was not intending to take the evangelical concerns seriously. Thus, a new supplemental agency – The Mission Society for United Methodists – would be formed. Those present at the first meeting covenanted to raise the $130,000 that would be needed to launch the agency. Support and encouragement came from a number of quarters. H. T. Maclin, field representative for Mission Development in the Southeast jurisdiction, resigned his job with the Board of Global Ministries and became the first executive secretary.
The Mission Society was very careful in its organizing literature to affirm most of the work the GBGM was doing. It would seek to act not in competition with, but alongside the official mission board. It would in no way seek to divert apportionment money or advance money from the GBGM. It would enter no area without a specific invitation of the bishop and the national church.
The Good News board rejoiced at the news of the new society. It voted immediately to disband the Evangelical Missions Council so that the Council could integrate itself fully with the new society. It released Virgil Maybray from his staff responsibilities with Good News so that he could work with H. T. Maclin in the Mission Society.
Not all in the UM Church, however, were pleased. Within a few months, the 1984 General Conference would be meeting in Baltimore, and the Mission Society would be an issue. Some wished to make the Mission Society “official.” Key leaders of the Mission Society were cool to the idea. “Official” would carry with it restrictions, political compromise, and bureaucratic entanglements, the very thing the society wished to avoid. Others at the General Conference desired an expression of condemnation. The conference finally passed a statement affirming the general board as the only “official” sending agency in the UM Church but also adding this statement: “In fairness to the concerns of those who feel the necessity for a second agency, we urge that measures be taken to assure our people that evangelization and evangelism are a vital part of the philosophy and practice by the Board and its staff is committed to Wesleyan theology.”
The General Conference also directed that directors and staff persons of the GBGM confer with directors and staff persons of the Mission Society to enhance the witness of Jesus Christ. Bishops were asked to serve as mediators in the discussion of mission philosophy. The “dialogue” that had begun between the General Board of Global Ministries and the Evangelical Missions Council would continue.
When the date was set, May 7, 1985, at Highland Park Church, Dallas, for the commissioning of the first missionaries from the Mission Society, Bishop James Thomas, president of the Council of Bishops, made arrangement with three other bishops to be present and participate in the commissioning service. It was customary to participate in such commissioning when United Methodist missionaries were being sent to do United Methodist work.
However, strong voices in the Council of Bishops, who wished to use the power of the institution against the society, prevailed against Thomas and made him renege on his promise.
This action of withholding the blessing of the bishops was followed by the bishops’ resolve not to give extension appointments to any clergy who would seek service with the Mission Society. In light of the practice of giving extension appointments to almost everyone who asked, even to agencies that had no contact with the Church, the action could only be seen as punitive and was a reminder of other actions taken by bishops and the Church against those who sought to serve Christ apart from “official” structures. The message of GBGM and the bishops to churches was plain: Do not support United Methodist efforts to win persons to Jesus Christ unless properly authorized by the “official” agencies.
In early 1988, the “dialogue sessions” between the Board of Global Ministries and the Mission Society mandated by the 1984 General Conference broke down and ended. The board had insisted that the meetings be closed and secret. When members of the United Methodist press pointed out that this was in violation of the Discipline, and members of the Mission Society refused to continue banning the press, the bishops simply canceled the meeting and the whole dialogue. It appeared to a number of observers that the bishops thought it more expedient to violate the General Conference mandate than to make public the discussions.
Ten years of efforts to find common ground had brought more alienation rather than reconciliation among the board and the EMC and then the Mission Society. However, the dire predictions of those who prophesied divisiveness, lack of support for the General Board, conflict on the mission field, and a loss of connectedness if the Mission Society were allowed to exist, never came to pass.
The Mission Society for United Methodists served as a good outlet for those who wished to support United Methodist missions work (rather than other independent agencies) that they could trust would operate with evangelical integrity.
Riley B. Case is the author of Evangelical & Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). He is a retired United Methodist clergy person from the Indiana Annual Conference, the associate director of the Confessing Movement, and a lifetime member of the Good News Board of Directors. This essay is adapted with permission from Evangelical & Methodist.
Editor’s postscript: Over a long and strenuous period of time, the UM Church has been able to accept the ministry of The Mission Society (now known as TMS Global). The 2008 General Conference actually passed a resolution affirming the work of The Mission Society and encouraging the GBGM to “develop new conversations and liaisons with the Mission Society for new and ongoing partnerships in areas of mutual concern.” In 2009, for the first time, GBGM and The Mission Society jointly sponsored a missions conference (with other organizations).
In 2012, the Rev. Dick McClain led a Bible study at a GBGM meeting. That incident was newsworthy because McClain was President of the Mission Society, a clergy person who for eight years had to go on Leave of Absence because his bishop would not give him an extension appointment to the Mission Society. (That, too, has changed.)
McClain’s presence at the GBGM followed the presence of Dr. Thomas Kemper, General Secretary of GBGM, at the Mission Society’s board meeting in preceding year. “It might seem like mission impossible bringing together two long-estranged mission organizations,” wrote Sam Hodges for The United Methodist Reporter. “But in the last few weeks, there’s been dramatic evidence of improved relations between the UMC’s General Board of Global Ministries and the Mission Society….”
“The Kingdom is much more than one organization and one understanding of the Kingdom,” Kemper told the Mission Society board. “Missions don’t rely on our means, and not even on our gifts, or even on our wealth. We think it’s all about money, but it’s about people, giving of ourselves,” Kemper said. As Christ sends his people into the harvest, which Jesus describes as “plentiful,” he said, “Let us work together so that the Kingdom of God is right at the doorsteps of people we meet and serve.”
In 2016, GBGM completed the move of its headquarters and staff to Atlanta, just a few miles from the home offices of TMS Global. The Rev. Max Wilkins, current President and CEO of TMS Global, says, “We welcome GBGM to Atlanta. The close proximity of our offices affords ever greater opportunities for honest conversation and cooperation in the multiple areas of Kingdom ministry that our two distinct missions have in common. It is a new day, and Dr. Kemper and I continue to meet together regularly and collegially as we seek to join Jesus in His mission around the world in the Wesleyan spirit.” Ω
by Steve | Apr 1, 2011 | Magazine Articles
After more than four decades of United Methodism’s membership decline, the 2008 General Conference created a committee of 20 church leaders to study the denomination and its churches, and to propose interventions at each level of the Church’s life. In late 2010, the committee published a “Call to Action” that is now widely discussed among United Methodists. The report addresses concerns ranging from the low “vitality” of local churches to the overall structure of the denomination.
Based on the findings of a research team, the Call to Action report identifies five “drivers” behind the “vitality” of the most “vital” local churches:
1. Traditional and contemporary services
2. More small groups
3. More programs for children and youth
4. Pastors who lead planning and preach inspiringly
5. Elevate more attendees into leadership roles.
The Call proposes making pastors and bishops more “accountable” for producing vital congregations, and it proposes a restructure of the denomination’s boards and agencies.
Because of his extensive expertise, we asked Dr. George G. Hunter III, author of The Apostolic Congregation: Church Growth Reconceived for a New Generation and Distinguished Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Asbury Theological Seminary, to interact with the report of the Call to Action. Hunter recently delivered the Denman Lectures, “The Recovery of a Contagious Wesleyan Movement,” at the 2011 Congress on Evangelism.
We asked for responses to Dr. Hunter’s analysis from distinguished thinkers and leaders representing various perspectives within United Methodism—the Rev. Drs. Steve Wende, Kent Millard, Joy Moore, and Terry Teykl.
As a separate analysis, we also asked the well-known church vitality expert Lyle Schaller to wrestle with the Call to Action. His thoughts are found on page 18.
—The editor
A serious conversation
By George G. Hunter III
Thank God for the “Call to Action!” It has catalyzed the first serious conversation about the denomination’s future in many years. I thank Good News magazine for encouraging the conversation.
My reflection on the report of the Call to Action proceeds from my convictions that United Methodism should be appropriately rooted in John Wesley’s theological vision and, as in early Methodism, our churches should be local missional movements more than conventional parishes. A Methodist missional life is expressed as a lay movement, that reaches, loves, and forms people through small groups, in local movements that enter their communities to make new disciples and work for God’s will to be done on earth.
Compared to the missional Christianity reflected in the New Testament, classical Methodism shared the bias of John Wesley, and Soren Kierkegaard, that the approach of Europe’s institutional national churches was not normal Christianity. Instead, it is domesticated Christianity, with much of the heart and more of the vertebrate removed, and the versions historically imported from Europe—America’s “mainline” churches—are almost as innocuous. For this reason, our denomination’s 20th century move to become much less Methodist and much more mainline, and much less of a movement and much more of an institution, has proven to be a tragic mistake.
The Call’s Confessions
While I will address the Call’s proposed interventions for our denomination, I’d like to begin with the Call’s Two Great (unspoken) Confessions.
First, the committee’s denominational leaders have quietly departed from their 20th century predecessors’ frequent insistence that the local churches exist for “the connection.” Now, apparently, the connection exists for the churches, after all.
Second, the document admits, de facto, that United Methodist leaders who contended in the 1970s and 1980s that membership decline was not really a problem were dead wrong. Those leaders welcomed decline. Fewer members, they said, would make us a better church. Quantity and quality, they assured us, are inversely related; so, with less quantity, we’d have more quality, more vitality, greater faithfulness and effectiveness.
Now, 40 years later, we face the brute fact that the loss of quantity has not produced greater quality and vitality. So, we have learned something in the last 40 years: Hear ye, Hear ye! Declining churches are less “vital” churches!
At several levels, the Call to Action, at last, transcends decades of entrenched denial, and it proposes a “revitalized” denomination.
The committee’s proposal to revamp the denomination’s boards and agencies is an idea past due. However, one proposal may not deliver what is hoped for. The Call to Action recommends merging our boards and agencies into fewer, and smaller, units. The problem is that we have already tried that—in 1972. As one example, the boards of education, evangelism, lay life and work, and other units like worship and stewardship and men’s work were merged into a conglomerate board of discipleship with much smaller staffs for those concerns. Since then, the denomination has been declining in quantity and quality. We have no reason to believe that consolidating into smaller boards yet again would produce a very different outcome.
Another proposal in the Call is useful, but could be expanded. The Call recommends that we form smaller “competency-based” boards. I served on the staff of the old Methodist Board of Evangelism from 1965 to 1972 and returned five years later to lead the program Section on Evangelism within the Board of Discipleship. The Board of Evangelism, whatever its shortcomings, had experts in evangelism; the Board of Discipleship, whatever its virtues, deployed board members to program sections without regard to subject-expertise.
Several other executives of program sections reported that their board members did not know enough about their section’s specialty to appraise, much less advise, the section’s work. So the call for competency-based boards makes great sense.
But this hopeful proposal raises a necessary question: Would it make sense to also select competency-based board staffs, and denominational executives, and bishops? If competency became priority at every level, the Church would be better positioned for a desirable future.
What triggers vitality?
The Call’s proposals for “vitalizing” local churches especially deserve reflection:
1. Programs vs. ministries. The Call reports that vital churches have more programs for children and youth than less vital churches do. That is undoubtedly true, but it invites some tweaking. Ministries with children and youth are even more important than “programs,” and the most effective churches engage in ministries with children and youth—and their parents.
2. Small groups. The Call reports that more vital churches have more small groups than do less vital churches. This represents a significant step toward reclaiming classical Methodism, but it stops short of involving all members in small groups, and it falls short of the reality that early Methodist societies were de facto churches of small groups. The report neglects to specify what should happen in a church’s small groups; we are not likely to improve on early Methodism’s agenda of (a) helping one another to live as Christians, and (b) engaging in ministry with each other, and with seekers.
3. Lay leadership. The report calls churches to elevate more attendees into leadership roles. The Call is not at all clear that, by this, they mean deploying lay people in ministries. If they do not, their point is only a small step toward a restored Methodism. The early Methodist societies in England, and the early Methodist churches in the United States, were indeed substantially lay led, but this piece is much less important than the point that most of the ministry that mattered was done by laity. In any case, in most churches across this land, the line of attendees who are eager to serve on committees or to get involved in church governance is a short line. Actually, many of the most effective churches are getting lay people out of governance, almost entirely, and into an astonishing range of ministries—in and beyond the church.
4. Worship. The report calls for a mix of traditional and contemporary services in United Methodist churches. That recommendation would have represented progress in the 1970s! Today, the future of worshipping congregations is much more extravagant—including multiple congregations, in multiple styles, sometimes in multiple languages, sometimes at multiple sites.
The committee also calls for more “topical” preaching rather than “lectionary-based preaching.” In several decades of studying churches, I have found negligible warrant for that recommendation—unless we are only talking about beginning a sermon with the question, need, or issue that the text speaks to. Most of our people expect, from their preachers, the meaningful interpretation of the Scriptures. Most of our visitors want to understand the biblical faith. As a postscript, the most effective churches do not put all of their dozen eggs in the preaching basket. Much of the Message is, increasingly, communicated in worship through music, drama, media, and the arts—and, beyond the worship hour, through the people’s reading and conversations.
5. The pastorate. The Call’s final set of recommendations focuses on the pastor. It calls, at last, for longer pastorates. We have known, at least since the early 1970s, that church growth correlates with longer pastorates. The Call also expects the pastor to provide inspirational preaching and leadership in planning. But one recommendation—that the pastor “mentor” lay leaders—will, in many churches, be met with puzzled expressions. Why? In many churches, there are laypeople who, as leaders, have already achieved more than the pastor will ever achieve. Indeed, it would be presumptuous of many pastors to “mentor” their church’s most accomplished leaders. If, however, it is even more important to deploy lay people in ministries than in governance, that is where the pastor’s coaching and mentoring are indispensable.
Accountability
The Call’s most predominant overall theme is Accountability. That is certainly a prominent theme in Methodism’s DNA, but the Call’s theme is less consistent than it could be. For instance, it proposes that underachieving pastors can be “terminated” and underachieving bishops can be “sanctioned.” But why can’t underachieving pastors be sanctioned as a first intervention; and why can’t underachieving bishops be terminated?
Furthermore, the call to accountability is more limited in its scope than it could be. Pastors, bishops, and agencies are on the radar screen. The whole system—schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals, etc.—should contribute to effective local Christianity.
Objectively studied, what we call the United Methodist Church is neither very “Methodist” nor very “united.” If you doubt that, consider this question: What else keeps the denomination technically together besides the Three ‘P’s: Polity, Property, and Pensions? What primarily kept the early Methodist movement together, even more, was their shared mission and message, and their mutual support and networking. The mere addition of greater accountability is unlikely to provide enough glue for any meaningful unity, nor enough energy to turn the ship around.
The Great Omissions
The Call to Action acknowledges that it is an incomplete plan for the denomination’s renewal. As I studied the document, I became aware of some “great omissions.” Let me point out a few.
1. You would never know, from the Call to Action, that revitalization could have anything to do with theology, or that there could possibly be anything sub-Christian, dysfunctional, heretical, or eccentric about anyone’s theology. But there is a very strong connection between theology and vitality. Some churches are so theologically compromised that they are incapable of reproduction; they cannot even keep a bare majority of their own children into adult membership.
2. You would never know, from the Call to Action, that revitalization could have anything to do with the serious Spiritual Formation of the people. Revitalization without prayer?
3. You would never know, from the Call to Action, that revitalization could have anything to do with obeying and joining the Holy Spirit in Evangelism. Revitalization without new disciples?
4. While the committee is clear about the reforms they’d propose for boards and agencies, the Call does not address the institutions of the episcopacy, or the district superintendency, or the inherited system for deploying the clergy. In Send Me? The Itineracy In Crisis, Don Messer sounded the alarm 20 years ago. Its insights were ignored, but never refuted. Many Methodist churches, worldwide, no longer appoint pastors, and they regard American Methodism’s devotion to the system as “quaint.” Some World Methodism leaders even wonder if we are “polity fundamentalists.”
5. The committee ignores the elephant in the room: the issue of whether our hierarchical organization is still appropriate. One of the most dominant trends of our time is away from authoritarian hierarchical organizations toward much greater local autonomy and control. An increasing number of the people who leave us no longer wanted to be involved in a large top-down structure; they leave for churches that are more autonomous. For similar reasons, we lose an increasing number of our entrepreneurial pastors to churches with greater local autonomy. Should the committee address the most fundamental issue about our structure?
Vitality revisited
The Call to Action reflects the quiet, but enormous, shift in focus that United Methodism experienced in the 20th century. Once, we knew that the world was our parish; now, our parishes are our world! We are now concerned that so many of our parishes lack sufficient “vitality.”
First, “vitality” is a desirable, but not sufficient, goal for the Body of Christ. The quest for vitality reflects what is already a domesticated version of Christianity. Christianity with the power to reach communities, and rescue the perishing, and advance justice, and produce people who devote their lives to the will of God, has more going for it than a good pastoral leader, small groups, good programs, and two worship styles.
The second problem with the goal of “vitality” is that you may not find it by seeking it. You experience it as a by-product of experiencing grace, and following Jesus Christ, and as new disciples enter the church’s ranks as transformed people.
Churches experience vitality as they become involved in the Christian Movement far beyond their community—as they support missionaries and as teams of church members join the missionaries in, say, a three-week mission trip to a village in Peru where they put a roof on a chapel during the day and join in community with the indigenous believers in the evenings. When they return to their local congregations, their newfound spiritual power is contagious.
Success and failure
While we were told what the “drivers” were for high vitality congregations, we were not told about the causes of “low vitality” in too many of our churches.
Let me presume to offer a diagnosis of these factors. Modern day United Methodists cannot recall who they are. They are no longer rooted in Scripture or in any recognizable version of Methodism’s theological vision. The religion that now inhabits the minds of our attendees is as likely to be Deism, or Pantheism, or middle class moralism, or civil religion, or even Astrology or “Luck,” as any recognizable form of “the faith once delivered to the saints.”
Most of our people who dutifully attend church are like a football team that sits on the bench while supporting, and cheering for, the coach—or they wish for a better coach! Most of our people are not in ministry within and beyond the church. Most of our churches do not regard Christianity’s mission as their main business. Most of our visitors do not hear our churches speak their language or engage their emotional struggles. Many visitors, who know they are not like “good church people,” read signals that we may not really want them.
The consequence of all of this, and more, is what John Wesley once feared. What is now called Methodism, in many places, has retained “the form of religion,” but “without the power.”
Unfortunately, the Call to Action proposal assumes that establishment, institutional, mainline, more-or-less Eurocentric Christianity is normal Christianity. Again, the Call seems to be unaware that Methodism once expressed serious, contagious, missional Christianity, locally and globally.
The main problem that I have with the committee’s Call is that, if it succeeds, the denomination might reduce the hemorrhaging, membership and attendance and finances might stabilize, and the denomination’s executives might feel less heat. Unfortunately, however, if the Call, in its present form, is implemented at every level, the most optimistic possible outcome would still find United Methodism thin on vision, passion, and courage. We still would not represent a version of the faith that could change the world.
George G. Hunter III is Distinguished Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He was the founding dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism. Dr. Hunter has authored a dozen books, including The Apostolic Congregation: Church Growth Reconceived for a New Generation (2009).
by Steve | Oct 11, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe —
It doesn’t happen often that I read something that stops me dead in my tracks and makes me think, “C’mon, he didn’t really say that, did he?” But it happened last week when I was perusing an article from the United Methodist News Service about the Call to Action Committee.
Concerned about the general effectiveness of our denomination and our continuing numerical decline, the Council of Bishops and the Connectional Table commissioned the Call to Action Committee in 2009 to bring forward “…a plan of action that will lead to reordering the life of the church.” To its credit, the 16-member committee has taken its work seriously and hired two well-respected, secular consulting firms (Towers Watson and Apex Healthcare Consulting) to study the church and its structures.
More than 400 UM leaders were surveyed and the results were reported in a 95-page summary. One of the findings that did not surprise me was that “general lack of trust within the Church was a pervasive and recurring theme in the majority of interviews.” Nor did it surprise me that Apex reported “lack of accountability was…cited as a root cause of distrust—when people are not accountable for their actions and behaviors, they cannot be trusted.” Specifically mentioned was the lack of trust between “the pew and the leadership.”
Another conclusion, hardly unexpected, was the unfavorable view of the church’s general boards and agencies. They were seen as less than effective in making “disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” According to another United Methodist News Service article regarding the survey’s results, “the autonomous organization structure of the agencies has lessened their value to the church, according to the ‘Operational Assessment of the Connectional Church.’”
Bottom line: people in the pew have a problem trusting our leadership, in general, and our autonomous (read “unaccountable”) boards and agencies, in particular—some, I’m sure more than others.
The findings of these reports should not have been surprising. The results only confirmed what many of us who serve in local churches have known for years. What was unexpected and refreshing was to read a report that was so frank about the problems we face.
The response by our leaders to these finding by outside observers will tell us much about their seriousness and resolve in regard to the renewal and reform of the United Methodist Church.
What absolutely floored me was a remark made by Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the General Board of Church and Society, what might be our most controversial, polemical, and distrusted church agency. “People do not join general agencies; they join local churches,” Mr. Winkler told the United Methodist News Service. “If we want to focus on ineffectiveness in making disciples for Jesus Christ, that’s the place to start.”
Astonishing. A credible outside source with no ax to grind, reports that “agencies often fail to collaborate with each other and their boards are too large and meet too infrequently to provide effective oversight;” “the agencies are a cacophony of voices;” and (not surprisingly) the people in the pews of local churches don’t trust our boards and agencies—and Mr. Winkler seems to say: The board and agencies are not the problem, the local churches are.
This is exactly the kind of response that will doom the best intended plans for the renewal and reform of the United Methodist Church.
The local churches that Mr. Winkler references are the same local churches that pay the salary of the General Secretary, correct? These are the same local churches that are being asked to pay $12.4 million this quadrennium in apportionments so the Board of Church and Society can represent (and misrepresent) grassroots United Methodists on the most important social issues of the day, right?
And yet the independent reports confirm that there is a breach of trust between the pew and the upper echelons of power within the United Methodist Church. Why would that be?
Why would we fail to trust a Board that is an official partner of the Religious Coalition of Reproductive Choice, which believes that there should be no restrictions on abortion—late-term, partial birth abortions are acceptable; so are abortions for the purpose of birth control; so are abortions for gender selection. All of these stances are contrary to our United Methodist position.
Why would we distrust a Board that instructed United Methodists to encourage their Senator not to block a healthcare plan that at the time would have provided federal funding for abortion? The sanctity of life concerns of many persons in the pew were dismissed by GBCS staffer Linda Bales Todd as “one narrow religious doctrine” when she spoke at a National Press Club briefing, sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Why would we distrust a Board that has had to spend close to $1.8 million dollars in legal fees to defend its use of a trust fund designated for “temperance and alcohol problems”—simply because it chose to use the several million dollars generated by that trust for purposes that had nothing to do with alcohol or temperance?
Why would we distrust the Board of Church and Society when its study on sexuality includes an article written by a Unitarian Minister who teaches that sex outside of marriage, heterosexual and homosexual, can be a moral choice as long as it is consensual, pleasurable, and protected? Why would we be less than trusting when a separate article sent under the Board’s sponsorship argues that expecting single clergy to be celibate is unrealistic and unnecessary?
Why would we distrust a Board that submitted a petition to the 2008 General Conference that would have redefined marriage so that it no longer would have reflected the historic Christian understanding that marriage is the union of a man and a woman?
Why distrust the Board when it has lobbied for decades to change our biblical and compassionate stance that all persons are made in the image of God, worthy of the church’s ministry, but that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching?
Why distrust a Board that receives church monies to carry out the church’s will, simply because it spends so much of its time and resources trying to change the church’s will?
Why distrust a board whose leader openly and publicly stated, “I don’t know if Jesus believed he was the Messiah or not,” as he did when I served on the Board of Church and Society? That kind of language is applauded at fringe theological gatherings such as the Jesus Seminar, but it serves to deepen the hole of distrust that exists between the people in the pews and their United Methodist leaders.
We are often told by our bishops that our people don’t feel good about paying their apportionments simply because they don’t know all the good our boards and agencies are doing. Just tell our story, they say, and your people will be happy to pay. The clear message of the consultants is that our people do know the story, as well as what is going on, and they are not happy.
For example, people all over the connection checked out “our story” after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi thanked the United Methodist Church for helping pass the recent healthcare reform bill because of the work of the Board of Church and Society. Grassroots United Methodists went to the Board’s website and they didn’t like what they found. They discovered exactly what I have described above. And some left the denomination. Others called our Good News offices, others wrote letters, and others sent emails—all wondering, “Is this really true? Does my church and does my money really support this Board?”
“Autonomous.” “Unaccountable.” Remember those words in the survey about why we have such a lack of trust in the UM Church? They describe the Board of Church and Society. No one holds the Board accountable.
A much different and more hopeful response to the Apex survey was given by Neil Alexander, a steering team member and president and publisher of the United Methodist Publishing House. In the same article he is quoted as saying, “As accountable stewards, we must accept the implicit criticisms and make changes that address them. Many of us share deep concern that overall the UMC is not seeing the magnitude and quality of results we aspire to achieve.” “… We have urgent and difficult work to do to deliver high quality resources and services and to persuasively demonstrate how general agencies add value.”
The Call to Action Committee is one of several recent attempts to re-order and revitalize the UM Church. Here’s what the Committee must understand if its work is to achieve its goal. As essential as restructuring is, even the best structures will fail to lead us into spiritual renewal and missional effectiveness, if the church continues to find itself unable to trust the persons who lead those structures.
We plead with and pray for the Committee—please take the results of the survey you commissioned seriously. Please, understand that if you change our structures, but not the personnel who lead them, “a general lack of trust within the Church” will continue to be “pervasive and recurring” and the UM Church will be nothing more than a new wineskin containing the same old wine. We must have leaders who believe in, support, and promote the positions of the church. And we must have leaders who actually believe the local church is who they are called to serve—not the problem they have to overcome.
Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News.
