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The Gospel of John, X2
Twenty years ago, Good News ran a major cover story titled "Missions Derailed" (May/June, 1983). After a six-month investigative study, we voiced concern that the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), United Methodism's official mission agency, was failing in its church-mandated assignment.
Our report cited problems such as excessive administrative overhead, a decline in the number of standard support overseas missionaries, and a change in the theological underpinnings of the board's work. We were concerned that the board had moved from a traditional understanding of mission to the trendy new liberation theology-a strange mixture of radical politics and liberal religion which views salvation as "liberating" persons from unjust social structures.
What brought this whole matter to mind was a recent UM News Service (11/3/03) piece noting that "budget woes" will mean no new full-time missionaries appointed in 2004. But what jumped out in the story was the report that after non-renewal of contracts, retirements, and requests not to be reassigned, GBGM is left with only 93 "in the category of standard support missionaries." Just 93! (The wind-like sound you just heard is the collective gasp of tens of thousands of United Methodists who follow missions closely enough to know the tragic significance of these numbers.)
Let me provide some context. Earlier in the last century, United Methodism fielded some 2,500 standard support, full-time missionaries. In 1965, we had more than 1,500 career overseas missionaries. When we ran the "Missions Derailed" article in 1983, GBGM's numbers had dropped to only 453 career overseas missionaries (GBGM staff at the time totaled 458).
One of our concerns as early as 1972, when the Evangelical Missions Council was formed and later became an arm of Good News for eight years (until 1984), was that United Methodism appeared to be going out of the mission-sending business. We were always told that wasn't the case. Today, however, GBGM has just 93 standard support missionaries, with no plans to take on any new ones in 2004.
Further context may be even more helpful. In 1983, when we had 453 missionaries, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board had some 3,196 career overseas missionaries, served by around 300 headquarters staff.
These trends at GBGM, plus a loss of a vital theology of mission, added to the board's rejection of many evangelical applicants who were left with no choice but to seek service under other mission-sending agencies, led to the formation 20 years ago of the Mission Society for United Methodists (MSUM), headquartered in Norcross, Georgia. The new, unofficial sending agency has always seen itself as a "supplemental" sending body, and has always urged that its support be from the members' second-mile mission giving, not from their apportionments.
Despite being viewed condescendingly by many denominational leaders as the black sheep of United Methodism's institutional family, the Mission Society, after just twenty years, now has 156 missionaries (full-time, career) serving in 29 countries on five continents, with a budget of just $9 million and a staff of only 25. Its ministries are holistic, culturally sensitive, and involve more than 3,000 national citizens in countries of missionary involvement.
I have been following with appreciation the efforts of the United Methodist Missionary Association, chaired now by Norma Kehrberg. This unofficial group of more than 350 current and retired UM missionaries seeks input into GBGM's mission policies and strategies. They have expressed concern about the board's diminishing missionary force. In 2001, they even called on directors to initiate a "major review" of GBGM.
Our mission board has a mandate: "To challenge all United Methodists with the New Testament imperative to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth.and to recruit, send, and receive missionaries" (Par. 1302.1, 3, Discipline).
Twenty years ago, a GBGM official said the World Division had as its "controlling principle" in the 1980s the "empowerment of the poor and the oppressed." Former GBGM head, Randy Nugent, also called back then for a new form of missionary outreach that should be a "mission to those who are at the levers of economic and social affairs."
While caring for the poor is an essential element to the gospel message, we cannot fail to simultaneously offer the saving message of Jesus Christ. Social justice and preaching the gospel should never be pitted against one another. Yet the board did that very thing. It failed tragically in its missionary mandate.
Does the UM mission agency, under its new leadership, have the will and passion to fulfill its biblical and disciplinary mandate. Do its leaders affirm the "New Testament imperative" or do they believe simply that all will be saved? Is Christ the Savior for all the world, or are all the world's religions equally valid and efficacious? Their answers will determine whether those tragic numbers change.
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