Archive: UM Missions: Which Way to the Future?

By James S. Robb

Good News talks to leaders of the official mission board and the new Mission Society

For years the debate raged.

On one side towered the denomination’s official mission agency, the General Board of Global Ministries. Armed with a glorious history of spreading the Gospel and a multimillion dollar budget, the board had come under fire over a number of its recent policies. Global Ministries officials maintained the board had merely changed to meet a changing world. It was faithful to its mission, they said.

On the other side arose disgruntled evangelicals and traditionalists. Upset by steady erosion in the number of UM missionaries overseas and by the mission board’s perceived commitment to political causes, the evangelicals missed few chances to petition the board for policy changes. Send out more missionaries, they requested. Concentrate on winning persons to Christ. But Global Ministries officials generally countered that they were concerned about the whole person, not just the soul.

In 1974 concerned evangelicals organized themselves into the Evangelical Missions Council to lobby for reform (EMC was part of Good News from 1976 to mid-1984). A separate group of ministers from large “tall steeple” congregations beyond the EMC circle also attempted to bring change. Regularly since the mid-’70s, the mission board and the evangelicals got together for “dialog,” usually at the Global Ministries headquarters at 475 Riverside Drive in New York City. Yet, after many years of meetings, neither side had substantially changed its views. It looked like a permanent stalemate.

Then suddenly a quiet revolution ignited. Deciding they could wait for change no longer, a group of 29 large-church pastors and 4 missions professors met in November, 1983. They announced they were forming a “supplemental” mission board, the Mission Society for United Methodists. The new society would send out more United Methodist missionaries, they pledged.

The Mission Society wasted no time in gearing up for action. It hired Rev. H. T. Maclin, Southeastern Jurisdiction representative for Global Ministries, to be chief executive. Rev. Virgil Maybray, head of the now-disbanded Evangelical Missions Council, was chosen for the number two staff slot. Headquarters was set up in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

In its first year of existence, the Mission Society raised several hundred thousand dollars and survived considerable opposition from Global Ministries and others who insisted that the official agency have the field to itself. Then this May, the society “sent forth” its first 10 missionaries. Dozens more may depart next year, and hundreds may be sent within a decade.

Meanwhile, Global Ministries isn’t sitting by quietly. Led by Dr. Randolph Nugent, general secretary, and Miss Peggy Billings, head of the board’s international work, the board denies that it is uninterested in converting persons to Christ. It’s also responding to many of the charges leveled against it and attempting to limit the success of the Mission Society.

Many United Methodist pastors and laypersons find themselves bewildered by the new situation. Questions abound. Was a second mission board necessary? What are the goals of both boards? Who is going to send how many missionaries? Do churches have to choose sides?

To help United Methodists find the path to the future, Good News recently interviewed top executives from the Mission Society for United Methodists and the official Board of Global Ministries at their respective headquarters.

Why was the Mission Society formed?

“The policy of the Board of Global Ministries is to support programs and not the sending of personnel,” flatly states Mission Society Vice President Virgil Maybray. “That wasn’t the basis on which God operated. He believed in sending people. He sent his Son—a person. Ultimately that’s what we have to do, send a person.”

According to Mission Society officials, the United Methodist Church simply has too few career overseas missionaries. From more than 1,500 in 1968, Global Ministries now claims just 460; this does not include short-term missionaries or foreign nationals. The drop disturbs Maclin and Maybray.

They say many smaller denominations are sending more. For example, the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, with less than three percent of the membership of the United Methodist Church, manages to field 1,099 overseas missionaries.

“The Board of Global Ministries’ policy, as they have said many times, is the empowerment of the indigenous church and enabling it to stand on its feet,” explains Maclin. “There is an element of truth in that. We do want the church overseas to stand on its own feet, to be autonomous and to be the church.

“But what about the 300-million-plus people in the world who do not yet have even the first verse of Scripture translated into a language that is understandable to them? Or how about the one to one-and-a-half billion that have yet to have reasonable opportunity to hear and heed the Gospel message?”

Global Ministries leaders deny they aren’t interested in sending missionaries. Peggy Billings, head of the board’s World Division, states, “There is and always will be, as long as there is a Board of Global Ministries, the need for people from the United States to be in mission in other places.”

But although Global Ministries says it would like to send more overseas missionaries, there is no talk of a major expansion. Mission Society people believe the need is so great they could not wait any longer while asking Global Ministries to send more missionaries.

Why doesn’t the Board of Global Ministries send more missionaries?

According to Nugent and Billings, the board is sending as many missionaries as it can on its income.

“Sometimes the church doesn’t understand the economic cost of its mission,” Nugent says. “God does some amazing things with the resources that are there. But at the same time, people are expensive.”

Global Ministries spent $86 million in 1984. The World Division, which is responsible for overseas missionaries, was allocated $29 million of that, or about a third of the total.

Of the $29 million, $13.9 million underwrote overseas missionaries. In addition to career overseas missionaries, this amount covered funding of short-term missionaries, foreign nationals directly on the payroll of Global Ministries, and brief overseas mission experiences by Americans, plus some increased funding for missionary pensions.

Billings says she realizes the World Division’s overall budget “really sounds incredible. But when you break it down, and you find out it now costs $18,000 a year to support one U.S. person in mission abroad (and that includes travel, education, and so forth), then how many folk can you get?”

In fact, she says, the increases in income the board has gotten haven’t kept up with rising costs. Under normal circumstances the present financial situation would have caused the board to further reduce the missionary force. “But we had made a decision that we don’t believe that should happen,” Billings states. “So we will maintain what we call the ‘present level,’ the 1985 level, on into the future.”

In addition to the $13.9 million that subsidized missionaries, the board’s World Division made cash grants of $12.7 million in 1984. Much of these funds went as block grants to Third World Methodist churches. Global Ministries officials say these grants, and not just missionaries, are necessary.

Mission Society leaders see a different explanation for Global Ministries not sending more missionaries. “Their philosophy of missions is such that it does not provide for the sending of more missionaries from the United States,” ventures Maclin. “They see missions in terms of [sending] a few from here, but also to enable people all over the world to be in mission [through cash grants]. There is a degree of validity in that.

“But at the same time,” he says, “a great deal of their effort has gone into funding programs of wide varieties, some of which have been highly questionable.”

Critics have pointed to a number of Global Ministries’ programs as being unacceptable. For example, last year the board gave more than $50,000 to an organization known as the World Student Christian Federation. Although the name makes the group sound quite religious, its own literature eschews discussion of God in favor of various far-left political causes. As reported in a 1983 article in Good News, resolutions passed by WSCF at a 1980 meeting elicited this response from Lutheran Bishop James Crumley: “As I look at these resolutions, I’m wondering whether this is even a Christian organization.” Ruth Harris, a Global Ministries staffer, defended WSCF in this way: “Their work is rooted in the conviction that Christian young people must be involved in the crucial issues and frontiers of the world’s life.”

Also in this vein, complaints have been made by Good News and others that the board spends excessive amounts on its headquarters operations. In 1984, Global Ministries spent just over $15 million to pay the salaries, fringe benefits, and travel for its more than 473 non-missionary employees. Board officials point out that many of these staff members are involved in such laudable activities as managing hunger relief efforts, missions education, and raising money to build U.S. churches.

What are the goals of the Mission Society?

Very simply, the Mission Society for United Methodists is in the business of sending Missionaries—long-term, short-term, foreign, and domestic. Consequently, the society is determined to send as many as possible as soon as they responsibly can.

“Before the office ever opened,” reminisces Maclin, “I had thought that if we were rolling and beginning to send people out after a three-year start-up, it would be a very reasonable time. We have actually done it in less than half that time, which is to my way of thinking almost nothing short of a miracle.”

The first 10 Mission Society missionaries were “sent forth” in Dallas in a May consecration service. The five missionary couples were assigned to: the Ghanaian Methodist Church, the Colombian Methodist Church, Scripture translation work in Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, and to the Four Corners Native American Ministry in New Mexico. Four of the couples are already on the field.

The formation of a new organization interested in sending more United Methodist missionaries has obviously struck a nerve in the church. In its 1984 maiden year the Mission Society managed to raise $289,000. Furthermore, the society has received an astounding 458 inquiries about missionary service. Of those, 158 have actually applied. Moreover, 29 of these are near acceptance. If the Mission Society can find enough places of service, the 29 could join the 10 already in place within a year.

The variety and quality of those who have inquired about missionary service has the Mission Society leaders amazed. There are 77 pastors and spouses, 12 agriculturalists, 10 medical doctors, 10 nurses, 14 teachers, and 4 psychologists, among others.

While Maclin is pleased that 10 missionaries are already commissioned. he mentioned that a research committee of his board had set some ambitious goals.

“They envision by 1992, somewhere in that era, we could have 200-300 missionaries serving,” he reports.

To those who consider their goals impossible, the Mission Society officials point to the new Presbyterian Church in America, An evangelical spin-off of the main Presbyterian denomination, the PCA has just 170,000 members and is less than a decade old. But the new denomination already supports more than 430 missionaries.

Is the Mission Society finding places to send its missionaries?

The key to their success, Mission Society leaders agree, is finding places to send their missionaries. “We’ve got several places that are opening now,” says Maclin, “but because of the past difficulties that we have encountered in announcing beforehand, from now on we are saying nothing about these areas until such persons have been sent forth and have actually arrived on the field.”

By “past difficulties” Maclin is referring to a major controversy that erupted this summer. The society “sent forth” its first 10 missionaries in a May service, and publicly announced where they were headed. One of the couples, Max and Patricia Borah, were invited to work with the autonomous Methodist Church of Ghana, West Africa, by the church’s president, Rev. Jacob Stevens.

In June, Stevens got a letter from Rev. James Lyles, of the Board of Global Ministries’ Africa section, telling Stevens that inviting missionaries from other groups “ruptures relationships and does violence to the structure and connectionalism of the United Methodist Church.”

Stevens took the letter as a threat. He told The United Methodist Reporter, “I said in the letter [responding to the board’s letter] I have tried the Board of Global Ministries for many years, asking for doctors, teachers and many others, and it didn’t work. So now the Mission Society comes along and breaks things open. I ask you, if Global Ministries can’t help and somebody else in the United States can, why shouldn’t we take it?”

A similar situation erupted concerning Florencio and Maria Guzman who were assigned by the Mission Society to help the tiny Methodist church in Colombia, South America. After it was announced where they were headed, a Global Ministries official met with the Methodist bishops of Latin America. The bishops, in turn, strongly advised the Colombians to revoke its invitation to the Guzmans. One of the Latin American bishops, Bishop Roberto Diaz of Costa Rica, said their statement was due to pressure from Global Ministries. The charge was denied.

“You have to recognize just how independent [the Latin American bishops] are,” Peggy Billings told the Reporter. “We can’t tell them anything.” As in the case of the Ghana church, the Colombians held firm.

The perceived interference from Global Ministries especially irritated Mission Society leaders because Global Ministries has no work in either Ghana or Colombia. In any case, the incidents made the society decide to keep destinations of future missionaries secret until they actually arrive.

Although Maclin and Maybray indicate other overseas Methodist churches will be asking for Mission Society personnel, they admit that the opposition from Global Ministries has had a chilling effect on many foreign church leaders. “That’s part of the reason why the Mission Society made it [our] number-one policy to send missionaries to unreached people groups,” explains Maclin.

The society hopes to send its first missionary to one of these “frontier” areas in 1986.

How is Global Ministries answering the criticism it has received?

The Board of Global Ministries is trying to explain itself better to the denomination and actually to adjust some of its policies in response to criticism. Directed by the 1984 General Conference, board officials are conducting a series of dialog sessions with Mission Society representatives moderated by the UM bishops. The dialog has so far failed to bring the two sides much closer together. Global Ministries officials won’t discuss the Mission Society directly while the talks are continuing. Yet, they are anxious to discuss some of the criticisms leveled by the Mission Society and others.

One of the most frequent criticisms deals with a perceived leftist tilt to the board’s theology. Especially criticized has been the board’s admiration for liberation theology (a Latin American theology which weaves together Christian teaching and radical political ideas). Last year the Mission Society circulated a pamphlet attacking liberation theology. In January of this year Bishop Roy Sano, president of Global Ministries’ World Division, called the brochure an “act of blasphemy.” Liberation theology has to be seen as the work of the Holy Spirit, he stated.

Following this line of thinking, the board has made dozens, or even hundreds, of large cash grants to radical political organizations. In 1981, for example, Global Ministries gave $25,000 to the African National Congress, a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the South African government. Last year the board gave Clergy and Laity Concerned $15,000 to protest the placement of U.S. cruise missiles in Italy.

Those and similar incidents have led many United Methodists, especially evangelicals, to worry that Global Ministries has forsaken traditional Wesleyan theology.

Explains H. T. Maclin: “Many people have been aware, bishops included, of the drift of our church, particularly in the area of mission, in the direction of a kind of theology that borders on universalism. But they’ve not really done anything [about it].”

Global Ministries staffers deny they are universalist (the belief that everyone will be saved no matter what their faith or practice).

“That is not true,” emphatically states Global Ministries head Randy Nugent. He claims the board is “very Christ centered.” He says the board is “absolutely” committed to personal evangelism. “I mean, you know God calls us to have changed lives, so all of that is who we are.”

Betty Thompson, who heads Global Ministries’ Education and Cultivation division, points out that the board itself wrote the denomination’s current mission statement, which has an evangelical ring to it. “In the midst of a sinful world, through the grace of God, we are brought to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. … We call persons into discipleship,” the statement reads (paragraph 103, 1984 Book of Discipline).

Global Ministries is now in the process of drafting a new mission statement, which should make its theology clearer.

In their defense of the board, Nugent and Peggy Billings implicitly acknowledge that the board’s style in the past has opened it up to criticism. “If you, for example, [ were just] looking in, you wouldn’t know that we have testimonies,” says Nugent. “You wouldn’t know that people talk about the effect of God in their lives daily. That doesn’t come through—that’s hard. [But] that is the reality.”

Yet, Nugent realizes the board has seemed almost indifferent to spiritual concerns at times. He wants to correct this impression. “There was a great deal of clarity in the early days when we talked about [salvation], about ‘the hell from which people were being saved,’” he says. “I think there’s still a lot of hell out there—I mean hell. But I think in this whole area of appeal, I think we are clearer, and we need to be more clear about what it is from which people are being saved.”

Nugent also agrees that the board needs to stress more holiness of lifestyle. “There is a wholeness and a wholesomeness that I think traditionalists and evangelicals might want to see, and yes, we understand that.”

Billings, in a clarifying statement, adds, “I think that people are not overtly trying to be more pietistic. If so, that would be a charade. And it would be simply a cosmetic response to the criticism that we are not evangelical.”

Yet the Mission Society’s Maclin is highly skeptical about how Global Ministries people use words like “salvation” and “hell.” He charges, “There are those who have taken the classic and the historic words of the faith and, without telling their listeners, have changed their meaning and are using them in ways which were certainly not inherent in the understanding we’ve had. … ”

Maclin was echoing a charge made by Council of Bishops president Ole Borgen at the 1983 Good News convocation. Bishop Borgen said one example of new meanings being put to old words was “Salvation, which no longer indicates a new relationship with God, but just as much any kind of ‘salvation’ within the socio-political realm, such as ‘liberation,’ ‘justice,’ political power, etc.” The Global Ministries leaders agree that in the past couple of decades the board sometimes got caught up with an emphasis on social change. Peggy Billings underlines the impact the decades of the 1960s and 1970s made on the board, as well as the whole nation. She specifically refers to the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam struggle, and the women’s movement. “The deep theological issues that were underneath those social events meant that we can’t continue to live our lives the way we have always lived our lives,” Billings says.

“I think that we have gone though virtual revolutions in terms of society. And the church was caught up in that. What is now happening is an integration [of social and spiritual concerns],” she explains. Adds Nugent, “In our working out of [social and spiritual concerns], there were times when they were not as integrated as they are coming to be.”

While now agreeing that the board has to re-emphasize spiritual matters, Billings says, the board won’t retreat from its social emphasis. “It’s a real world. And it’s not neat; it’s not absolute. Your mission and your theology of mission has got to respond to the real world.”

In answer to other, more concrete criticisms, the board is trying to respond. For example, a common complaint has been that persons applying to be missionaries have been treated carelessly. The board has added a number of safeguards, including a complaints desk, to ensure that applicants are not ignored. Billings says they are also reconsidering their policy of writing such narrow job descriptions for missionaries, which have convinced many would-be missionary hopefuls that they could never qualify.

Even the Mission Society leaders feel the board has made progress in adjusting some attitudes. “Correspondence with missionaries indicates that they are benefiting from the existence of the Mission Society,” states Virgil Maybray, “just because of the change of attitude at the Board of Global Ministries. [Global Ministries] has done some things that some missionaries can’t remember [happening recently], such as coming to the field and saying, ‘What do you think?’ ”

The Global Ministries leaders are excited about some of the new thrusts they are pursuing. For one thing, they hope to do much more within the United States to reach groups of people that the church can’t seem to attract, such as working class persons migrating to the South from the North. Another new program is cooperating with the Christian church within communist China in sending Christian teachers into the country.

Will Global Ministries and the bishops ever accept the Mission Society?

Speculation about how long denominational officials will try to freeze out the Missions Society has to be sketchy. That’s because Global Ministries staffers won’t talk to the press about the Mission Society while the dialog sessions with the society are continuing. But Maclin and Maybray have some thoughts on the matter.

The Mission Society leaders are frustrated, but not shocked, by the opposition they have faced. “I don’t know that it caught me by surprise,” states Maclin, “I think I came into this fully aware of what might happen, and what indeed has happened.

“I recall before I left, I shared my thoughts with a staff member of the board. His statement to me has been borne out 100 percent when he said to me, ‘You know you’re going to be up against a bunch of street fighters. They’re guerrillas here.’ Exactly right,” Maclin agrees in retrospect. “Dead on!” The opposition has been intense. Besides the Ghana/Colombia controversy, Global Ministries enlisted the help of the Council of Bishops early last year in an attempt to stop the Mission Society from getting off the ground. Bishop Jesse DeWitt, then-president of Global Ministries, wrote the bishops, saying the new society “discredits the entire system” and calling for help in opposing it. Although four out of the five regional “colleges of bishops” stated opposition to the Mission Society, the effort partially backfired. Bishops from the North Central, South Central, and Southeastern jurisdictions spent much of their statements criticizing Global Ministries for being narrow and unresponsive.

At the 1984 General Conference, held some months later, the bishops’ official address criticized the formation of the Missions Society and urged Global Ministries to stress evangelism. The bishops also released a report discussing the church’s ecumenical relations which criticized Global Ministries, noting a “reluctance to deal constructively with concerns of a large segment of the United Methodist constituency.”

Later, the entire General Conference voted to disapprove the organization of the Mission Society. Yet, the delegates also authorized the two mission agencies to engage in talks; so the Mission Society was not considered entirely illegitimate. Furthermore, a move to order an investigation of Global Ministries failed by just 67 votes. The General Conference actions left both sides feeling partially affirmed.

Maclin and Maybray point to the quiet support they have received from bishops. “The bishops have two opinions,” states Maclin. “They have a private opinion, then they have a public opinion. And the two are seldom ever one and the same. I think a number of bishops privately support the basic goals and aims of the Mission Society.” Yet publicly, he says, the bishops feel obligated to affirm only the institutional line.

Mission Society officials are distressed that many bishops don’t treat them as well as they do entirely non-Methodist groups like OMS and Wycliffe. A big issue, say society officials, “may boil down perhaps in part to the famous seven last words of the church, ‘We never did it that way before.’ ” Maclin and Maybray also realize that “there are some bishops and certainly many pastors who feel we weaken ourselves by being divided.” In answer, Maclin states, “Yet the fact remains, we are divided.”

Church history shows a pattern of upstart church organizations being fought for a couple of decades, then finally made an official part of the denomination. In the church of England, the Church Missionary Society was founded, much like the Mission Society for United Methodists, as a supplement to the official Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The new Anglican society was bitterly opposed at first, but within two decades it became larger than the older organization and was accepted.

Within the United Methodist Church itself, the group that has become United Methodist Women began unofficially as a supplemental missions organization. Though opposed when first organized in 1869, within a dozen years it was accepted and acclaimed. Today the UMW is at the very center of the UM missions establishment. But still, the Mission Society leaders aren’t counting on anything.

“We live from day to day,” says Maclin, “month to month, and just trust that God will eventually make what we’re attempting to do, in a supplementary way, a major undertaking of the church at some point in the future. I don’t see this as a short-term effort. I think it will probably go well beyond the time that Virgil and I are here. I’m sure we would both like to see an acceptance. But given the state of things at the present time, I’m not greatly encouraged.”

For now, although Global Ministries leaders are refusing public comment, the word in the halls of their New York headquarters is that they already realize the Mission Society can’t be stopped. Staff members appear to be resigned to, though still unhappy about, the society’s ability to raise funds and place its personnel overseas.

Must United Methodists choose between the two mission agencies?

No, say Mission Society leaders. Maclin and Maybray realize they can’t win if it comes to choosing sides. They say United Methodists can, and many do, support both agencies.

Maybray amplifies the point further. “One of the bishops [told] his preachers that they were to look upon the Mission Society as a third option. I wrote to him and thanked him. I said we’d be happy. Now obviously first is World Service, next are Advance Specials [second-mile missions giving through Global Ministries], and then us. Fine! We’ll settle for that.”

James S. Robb is the executive editor of Good News.