ON HOPE FOR METHODISM: A TESTIMONY (PART 7)
MISSIONS
By Dr. Riley Case
(At the center of the present crisis in United Methodism are irreconcilable differences between those who hold to the historic faith in the Wesleyan tradition and those who believe that traditional and historic Christianity must adjust to keep up with changing understandings of truth. This series of articles is one person’s testimony on living through the events that have brought the church to the point of division.)
Missions is in my blood. My mother had cousins, aunts, and uncles who were missionaries. We prayed for them regularly and received personal letters from them. I attended college at Taylor University, a holiness-Methodist background school named after the Methodist missionary bishop William Taylor. Three of my friends became Methodist missionaries. In 1955 I attended the Inter-Varsity Missionary Conference at Urbana. 5,000 college students were challenged to win the world for Christ. The Methodist Board of Missions had a booth there that attracted many.
In seminary, a good friend was Emilio Julio Miguel de Carvalho, from Portuguese Angola, later Bishop de Carvalho (a great pianist and pin pong player by the way). He spoke almost nothing of politics because he was being shadowed by the Portuguese government. But because of him, I became very aware of oppressive European colonialism. When he returned to Angola he was thrown in prison and might have been killed except for the work of our Board of Missions (and the state department). I wrote letters to magazines and to congresspeople in those days about the evils of colonialism.
My first churches were missionary churches. I organized CROP walks. Our youth group cooperated with a farmer and sold sweet corn door to door. The youth group (the boys at least) for a couple of years did a Lord’s Acre project. When I became district youth director another pastor and I took 30 teenagers to Haiti (way too many, by the way). My churches participated in all the district mission saturation programs that were offered.
In those days there was a good feeling and much support for the Board of Missions. Evangelicals may have had problems with seminaries and Sunday school material and some of the social activism, but they could always be supportive of our missionaries.
Then all of a sudden things changed. The late 1960s brought social and theological upheaval: death of God, feminism, liberation theology, and revolutionary movements. Our Board of Missions supported the change. In 1971 Philip Hinerman, pastor of the inner-city church Park Avenue Methodist Church in Minneapolis (one of the largest in the conference and 60-40 white and black), and chair of the Good News board, attended the annual Board of Missions meeting and was “shocked.” In five days, he reported, “I heard or read not one word about the need to reach persons who are forever lost without Jesus Christ.’’
Hinerman knew whereof he was speaking. For one thing, we were suddenly being told, “missions” was now “mission” (without the s). Everything the church did--education, social action, evangelism—was now identified as “mission.” “Mission” was not only going into the world to preach the gospel but anything else that advanced justice and equity and inclusion and a new social order. Institutional Christianity of any variety—liberal or evangelical—was now being seen as irreverent and outdated, at best, and a hindrance to progress, at worst. Revolutionary leaders in developing countries were denouncing “paternalism” and “capitalism” and linking missionaries with repressive political and social structures. Mainline mission agencies were agreeing. God’s call for a new social order demanded a different approach. In the new approach, old-style missionaries were not as important as they once were. During the time of restructuring leading up to 1972, Methodism’s missionary force dropped from 1,309 to 870 in four years (it was once almost 2,000 missionaries). What was noticeable was that it was the evangelicals who primarily were not being accepted as missionaries and evangelicals on the field who were not being returned. Since the merger, the 870 career overseas missionaries affiliated with the board have been reduced to 350. This is at a time when the total of overseas missionaries sent from America numbers over 100,000. Sixty years ago, missionaries supported by mainline Protestant churches outnumbered missionaries from evangelical churches by 9 to 4. Today, evangelicals outnumber mainliners by 40 to 3.
Even with these shifts most of us still supported our mission agency which was now, after the merger, the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). The conference I was in before the merger, the Methodist North Indiana Conference, for years had ranked in the top three or four of all the conferences in giving to Advanced Specials. We noted the fewer missionaries. GBGM argued that the reason missionaries were not being sent was because of a lack of funds. However, they did have funds to pay expenses for 177 board members whose expenses per year ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The board also, at least at the end of 1996, reported net assets of 335 million dollars including 100 million unrestricted funds in the world division. But there were other suspicions: the reason some missionaries were not being sent was that they did not reflect the board’s philosophy. When I asked once why the board was not excited about Ken Enright, who had ties with Indiana, the answer was, “He’s too much of a lone ranger.” When Ken’s son John, who grew up in the Congo and spoke four or five African dialects, was tentatively accepted as a missionary but was being delayed for months presumably for lack of funds, the superintendent from the district where John served, L.G. Sapp, raised money and sent a check to the board with instructions to the effect that this was enough to cover John Enright’s salary for a year and there was more where that came from. However, if the Enrights were not being deployed within six months the check was to be forwarded to World Gospel Missions. John was sent.
But there were other purposes for the funds besides missionaries. In the early 1980s, it became known through “The Jessop Report” (which led to the forming of the Institute of Religion and Democracy) that Global Ministries (along with Church and Society) was supporting non-Christian groups like the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe, the Cuba Resource Center, and the Nicaraguan Literacy Program. This information was picked up and reported out by the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, the Reader’s Digest, and finally 60 Minutes.
Meanwhile, Good News and some others, including several former staff members of GBGM, had formed the Evangelical Missions Council which, among other things, entered into conversations with Global Ministries about these things. The Council wanted more missionaries, specifically missionaries who were involved in evangelism. They referred to overseas bishops who were pleading for these missionaries. The conversations failed and the concerned pastors and churches formed the Mission Society for United Methodists, meant to be a supplemental agency. On May 7, 1985, the Society’s first missionaries were commissioned at Highland Park Church in Dallas. Bishop Jim Thomas had indicated UM bishops would be present to do the commissioning but, at the last minute, had to renege because the GBGM and the Council of Bishops had decided the Mission Society was a renegade and illegitimate group. Not only would the bishops not participate, but they also would not give special appointments to pastors who wished to associate with the society. It was one of the church’s darkest hours. Now the Mission Society, with 150 overseas missionaries, continues to be a bright light in United Methodism’s worldwide growth.
Today, despite the downsizing of overseas missionaries connected with the GBGM, and even though Christianity seems to be unraveling in America, there has been an explosion of Christianity across the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. From 9 million Christians in 1900, Africa now counts 685 million. 17 million are in Methodist groups related to the World Methodist Council. There are now almost as many UM’s in Africa as in North America. There are now about 601 million Christians in South America. Much of the new growth is Pentecostal and unrelated to missionary presence. While missionaries have made many mistakes through the years, God has used the commitment and the vision of missionaries, particularly those from America, to do great things.
What about the GBGM commitment to bring justice and equity to the world through revolutionary political movements? The Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe led to the regime of Robert Mugabe and poverty and corruption. The GBGM and other liberal support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua led to Daniel Ortega, now one of the cruelest dictators in Latin America. Cuba, once the hope for equality and justice through Marxism, is still a dictatorship. Despite that, without help from Americans, there is at the present time a great revival among Methodists in that land.
United Methodists, one of these days after division, must decide whether to identify with a new form of Methodism, The Global Methodist Church (GMC) or stick with a continuing UM Church which will continue things pretty much as they are now, except with the acceptance of new expressions of sexuality, including transgenderism. The GMC is committed to winning the world to Jesus Christ. Unless things change, the continuing UM Church will continue with an understanding of the mission of the church which cares less about bringing persons to Christ and more about political and social reform.
Time to pray for discernment.
