wfn.org | Re: United Methodist Daily News note 3101

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3124 notes).

Note 3122 by UMNS on Aug. 13, 1996 at 16:34 Eastern (4849 characters).

'TITLE:    Missions Agency Restructured
SEARCH:   missions, restructure, Nugent, staff, assignments
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Joretta Purdue                          408(10-71){3122}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722           Aug. 13, 1996

Personnel changes accompany
restructure at missions agency

     NEW YORK (UMNS) -- A vast restructure of the United Methodist
Board of Global Ministries, headquartered here, has been announced
by the board.
     The redesign reportedly focuses on function or task and
eliminates the geographic divisions that formerly were designated
as "world" or "national" and the regional teams that worked with
world missionaries.
     Although the departmental composition of the board has
changed, the purpose, responsibilities and objectives of the
denomination's mission agency remain the same, according to the
Rev. Randolph Nugent, general secretary.
     Board executives have maintained that this is not a
downsizing of staff and missionary personnel.
     The total number of people currently employed by the board
has dropped during this quadrennium, but there are many openings
in the new plan, for which hiring was deferred until the plan was
defined.
     Currently there are 1,418 people on the board payroll,
including 453 staff and 965 missionaries.  Four years earlier the
total was 1,511, including 475 staff and 1,036 missionaries.  The
new staff roster, effective July 25, lists approximately 180
positions, more than 50 of which were unfilled.
     Where in December 1995 the board had three deputy general
secretaries and four associate general secretaries, it now has a
cabinet of seven deputy general secretaries -- two of whom are yet
to be named -- and the general treasurer. They, together with the
associate general secretary of mission evangelism, report directly
to the general secretary, as do the assistant general secretaries
for financial development and communications.
     Six mission program areas are paired under the supervision of
three deputy general secretaries, each with an associate general
secretary to assist.
     These areas are community and institutional ministries,
evangelism and church growth, mission contexts and relationships,
mission education, health and relief, and mission volunteers. The
Women's Division retains its purpose and its organizational
structure. Mission personnel will be a separate program area.
     Support staff will be assigned in early September.
     The deputy general secretary for administration, Lorene F.
Wilbur, has said that although most of the board's employees will
receive new assignments and job descriptions, there will be no job
losses or salary cuts.
     "We have made every effort to move the agency forward and to
accomplish these changes in as sensitive and humane a manner as
possible," Wilbur said. "Every staff person has been assured that
we will provide thorough training in whatever task he or she is
assigned."
     Nugent has called the new structure a "major new direction in
mission." He has attributed the need for change to the emergence
of a global church and changes in the call to global mission.
     He said the board is dealing with reciprocity in sending and
receiving missionaries, separating the good news from western
scriptural and cultural interpretations and increasing dialogue
between people of different faiths.
     The UMCOR hotline and other 800 telephone numbers are
expected to continue without disruption as are volunteer-in-
mission efforts throughout the world.
     The changes have left many staff and missionaries confused
and uncertain.
     New staff assignments in many cases have no relationship to
previous experience and training; and in at least some instances
staff were given the choice of accepting new assignments without
having job descriptions or supporting information. 
     Staff reportedly have been told that they are to do their old
jobs and their new jobs simultaneously until the plan is fully
implemented, which may take until the end of the year.
     Long-time missionary Pharis Harvey said the result of the new
structure will be an "overall tendency to see the world through
the prism of U.S. experience." The new plan has removed from the
board staff "any structured way of building expertise on other
parts of the world," he explained.
     Terming the restructure "a recipe for institutional suicide,"
Harvey said, "You can't run an institution when there is no
institutional memory." Innovation is important, but when it is
done in such a way as to devalue a whole institution's work, the
outcome is confusion followed by a period of apathy, he observed.
                              #  #  #

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