wfn.org | "Congregations in Global Mission" Conference

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

14-November-1997 
97439 
 
    "Congregations in Global Mission" Conference 
    Hailed as a Turning Point in Presbyterian Church 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
ST. LOUIS, Mo.--In what many called a watershed event, more than 500 
mission-minded Presbyterians from 40 states and numerous countries overseas 
gathered here Nov. 8-11 to share stories and ideas and to explore the 
current and future directions of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) global 
mission. 
 
    "Mission, mission, mission," said former General Assembly moderator 
Marj Carpenter, greeting the cheering crowd early in the conference.  "I 
knew that if I chanted it long enough someone would listen -- this 
conference proves that you have."  Carpenter, who said the church "had kind 
of forgotten about mission for a while there," told conference participants 
that she was "greatly rejuvenated" by the conference and called it "a real 
turning point, I hope and believe," in the Presbyterian Church's commitment 
to global mission. 
 
    The conference, "Congregations in Global Mission: New Models for a New 
Century," was sponsored by the General Assembly's Worldwide Ministries 
Division (WMD), but a vast majority of the event's planning committee came 
from congregations, not the national staff, and the conference was clearly 
designed to provide participants with opportunities to tell their stories 
of congregational involvement in global mission and to glean workable ideas 
from each other about how to increase hands-on involvement in mission work 
in this country and around the world. 
 
    The Rev. Marian McClure, newly elected WMD director, signaled the 
intent of denominational global mission officials when she was introduced 
early in the conference.  "I didn't come with a prepared speech because I 
want to learn from you what is working in your congregations," she told the 
crowd.  "When I do speak," she said, referring to her closing address on 
the final morning of the conference, "I want it to be responsive to what I 
have learned from you during this time together." 
 
    Later, in her prepared remarks, McClure said she is "grateful that 
God's mission has a church and that we are part of it."  She praised the 
"diverse partnerships" that have come to characterize Presbyterian global 
mission and called for "greater mutuality and understanding for the sake of 
the reign of God." 
 
    She called on conference participants to be "dichotomy-busters" -- to 
refute the assumption that Presbyterians have to choose between evangelism 
and social action, to reject the notion that long-term missionaries are 
more valuable than short-termers or volunteers, to challenge the idea that 
congregations have to choose between local and global mission, and to seek 
genuine equality with mission partners and be "better stewards of our 
privilege." 
 
    The themes of unity and partnership in mission resounded through the 
entire conference.  During his opening address, General Assembly stated 
clerk and former WMD director the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick said that "the 
unity of the church lies in its commitment to mission."  At the heart of 
the church's life, he said, "is the fact that we have been given the love 
of Jesus Christ -- not to keep it, but to share it throughout the world." 
 
    Kirkpatrick, who joined the global mission staff of the General 
Assembly in 1981, said he has seen "a world of change in 17 years."  When 
he began, he explained, "the denomination did global mission for the 
churches."  Now, he said, "every congregation and governing body in our 
great Presbyterian Church is called to be a missionary society." 
 
    Direct involvement by congregations in global mission is essential, 
Kirkpatrick said, "for personal growth and corporate renewal.  Like never 
before, the world needs us to be a counterwitness to destruction, 
injustice, divisiveness, hatred, hunger.  To help all the world rediscover 
that unity in mission is what holds us together and is at the heart of the 
gospel." 
 
    Presbyterians have always been on the cutting edge of global mission, 
said the Rev. Sherron K. George, a former missionary to Brazil who is now 
professor of missions and evangelism at Austin Presbyterian Theological 
Seminary. 
 
    "Health, education, development, refugees, accompaniment, bringing 
missionaries to the U.S., peacemaking, young adult volunteers, presbytery 
partnerships -- we have always understood that the church is given form by 
God's activity in the world," she said, "and that our reason for living is 
mission -- to give our life away for others as Christ did." 
 
    In an exhilarating exposition of the Presbyterian Church's history of 
global mission involvement, George surveyed the various "paradigms" the 
denomination has employed to structure its global mission enterprise.  The 
church is currently undergoing a massive shift, she said, from a highly 
centralized model in which the denomination "sent out missionaries" to 
other countries to a model in which congregations are central to the 
enterprise and in which missionaries are both "going and coming" as 
immigrant communities grow in the U.S. and maturing churches in other 
countries send missionaries here. 
 
    This partnership between U.S. churches and mission churches in other 
countries that are now strong on their own is a hallmark of the new 
emerging model of global mission in the Presbyterian Church, George 
continued. 
 
    "The congregation is the most important mission agency in this new 
paradigm and it requires partners," she said.  "The new model is a web, not 
a hierarchy, and it requires finding partners.  Everyone can do it, but no 
one can do it alone." 
 
    And churches of all sizes can be involved, said the Rev. Ann Owens 
Brunger, pastor of the 150- member Highland Presbyterian Church in 
Maryville, Tenn.  Describing her congregation as "being ordained by God to 
be a small but diverse faith community active in global mission," Brunger 
said the keys are pastoral leadership and a willingness "to give our first 
fruits to mission." 
 
    Mission, she said, "is more about relationships than money -- that out 
of relationship with God flows love, trust, hope, a hunger for justice and 
a commitment to our neighbors."  She described Christian mission as "a 
pattern of concentric circles, starting where you are and going out." 
 
    At Highland Church, Brunger said, the congregation began by reaching 
out to Maryville College, a PC(USA)-related school across the street. 
Mission awareness grew as the congregation learned to welcome international 
students and visitors who came to the college.  "The real challenge," she 
said, "is to welcome the existing diversity out there into our 
congregations." 
 
    Genuine partnership -- the willingness to share power and resources -- 
is "responsible living in complementary relationships," said the Rev. 
Maitland Evans, general secretary of the United Church in Jamaica and the 
Grand Cayman Islands. 
 
    Recalling the biblical story of Esther, Evans said that "when we find 
ourselves in the palace of power, we must make sure we know what is our 
role and purpose."  The challenge facing Christians living in 
industrialized countries, he said, "is how to resist becoming addicted to 
the consumerism of the global marketplace." 
 
    Calling the crushing burden of two-thirds-world debt combined with 
degradation of the environment and exploitation of labor and natural 
resources in the poorer regions of the world "the towering reality of our 
global context," Evans called on the church to "turn from fractured 
dependence to partnered interdependence." 
 
    The real test of Christian life and mission, he concluded, "is our 
ability to enter into qualitatively different relationships ... partnership 
that invades and brings down the walls of separation and division 
everywhere." 

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