wfn.org | UCC candidates for election get warm welcome

[powellb@ucc.org]

United Church of Christ
Newsroom
Friday, July 11, 2003
newsroom@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.og

By Irwin Smallwood

MINNEAPOLIS?A smallish woman with eyes that fairly sparkled from her warm
and friendly face won new hearts by the dozens Friday as she was introduced
as the person who has been called to lead the United Church of Christ's
Wider Church Ministries during the next four years.

Olivia Masih White, a Texas scientist who said she "found the UCC in 1966
when I married a Hoosier," was born a third-generation Christian in India
and grew up a product of Anglican and Methodist mission schools. But "now I
find that my philosophy of mission has changed," she told a gathering of
delegates and visitors to General Synod 24.

In this new technical and global society, she said: "We are all
missionaries. We need to go out to learn, not just to teach. We need to
find out what it means to be Christian in a country that is only 3 percent
Christian, or in a country at war."

White, and Edith A. Guffey, who has been nominated for a second four-year
term as Associate General Minister, were quizzed alternately by an audience
invited to ask questions and pass along concerns. This year, only two of
the five positions that make up the UCC's Collegium of Officers are slated
for election. White has been nominated to replace Dale A. Bishop, who
declined to seek another term and will begin teaching duties at UCC-related
Hartford Seminary in Connecticut this fall.

Guffey, who was secretary of the UCC from 1991 to 1999 under its former
structure, faced two rather thorny questions right off. In her soft,
familiar voice of experience and resolve, she said (1) No, UCC resources
are not necessarily spread too thin, and (2) Yes, restructure (which went
into effect four years ago) has worked as far as it has gone.

As for resources, Guffey said, "We haven't done a very good job getting
resources, of telling our story.... We are not a poor church.... There is
still room to look for things that overlap." On restructure she said, "I
believe that, in things that restructure could fix, it has worked.... Those
who thought it would fix everything were wrong, but life internally is much
better.... Is it working? Yes. Are we there yet? No."

White will be leaving a position as an assistant professor of biology and
genetics at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Though 65, she
described herself as a person "blessed with excess energy." She professed
to have a "passion for what the UCC stands for" and said she draws much of
her energy from people. "My biggest hesitation in applying for this job was
leaving my students," she said.

White, a member of Central Congregational UCC in Dallas, has held many
responsible positions in the wider church but says she never dreamed of
being where she is until she dove headlong into a seven-year term on the
board of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC). Now in the middle
of that term, she is vice-president and moderator of its Department of
Partnership of Women.

When asked to join WARC, "I didn't even know what it stood for," she
confessed with a grin as wide as her beloved Texas. But as an officer of
WARC, she has traveled extensively around the world. Most recently, she was
in Iraq just three weeks before the war started, talking with church
leaders about the effects of sanctions.

Science has made her faith stronger, she said, and among the many things it
has taught her, she concluded, is that as humans "we are much more similar
than different."

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