wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Mission conference speakers tout winning formula

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8988 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05576
Oct. 25, 2005

Conference speakers tout winning formula:
Dynamism of Southern church + wealth of Northern church = mission vitality

by Pat Cole
WMD communications officer

ATLANTA - The church's spiritual vitality in the Southern Hemisphere and its
material resources in the Northern Hemisphere should be coupled in a common
mission to the world, a Presbyterian theologian from Ghana said during a
recent mission conference.

	The church in Asia, Africa and Latin America is growing fast, and
already has about 60 percent of the world's Christians, said the Rev. Kwame
Bediako, who directs the Akrofi-Christaller Centre for Mission Research and
Applied Theology in Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana.

	The world church has experienced a "shift in gravity" from North
America and Europe to the Southern Hemisphere, Bediako noted in his plenary
address during an Oct. 20-22 conference at Peachtree Presbyterian Church. The
spiritual dynamism of the church in the global South has a great deal to
offer the Northern church, he said, while the church in the North has the
financial resources to support mission efforts.

	In the South, he said, faith is "more vital and more vigorous, but
can be frustrated and fail to reach its full potential because of the lack of
material and academic resources." 

	Mission should not be viewed "as flowing from the haves to the
have-nots," Bediako added, "but flowing from the people of God to
everywhere."

	The conference was sponsored by the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship
(PFF) and the Outreach Foundation in cooperation with the Worldwide
Ministries Division (WMD) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

	During a worship service at the start of the conference, the Rev.
Marian McClure, WMD's director, told the participants they would learn that
the church in the South is sending more missionaries, enrolling more seminary
students and enrolling more new members than the church in the North. "More
everything," she said, "except maybe money."

	The changes can bring both rejoicing and discomfort for Christians in
the North, she said, but "a little discomfort isn't bad."

	"Don't conclude that we can settle in on the sidelines with pitiful,
dejected faces and turn against each other for somehow being the cause of the
loss of dynamism in our own church," McClure said. "God is not through with
us yet, and doesn't want a pity party, or squabbling."

	McClure said quantity and quality are both important in God's
mission, and the PC(USA) has invested wisely in both in its overseas
missions, including its frontier mission work and its international
leadership-development program. 

	McClure said the PC(USA) sponsors 36 mission workers in 15 countries
who work with 24 largely unreached groups. "When we combine the cost of
fielding the (missionaries) with the cost of grants given to frontier
projects in 40 countries with 66 'people groups,' the investment is between
$3 million to $4 million per year," she said, noting that the PFF has
"nurtured and spearheaded the renaissance of this kind of mission work."

	The PC(USA) also supports 158 mission workers serving as educators
around the world, and provides 50 to 150 scholarships annually for future
church leaders, McClure said, adding: "I tried doing the math on this, and
the result is tens of thousands of students turned to loving God with their
minds and thanking God with their lives."

	She said the denomination is investing in direct mission
participation of its members, too, citing recent efforts including:

	The formation of two dozen mission networks that bring together
grassroots Presbyterians interested in a particular country. One additional
network has formed for education; networks for ecumenical and interfaith
partnerships will be forming soon.

	The addition of 27 mission personnel whose duties include helping
congregations taking mission trips.
 
	Experiments in direct mission involvement in programs addressing
hunger, health, natural disasters and self-development.

	These efforts, McClure said, are in addition to longstanding programs
that help presbyteries form and nurture international partnerships, send
young adults into mission service overseas and in the United States, and
bring church leaders from overseas to help U.S. congregations.

	To maintain the quality and quantity of the PC(USA)'s work, McClure
said, Presbyterians must respond generously to the Mission Initiative:
Joining Hearts & Hands campaign, which is raising $20 million for new-church
development in the Untied States and $20 million for international mission
personnel. "There is no greater impact you can have for our overall mission
society," she said.

	Another speaker, the Rev. Vic Pentz, pastor of Peachtree
Presbyterian, the largest church in the PC(USA), said he once viewed mission
as "just taking great big gobs of money and sending it from the West to the
rest." His attitude changed, he said, when he was overseas on study leave and
encountered a Malaysian pastor. 

	Pentz wanted to give the pastor $10,000 to help with a school
project, but the Malaysian demurred, saying that he needed Pentz's prayers
more than money. So they prayed together.

	"Over the next few weeks it was no longer the Western have and the
Eastern have-not," Pentz said, "but I found myself ... under the spiritual
authority of my Malaysian brother."

	The conference's concluding speaker was the Rev. Ramez Atallah,
general secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt. He said Western
denominations should expect the money they send to partners overseas to be
spent responsibly, but shouldn't expect a "return on investment" as they
might demand from a stockbroker.

	Too often, he said, Western groups want quick results and are too
impatient to wait for evidence of long-term success. "We need to invest in
ministries and not just projects," he said.

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