wfn.org | Legendary Presbyterian mission innovator Margaret Flory dies at 95

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Legendary mission innovator Margaret Flory dies at 95

> by Jerry L. Van Marter
> Presbyterian News Service

Louisville, Ky., October 13, 2009 ? Margaret Flory, a visionary
Presbyterian leader who created a number of seminal programs that
connected Christians around the world with each other, died Oct. 1 in
Asheville, N.C. She was 95.

During her 36 years on the national staff of the former United
Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Flory created such programs as
Junior Year Abroad for college students; Frontier Interns, which sent
Presbyterian mission workers to unreached corners of the globe; a
similar ecumenical program, Frontiers in Mission, which still operates
out of Geneva, Switzerland; the Overseas Scholarship Program, which
brought overseas teachers and pastors to the U.S. for study; and
Bi-National Servants, a program for people who have lived in two
cultures and want to share that experience in a third culture.

?Margaret Flory is one of the most outstanding leaders of the
ecumenical movement of the 20th Century,? Rubem Alves, Brazilian
theologian and poet, wrote on the occasion of her 90th birthday in
2004, ?because her eyes had the power to see trees when they were only  seeds.?

More than 130 alumni/ae of the Junior Year Abroad program ? which
Flory founded in 1953 at a time when very few U.S. colleges offered
overseas study ? gathered at the Stony Point Conference Center in 2003
for a reunion and to celebrate Flory?s ground-breaking work. She
Administered the program until it concluded in 1968, having sent more
than 1,000 Presbyterian students overseas for study.

In 1955, 1959 and 1963 she chaired the planning for the Student
Volunteer Movement Quadrennial Conferences at Ohio University in
Athens, OH. In 1955 alone, 97 countries were represented.

The 1959 conference ? which included a young Martin Luther King, Jr.
among its participants ? organized its program around nine frontiers.
Flory took that idea and created the Frontier Interns in Mission
program in 1961. It placed American college or seminary graduates
overseas on frontiers ? the same nine used in Athens ? where the
church was ?absent, irrelevant or inadequate.?

Convinced that ?the American church has much to learn from the rest of
the world,? Flory then created an Overseas Scholarship Program that
brought pastors and teachers to study in this country.

In 1970, she established the Bi-National Servants program as a way for
people who have experienced two cultures to continue to transcend
borders through annual meetings in various parts of the world and
through regular correspondence.

At Flory?s 90th birthday fete, former PC(USA) moderator Synman Rhee
told Flory: ?The seeds of the faith you have planted all these years
are bringing wonderful fruition everywhere, as church leaders,
educators, peacemakers and justice makers.?

Added then-General Assembly Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, ?I
cannot think of anyone who made a greater contribution to shaping a
generation of leaders in the church ecumenical than (Flory), and I am
grateful to God for that.?

Following her retirement in 1980, Flory stayed busy, writing three
books and continuing to travel extensively to mission fields she was
so instrumental in developing, including Europe, Africa,  Japan and Cuba.

In the late 1990s, the John Knox Center in Geneva named a new building
in her honor ? the Margaret Flory Conference Center.

It was this direct, relational approach to mission that set the Ohio
native apart and set the stage for contemporary mission efforts, such
as the current ?Mission Challenge ?09? program of the PC(USA).

As Margaret Flory often said, ?People communicate. Paper does not.?