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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (197
notes).

Note 197 by UMNS on July 2, 1997 at 15:37 Eastern (6332 characters).

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency
of the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn.,
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Contact:  Joretta Purdue                          385(10-71B){197}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722            July 2, 1997

Methodist evangelists share
successes, obstacles at seminar

                        by Alice M. Smith*

     ATLANTA (UMNS) -- Methodists from 60 countries who gathered
here recently were as driven as last year's Olympic athletes, but
this group's goal is winning the world for Christ.
     "Everybody ought to know who Jesus is," said the Rev. H.
Eddie Fox, executive director of evangelism for the World
Methodist Council, an association of 73 member churches around the
globe. "We come to the dawning of the millennium with that renewed
commitment."
     The occasion, the sixth International Evangelism Seminar of
the World Methodist Evangelism Institute, brought 200 Methodist
evangelists to Emory University's Candler School of Theology, June
23-July 3.
     The school, one of 13 United Methodist seminaries in the
United States and home to the institute since it was established
in 1982, hosts the two-week international seminar every four
years. During the past seven years, regional training seminars
also are scheduled in different parts of the world -- the most
recent one taking place earlier this year in Rome.
     The worldwide Methodist movement has grown by 1 million
people a year to 60 million people who speak 500 different
languages.
     The council's world evangelism program was established in
1971, followed by the naming of Sir Alan Walker of Australia as
the first full-time director in 1978. Four years later the
institute was created as a partnership between the council and
Candler.
     "It became obvious," said the Rev. Joe Hale, the council's
executive secretary, "if indigenous leaders in evangelism in the
108 countries in the World Methodist Council were to be raised up
across the world, some form of institute for training ... was
required."
     Walker observed that "no other church has anything like the
program we have in world evangelism or in this institute."
     Throughout their stay, the international delegates exhibited
a commitment to spreading the gospel, despite tremendous obstacles
they often face in their home countries.
     In Malaysia, for example, where the official religion is
Islam, the 150,000-member Methodist Church in growing and finding
ways to evangelize among Muslims despite the fact it is against
the law.
     "If you believe who Jesus is, you have no choice," said
retired Malaysian Bishop Denis C. Dutton. "There are ways to do
it. We call it lifestyle evangelism -- you speak by the way you
live -- by the care you offer those with whom you deal."
     Under Malaysian law a Muslim can convert to Christianity, but
it is extremely costly, tantamount to denying one's race, family
and culture. "It's easy for us who have never been Muslims and
have no such pressure to say, 'I want to be Christian,' but when
it comes to Muslims, it's sheer hell," Dutton added.
     Although the Malaysian constitution allows freedom of
worship, the Christians face discrimination in the way the law is
enforced. For example, they can buy land to build a church but
wait indefinitely for zoning approval. 
     "Many of our churches are houses, factories and warehouses,"
Dutton said. His spirited response to government surveillance is,
"Who cares? Lift Jesus high."
     In Slovakia, the Methodist church survived the communist
years with three churches and two ordained pastors. Today there
are four ordained pastors and several seminary students, five
fully constituted churches, and five mission churches with plans
to open two more. All of this has happened with a small membership
of 300 full members and a constituency of 1,200.
     Much of the growth in Slovakia has come through the
Connecting Congregations program of the World Methodist Council
whereby established churches in the U.S. covenant to provide
prayer and financial support for a new congregation. Some 100 such
congregations have been started in Eastern Europe since 1992 and
more than 50 others begun in other parts of the world.
     "The great thing is they're all led by people from their
region," Fox said. "We've just stood alongside them to help them."
     Although there is freedom of worship in Slovakia today,
Methodists in their evangelistic work still struggle against the
communist mindset. "Forty years of idealogy has marked some signs
on the hearts of people [and] it's not easy to uproot," said the
Rev. Pavel Prochazka, superintendent of the Methodist Church in
Slovakia. "It is a job for one to two generations."
     In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the 180,000-member Methodist
Church is demonstrating mission through Evangemed, a mobile clinic
with a doctor, dentist and nurse. It dispenses health care and the
gospel while parked for a month at a time at a Methodist church in
a poor section of the city. The clinic was a gift from Christ
United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tenn.
     At the first church where Evangemed located, 50 new people
began attending services, 30 of whom became members, recalled
Wilson Bonfim, the director of Evangemed.
     Costa Rican Zulay Palomo has a mission for Latin American
women, claiming their role as evangelists. The wife of Bishop Luis
Palomo and president of the Latin American Federation of Methodist
Women, she is urging every Methodist woman to share the gospel
with another woman. 
     "In Latin America," she said, "there are more women than men
in church, and we have been called to reach others. If I reach a
woman, I ... reach one woman, plus the husband and the children."
She has trained 90 leaders in Costa Rica in the art of sharing the
gospel and has plans to expand to other countries.
     The ardor of Methodists like Palomo is an example to
Methodists in the U.S., Fox pointed out. "We will be saved in this
country as we experience what God is doing [around the world] and
the spirit comes back to us from Brazil, from Africa, from Asia."
                              #  #  #

     * Smith is executive director of the Georgia United Methodist
Communications Council.

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