wfn.org | Children, poor must be church's top priorities, bishop says

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Aug. 1, 2001  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71B{336}

NOTE: This report is accompanied by a sidebar, UMNS #337.

By Tim Tanton*

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - The church must reorder its priorities to
emphasize those whom Christ lifted up long ago: children and the poor, a
United Methodist bishop says.

"If there's a priority that the Bible says God focuses on, it's the orphan,
the widow, the poor," said Bishop Donald Ott, coordinator of the United
Methodist Council of Bishops' Initiative on Children and Poverty.

Ott challenged 1,100 church people who work with children to advocate
reordering the denomination's priorities. He preached during a July 29
worship service that kicked off "Focus 2001: Hear The Children Praying,"
sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Discipleship. The gathering,
which ended Aug. 1, drew people to Nashville from around the United States
and abroad, including Congo, Latvia, Canada, El Salvador, Malawi, Kenya and
Lithuania.

Participants celebrated the gifts and presence of children, while also
confronting the harsh realities that oppress young people all over the
world, such as poverty, war, neglect, exploitation.

In the United States, 32 million children have no health care, Ott said. In
South Asia, children labor in sweatshops, making rugs that "you and I walk
on." In central and southern Africa, many leaders view HIV/AIDS as a health
care matter that will somehow run its course, and not as a political,
economic and gender power issue, he said.

"In every congressional district of this land, kids are getting the short
stick," the bishop said, citing problems in education, busing, health care
and other areas.

Ott acknowledged the challenge facing the children's leaders attending Focus
'01. "Parents and grandparents and church leaders want you to lead the kids
to salvation, but they don't always want you to tell the whole story," he
said. "You who care about kids, all God's kids, have a huge dilemma. How do
you keep faith with God's word, which is falsely taught if it does not
include announcing that there is no peace without the reordering of the
world?"

The Council of Bishops has adopted a new paper stating that all children and
poor people need to be in the life of the faith community. "Your bishops
have said 'yes' to an audacious primary goal to reshape the United Methodist
Church in response to the God who is among 'the least' and to evaluate
everything in light of the impact on children and the impoverished," he
said.

"Perhaps our marching orders as educators, beginning with children, are to
present God's story book in such a way that it surprises and troubles our
hearers."

He gave the children's leaders three guidelines. First, he said, "be clear
about your convictions - they must reflect the whole of God's message."
Second, he said, focus on the children and the poor. "Reordering is the
precondition to the new heaven and new earth. God won't buy our current
arrangement with kids and the poor left out."

Third, "envision, imagine and construct an alternative." He quoted Bible
scholar Walter Brueggemann, who said: "Young people need someone who is
'crazy' about them." "He wants us, your bishops want you, to be for kids
with unconditional advocacy," Ott said. "We are to make disciples - that is,
to make our children able to 'envision, imagine and construct an
alternative' with their life."

Ott built his sermon on readings from Zechariah, which included a thematic
line for the Focus 2001 event: "And the streets of the city shall be full of
boys and girls playing in its streets."

"Our children are praying," he said. "Our children see the many lifestyles
and life choices. They see the ways their world works. Most of it isn't
pretty." But God offers a different story through Zechariah, he said. The
image of children filling the streets is different from that of kids ducking
under beds to avoid bullets, he said.

In an interview, Ott said he fears that the church's God-given mission to
care for the least and the lost is taking a secondary position to other
concerns. The church, he said, is preoccupied with itself as opposed to
those it's called to reach, he said. Leaders tend to devote attention to
what's on their plate rather than to what God puts on their plate, he said.

The Rev. Paul McCleary, president of ForCHILDREN Inc., an international
development agency, reported that "amazing changes" have occurred for the
world's children in the last four decades. He cited as examples the creation
of UNICEF, the adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
and the convening of the World Summit on Children in 1990.
 
Next month, the United Nations will hold a special session focusing on the
progress made toward the goals adopted at the summit, which included cutting
infant mortality, reducing maternal deaths in childbirth, and providing
education opportunities. "By and large, the goals of the World Summit for
Children are not being met," McCleary said. However, he added, such an
immense effort was made that conditions are better.

Of the 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion - including 600
million children -- live on less than $1 a day, he said. Ten million
children die yearly because of diseases that are curable; 150 million are
malnourished to the extent that their health will be affected into
adulthood; and 100 million are not in school. 

Another statistic: Of 83 million children born each year, all but 1 million
are in developing countries, he said. "This growth has tremendous
consequences on the resources of the world and the conditions in which
children are raised."

Noting that God sent his son as a divine intervention to the world, McCleary
told the Focus 2001 participants that they can make a difference by going
into developing countries. 

Other Focus 2001 speakers included the Rev. Yolanda Pupo-Ortiz, associate
general secretary with the churchwide Commission on Religion and Race; the
Rev. Vance Ross, pastor from Hyattsville, Md.; the Rev. Janet Wolf of
Nashville (see sidebar); and the Rev. Barbara Garcia, originator of Focus
events and assistant to Bishop William Morris of the Nashville Area.

Workshops addressed an array of issues. One focused on racism, a key concern
in the United Methodist Church. A major barrier to honest talk about racism
is that most white people don't think it affects them, said Naomi Tutu, a
South African-born woman who is program coordinator at the Race Relations
Institute at Fisk University in Nashville. "We're not going to heal until
we're honest about it."

Several participants called the church to accountability in addressing its
own racism and ensuring that racism isn't passed on to children. "We don't
want to continue raising a bunch of racists ... or people that want to
continue living with white privilege," said Emonia Barnett, of Kansas City,
Mo., after the workshop. She cited segregated worship as an example of
racism.

Racism, along with sexism and classism, should be addressed in the Bishops'
Initiative on Children and Poverty, said Cheryl Walker, of Lake Junaluska,
N.C.

During another workshop, Board of Discipleship staff member Craig Miller
said that a youth boom in the United States is on the way, driven by the
millennial generation - people born between 1981 and 1999. "In 2006, we will
see the emergence of a new youth boom, larger than the youth boom of the
'60s and '70s," he said, defining "youth" as people between ages 7 and 24.

"When a youth boom hits ... a generation finds its voice and begins to
influence the rest of the culture," Miller said. "So it's critical for the
church to be in ministry to children and youth today so we will be a part of
their lives when the youth boom hits."
# # #
*Tanton is news editor of United Methodist News Service.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org