wfn.org | United Methodists accept new mission churches in three countries

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 29, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
10-21-71B{497}

STAMFORD, Conn. (UMNS) - Churches in Cambodia, Honduras and the Cote
d'Ivoire have been formally approved as "mission churches" by the United
Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

A welcoming service concluded the presentation during the board's Oct. 21-24
annual meeting, marking the initial entrance of the three church bodies into
the United Methodist Church.

Par. 563 of the United Methodist Book of Discipline allows the Board of
Global Ministries to initiate, administer and coordinate a mission, defined
as an administrative body for work inside or outside the structures of an
annual or missionary conference.

"The purpose of a mission is to provide ministry with a particular group or
region whose needs cannot be fully met with the existing structures and
resources of the annual conference(s)," the paragraph says. "It may also be
the initial stage in moving toward the formation of a provisional or
missionary conference."

The fledgling congregations in Cambodia and Honduras have sprung from the
mission agency's work in those countries. But the Protestant Methodist
Church of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is an autonomous, 1.4 million-member
Methodist communion that grew out of the British Methodist tradition.

Methodists in that French-speaking West African country are divided into
three districts - Grand Bassam, Dabou and Abidjan - and the two missionary
districts of Bouake and Daloa. The denomination has 853 local churches, with
89 active pastors, including four women, and 38 evangelists. It runs a
number of schools, as well as an orphanage and the Protestant Methodist
Hospital in Dabou.

Bishop Joseph Humper, who leads the United Methodist Church of Sierra Leone,
said that he and other United Methodist bishops in West Africa consider the
Methodist Church of Cote d'Ivoire to be "spirit-led" and "people-focused."
He believes that church could act as a springboard for United Methodist
mission in other African countries. 

The Board of Global Ministries first became involved in Cambodia in the
1980s, through refugee assistance and rehabilitation and reconstruction work
through international and ecumenical organizations. In 1983, the agency
established the United Methodist Church Indochina Caucus to help nurture
expatriate Christian faith communities and to explore mission outreach in
Cambodia and other parts of Indochina. By the end of that decade, Cambodian
United Methodists living outside their country began returning to share
their faith.

In 1990, the first United Methodist congregation within Cambodia, at Tek
Thla, was started with assistance from Central United Methodist Church in
Stockton, Calif., a Cambodian congregation. By then, proposals were being
shaped for launching a mission in Cambodia that would encompass community
rehabilitation, education, health care, evangelism and building faith
communities. During the same period, Cambodian United Methodists living in
Switzerland and France began their own mission outreach to Cambodia.  

In the mid-1990s, United Methodists began discussing collaboration in
Cambodia and Vietnam with the Methodist Church of Singapore and the Korean
Methodist Church. A coordinating board of the Cambodia Methodist Mission was
formed in 1997. The first United Methodist missionaries were dispatched in
1998, the same year that land and a building were purchased in Phnom Penh
for a United Methodist Mission Center. A Bible school, founded by the Korean
Methodist Church, but supported by all partners, opened in 2000.

The United Methodist Mission Initiative in Honduras began planting new
congregations in 1998. Currently, 11 churches and 2 communities of faith are
in operation, with an average worship attendance of more than 1,250 people.
The initiative works collaboratively with the Methodist Church of the
Caribbean and the Americas and has received support from the Latin American
Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches (CIEMAL) and the Christian
Commission on Development.

Training indigenous church members in this Central American country for
future leadership roles is the initiative's top priority. The Fuente de Luz
Church in the city of Danli has become the country's largest United
Methodist congregation, making that city the center of the denomination's
work in Honduras.

Rosy Martinez Rodriguez, who serves with her husband Jorge Rodriguez as a
board missionary in Honduras, told directors that 75 percent of the Honduran
members are young adults, youth and children. Mission work includes support
of women, especially those who are victims of domestic violence, she said.

In other mission-related business, board directors:

7	Set aside $168,000 to build a mission complex at Magoanini village
in Mozambique, located on a site in the capital of Maputo where the United
Methodist Committee on Relief built 128 replacement homes following the 2000
floods. The complex will include a church, parsonage, school and clinic.

7	Approved a $100,000 grant to support the Russia United Methodist
Theological Seminary and up to $121,000 for the board's Russia Initiative.

7	Agreed that partnership funds supporting strategic plans for mission
in three areas -- $106,000 for the Evangelical Methodist Church in Uruguay,
$110,000 for the Dominican Evangelical Church and $90,000 for the Leeward
Island District, Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas - would
be released over a three-year period as capital gains assigned to the
account are realized and cash flow permits.

7	Approved a $40,000 grant to the New York University Robert F. Wagner
Graduate School for Public Service to support the Mandela Fellowship for
African students attending the masters of science/international public
service course, which the board funded in 1999.

7	Commissioned six missionaries, five church and community workers and
12 deaconesses and recognized 11 retiring missionaries during a special
worship service.

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United Methodist News Service
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