With the national election within the United States now a little more than a year away from the election of a new President of the United States in the year 2000, it is now only about three months from the first primary election to determine the candidates of the two major political parties.

This, of course is a serious business. Voters in these Unites States will be determining first the contenders and then the victor in the contest for what is the nation with the most important economic engine in the world. We might expect the secular media to be taking its own leadership role in assessing the merit and worth of potential presidential candidates, prodding them on the most pressing issues of both the day and of the future, in an effort to chart visions, lift up ideas, and determine the true substance of potential presidential timber. For whether we like it or not, the United States presidential candidate has great impact on the entire world.

That is what we should expect; but clearly we are getting something quite different.

We find the press engaged in the national game of "trivial pursuit," and by so doing encouraging the American electorate to do the same. Writing recently in Newsweek magazine, Howard Fineman observed, "The O.J. Simpson trial turned the law into soap opera. Bill Clinton 's rise and fall and rise again did the same for politics. Monica Madness has erased what was left of the dividing line between the serious and the circus, and in celebrity candidates the media may have found an irresistible roster of camera-ready contenders."

We are referring, of course, to a large number of high profile names and personalities who have indicated their possible interest in seeking the office of President of the United States; an eclectic list which includes actress Cybill Shepherd and actor Warren Beatty; billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump; syndicated newspaper columnist and TV personality Pat Buchanan perennial billionaire gadfly Ross Perot; and former professional wrestler and present Governor of Minnesota Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who is playing the role of "kingmaker" in Rose Perot's Reform Party for the time-being. Ventura has indicated he would not be opposed to being drafted as a presidential candidate next year. "I'd stand a very good chance," he has said. That sentiment is echoed by Donald Trump with regard to his own elective presidential potential. Says, The Donald, "All my construction guys love me. The guy who picks up the bus at the Port Authority, gets $50.00 in chips and a ticket for the all-you-can-eat buffet and takes the missus to the Trump Taj Mahal, he loves me."

While such an outpouring of love may translate into potential victory in Donald Trump's eyes, it sends another message to Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter. He has written (10-11-99): "Celebrities, with the help of the media, tend to trivialize politics by turning it into entertainment. Their presence further subordinates substance to performance, and encourages the media to review how something plays rather than to analyze what's being said."

This analysis was validated in the coverage again by Newsweek of an event held at the end of last month at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel ballroom. The event drew 150 reporters and a dazzling array of Hollywood celebrities. Former Clinton White House staffer George Stephanopoulos covered the event for Newsweek, and he seemed more interested in performance over substance. Warren Beatty was the keynote speaker at the event, but George Stephanopoulos had little to say about the content of his speech. Instead he reported on Dustin Hoffman's introduction of Beatty and of the other celebrities in attendance: "Warren Beatty wouldn't make the mistakes of other presidents," Hoffman dead panned. "Unlike George Bush, he would have come up with something better than being 'Out of the loop.' Unlike Bill Clinton, he would have never trusted a 22-year-old girl to be discreet." "That's the kind of night it was," George Stephanopoulos continued, "where Jack Nicholson looked lost without his shades. Courtney Love hid a hole in her slinky silk with a Beatty 2000 sticker and gadfly Gloria Allred held court to promote Cybil Shephard's campaign."

But as it turned out, there was much of substance to report in Warren Beatty's speech. Syndicated columnist Lars-Erik Nelson offered these excerpts from it. Said Warren Beatty:

"How can we not have heard a serious objection to the hypocrisy of...advertising our economic expansion as a 'boom of unparalleled prosperity for the nation' when 60% of our people are doing no better in 1999 than in 1989? How can we gloat about prosperity when the poverty level hasn't changed? Or when child poverty is four times that of Western Europe? And extreme child poverty has gone up 26% in the past year? And in the richest city in the Country, outside this hotel, one out of three children lives in poverty and homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under 18?

"The disparity of wealth between rich and poor is higher than ever: The poorest fifth of Americans have less then they had in 1977, and the richest have 43% more. The pay of the average corporate chief executive officer has gone from 42 times to 419 times as much as the worker. A study of four northwestern states shows half the available jobs don't pay a livable wage. And there were 56% more layoffs in '98 than the year before. The richest 2.7 million Americans have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 100 million . You won't hear these unrepresented people. You'll hear about the unprecedented prosperity of globalization. Why? Because these unrepresented people make no campaign contributions.

"Getting the money to win makes decent politicians do indecent things. But billion-dollar subsidies and tax breaks, the pork barrel and corporate welfare are only the smaller tumors. There are bigger ones.

"Our taxpayers are bailing out thieves in Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and other countries and at the same time bailing out major American financial houses who refuse to face the consequences of their bad investments overseas. What we are in danger of experiencing, is a slow-motion coup d'etat of big money's interests over the public interest . . ." And Lars-Erik Nelson commented at the end of his article, "It takes an outsider like Beatty to remind us of what's wrong."

In this last report to the Directors in this passing millennium, I would suggest that a similar tendency can be traced in some of the press which reports about our Board as in the secular press, namely the pursuit of the trivial at the expense of substance, and that it takes a mission perspective to set the record straight, namely the mission perspective as practiced and demonstrated by the General Board of Global Ministries.

The true story of mission is seldom told on the front pages of some of these papers. It is told, of course, in the pages of our own New World Outlook and Response. But the mission story is conspicuously absent from those publications so quick to feature controversies and disputes within the church. Divisiveness, it would seem, is deemed more newsworthy than reconciliation and unity, community and sharing, harmony and shalom. How else can the absence of emphasis upon the mission story and the mission development of the churches with which the Board is engaged be explained? One would think that such publications might at least sometimes report on changed lives, conversions, and commitments to God in Christ Jesus which have come about because of mission conversations and commitments which have resulted from the indwelling of the Spirit and the presentation of Jesus Christ through the programs the Board has supported and the work of the missionaries we have commissioned. Sometimes, one would expect, the "old, old story of Jesus and His love" as told by churches engaged in mission and as promoted by the Board in the exercise of its mission commission just might be lifted up, featured, and indeed publicized! And if the true mission story were told and publicized, the church as a whole would be better equipped to respond to the divisive criticism designed to denigrate the mission outreach of programs, projects, and ministries sponsored through the Board. When the true mission story remains essentially untold, rumors and myths gain unmerited and unwarranted credibility and credence.

If the stories of mission were to be more widely told and broadly shared, the stories of the works and sacrifices on behalf of witness and service to God in Christ Jesus, others throughout the world would be better equipped to understand and appreciate the power of the Gospel to change lives. The profound hope and the unquenchable zeal of the people in Rwanda, or Sudan, or Burundi would be better understood. People would be better able to understand why, in spite of the wars, the violations of human life, the killing and maiming and torture and rape of women and children as well as men in these nations, the churches are growing and converts in the tens of thousands are embracing the church daily.

It is particularly difficult to understand why the many accomplishments of the Board in mission have not captured the headlines in the press since such mission matters and outcomes are such good press! You couldn't ask for better stories than: the establishment of United Methodist work in Sudan, Cambodia, Harbin, Vladavalostock, Manchuria; or new program initiatives which have been undertaken to strengthen the work of the church in Titusville, Alabama, or through the many grants to Annual Conferences interested in beginning Hispanic language ministries to meet the needs of their new constituencies in their conferences, including new immigrants. What wonderful stories of mission progress can be told about our programs with regard to Black Church Development in Arkansas or the new and significant Asian work now underway in these United States. Not only do these wonderful stories of mission make good copy, but also their telling and lifting up are absolutely essential if congregations in our denomination are to be assisted in understanding and acceptance of their vitally essential role in effectuating the ultimate success of these mission initiatives. But unfortunately, for the most part, these mission programs are not only not seen, but since they have not been shared, they are not understood or appreciated by congregations in the church at large.

There has also been little report in the church press of the numbers of loans and grants which have been given for church development or of the leadership development grants which undergird the work of institutions all over the world. Such grants enable these institutions to prepare young people to take the leadership and become the persons on whom the church may rely for the future development of the ministries of our denomination. Where are the reports of the new sharing programs adopted by some of the agencies and institutions of our church? I am speaking of the significant programs in which institutions relating to the General Board of Global Ministries have been challenged and encouraged to partner with other agencies and to share resources and even training personnel with them.

Over the last three years, 337 missionaries have been commissioned. During the same period, the Board has substantially aided the growth of the Korean constituency of The United Methodist Church and indeed the whole church through the support of Korean Pastors whom the Board has accepted as missionaries 79 Korean Pastors commissioned. Where are the words which will help United Methodists appreciate and understand the hard work which has been and continues to be done to acquire gifts and bequests for missionary work in the Middle East and in Kosovo? The recommendation of one of the directors of the Board combined with collaborative efforts with one of our annual conferences resulted in a single gift of over three quarters of a million dollars being designated for the Board's work in the Middle East.

Absent are stories of the planting of churches across a wide range of communities in Latvia and Lithuania; congregations established in these nations since the end of the totalitarian administration of their lands. We need desperately to hear of the responses of the faithful and of new converts in these places.

The stories of our restorative justice programs, our prison ministry outreach, and our significant new methods of evangelism through music need also to be told and heard. We need to share the hope that is raised in the hearts of tens of thousands of people who hear discussion about the development of landmine removal efforts being extended to their homelands, due in large part to the generous devotion of time and effort by landmine removal professionals who are helping the Board think through its approach. When landmines are removed children are able to play again without fear of losing a limb or losing their sight. People are able to plant gardens and grow food for their communities once again, and are no longer dependent upon relief efforts such as those provided by UMCOR.

We are only 75 days away from the dawn of a new millennium, and shortly thereafter the General Conference which will usher in a new quadrennium. In preparation for both, we would do well to look at some of the major programs developed within the current quadrennium in order to give us a perspective of not only the direction in which our mission has been going but also a look at the impact and influence which the Board has had on the world at large. I will highlight only a few, but please do not fail to read and review all of the enclosed program reporting. These reports tell the stores which need telling, and as directors, you along with others must be the storytellers. We must make known the dramatic results of the faithful stewardship of people who with foresight and purpose in their wills and bequests have provided funds which we now use for mission. Your storytelling and faith-sharing will increase understanding of the stewardship and administrative efforts of the Board over the past several quadrennia; the significant depth, breadth and scope of program implementation; of the way in which the Board supports its programs and how funds reach their designated destination; and how financial administration of these funds has been prudent and successful.

As the new millennium and quadrennium approach, we need to intensively seek ways of outreach to youth and women around the globe. What, for example, will it cost to meet the mission needs of more than six thousand children who live in Burundi but who have no place to call home, no place to lay their heads? Meeting the mission needs of these children will have to include major support for counseling for emotional brokenness as well as physical damage. These are children who have endured immense suffering and indescribable deprivation and continue to do so as the conflicts, the killing, and the maiming continue within Burundi (as well as in many other nations of the world). Among these are children some whose hands and limbs have been severed, not by landmines, but by the machetes and bayonets wielded by other children. Many of whom have classified as child soldiers some in combat for three to five years. Their victims are the children for whom shelter is sought shelter for six thousand children, clothing for six thousand children, food for six thousand children, schools and education for six thousand children, counseling for six thousand children, places of worship for six thousand children. And those figures are only for one nation. The numbers increase when children of other nations are included.

What will it cost to train teachers and counselors and to prepare them for their awesome responsibility amidst such horror? In nations across the globe it is the General Board of Global Ministries which has constructed hospitals and maintained medical services and continues to do so. This is a necessary but costly process. How shall we finance the medical care for these children many of whom are residents of communities bereft of medical services. And how are we to prepare ourselves to be partnership conferences and the agency of reconciliation and restoration on such a massive scale of human need?

In this quadrennium we have committed ourselves to many new and important program directions. We must plan now for their continuing support and undergirding. What additional missionary personnel will be needed? Our church is calling for ever increased numbers of missionaries, and the only way such increased numbers can be provided and supported is through funds secured from the General Board of Global Ministries. In Asia and Africa, churches and church membership has increased at an enormous rate. The members of these churches though deeply committed to stewardship, do not have the funds to maintain the buildings or the personnel necessary to serve. It is to the mission agency that they turn for help. How are we to make provision for the increased numbers of church buildings? [Again, The United Methodist Church expects and charges that the financing of such mission emphases come from the Board.]

In the new millennium, we will be defined and known by our response to these mission challenges. May we be worthy of the hope placed in us by the whole church and may we be responsive to the call of God in Christ Jesus. We have not had a missionary opportunity as filled with promise and possibilities in the last one hundred years.

As directors and elected staff of the General Board of Global Ministries, I would like to ask you to focus again on the responsibilities of the General Board of Global Ministries as they are listed in 1302 of the Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church:

1. To discern those places where the Gospel has not been heard or heeded and to witness to its meaning throughout the world, inviting all persons to newness of life in Jesus Christ through a program of global ministries;

2. To encourage and support the development of leadership in mission for both the Church and society;

3. To challenge all United Methodists with the New Testament imperative to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth, expressing the mission of the Church; and to recruit, send, and receive missionaries, enabling them to dedicate all or a portion of their lives in service across racial, cultural, national, and political boundaries;

4. To plan with others and to establish and strengthen Christian congregations where opportunities and needs are found, so that these congregations may be units of mission in their places and partners with others in the worldwide mission of the Christian church;

5. To advocate the work for the unity of Christ's church through witness and service with other Christian churches and through ecumenical councils;

6. To engage in dialogue with all persons, including those of other faiths, and to join with them where possible in action on common concerns;

7. To assist local congregations and annual conferences in mission both in their own communities and across the globe by raising awareness of the claims of global mission and by providing channels for participation;

8. To express the concerns of women organized for mission and to help equip women for full participation both locally and globally in Church and world;

9. To engage in direct ministries to human need, both emergency and continuing, institutional and noninstitutional, however caused;

10. To work within societies and systems so that full human potential is liberated and to work toward the transformation of demonic forces that distort life.

11. To identify with all who are alienated and dispossessed and to assist them in achieving their full human development body, mind, and spirit;

12. To envision and engage in imaginative new forms of mission appropriate to changing human needs and to share the results of experimentation with the entire Church;

13. To facilitate the development of cooperative patterns of ministry so that the unified strength of local congregations and other units of the Church in designated areas can respond with more effective ministries of justice, advocacy, compassion, and nurture;

14. To affirm the concept of volunteers-in-mission (short-term) as an authentic form of personal missionary involvement and devise appropriate structure to interpret and implement such opportunities for short-term volunteers in the global community;

15. To facilitate the receiving and assignment of missionaries from churches in nations other than the United States in cooperation with the other general agencies and with annual conferences.

This is our charge and these are our designated responsibilities. All that we do in mission as the General Board of Global Ministries as the designated mission agency of our church is directed toward a faithful and efficient fulfillment of these our designated responsibilities.

STAFFING AND ANNUAL CONFERENCE RELATIONSHIPS

We are poised and in an excellent position to answer our charge and fulfill our responsibilities. As the central administrative entity within the Board, the Cabinet is now functioning so that it is possible to employ the entire organization for mission in a cooperative and collaborative effort; to bring to bear in one place myriad resources from many units of the Board. But we also recognize the spiritual power of the members of Annual Conferences, which, when employed, channeled and engaged is able to bring a new and exciting dimension to the partnership for mission.

When this spiritual power for mission is harnessed and targeted with the unlimited resources of The United Methodist Church, the task of mission and for the evangelization of the entire world becomes more evident. From the concentrated, compacted, teeming neighborhoods of the world's urban centers to the vast rural areas, our denomination is poised with potential and promise in the proclamation of the Good News. We have the resources in magnificent abundance. And I do not mean financial resources only, but more importantly the greatness of our membership, the involvement of United Methodist people, the application of their skills and their desire to participate in the proclamation of the Good News as well as their willingness to be sent to every corner of this planet in the name of God in Christ Jesus and to participate in the fulfillment of God's intention and design for creation.

This is what is happening today. There is no place to which our United Methodists have been called where they have been unwilling to go in response to that call. As a Board, we are charged with the responsibility to challenge people and to open for them the vision of mission and ministry. And whenever and wherever we do this clearly and effectively, there are always responses from large congregations, from small congregations, and from every size in between. But we must still find ways to relate to the Annual Conferences with greater intention and to provide thorough information for them and this more rapidly. Especially with reference to the programs which provide opportunities for partnership in mission with the Board.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND PLANS

As we look toward our mission future, we must also take into consideration the world of tomorrow. What will be the experiences of the people of tomorrow which will call for new possibilities for the proclamation of the Gospel?

Clearly, in the world of tomorrow, vast numbers of people will be poor. We will be evangelizing the poor; and we will be doing mission in the context of poverty. It is clear that will be the case tomorrow because it is clearly the case today. Almost one person out of four in our world today 1.3 billion people live in grinding poverty. According to the World Bank, they struggle to survive on a dollar a day. Our mission task must therefore engage the body and the soul, and our evangelization must proclaim Good News to the poor.

Poverty is the cause of other miseries and tragedies: hunger and disease, for example. Some thirty-four thousand children die from hunger and preventable diseases every day; 1.45 billion people have no access to health services; 1.35 billion people lack safe water.

But seen from a different perspective, it could be argued that mission needs to find a way to challenge those who are with major wealth in the world; namely the wealth of the privileged few at the expense which needs to become employed for the impoverished many. According to the United Nations, it would cost between $30 and $40 billion a year to provide all people in the developing countries with basic education, health care, and clean water. That is the same amount that is spent in the United States on golf every year. And according to the 1999 Forbes 400 list, it is a tab Bill Gates could pick up twice and still have a comfortable bundle left over (he has $85 billion); Paul Allen could pick up one year (he has $40 billion) and Warren Buffet could pick up the next (he has $31 billion).

With only 75 days left to the new millennium, it seems clear that in the world of tomorrow and into the foreseeable future the current denials of human rights and the violations of persons will continue. The brutalities of today will no doubt remain the brutalities of tomorrow. The incapacities of nations to provide humane conditions for large numbers of their people will be a reality which spans the two millennia. Therefore, the Board's approaches to mission must be strong in their emphasis on justice and righteousness and have a firm ethical grounding. Our mission efforts must consciously proclaim and embody our oneness in Christ Jesus and the oneness of all in Christ. Our mission and evangelization efforts must clearly redefine relationships among persons on the basis of our oneness in Christ, so that people are no longer defined in terms of race, class, or economic status. The redefinition must be accompanied by fostering a clear understanding of the implications of the manner by which old categories or definitions have been implemented.

Our future mission and evangelization efforts must recognize the present reality of a functional age gap. So many young people today are out of contact with their elders, and are living lives of deprivation as a result: they are deprived of the gifts, the wisdom, the nurture and the love which the elderly have to give. The church is the ideal community for fostering such intergenerational relationships and experiences.

Our future mission and evangelization efforts will need to self-consciously and literally restore a human touch. We will be living in a world in which people find themselves at the mercy of and dependent upon technological processes which will affect their daily lives not only on a grand scale but also to the most minute detail. Machines which now respond to telephones or control the flow of traffic in the future will become the arbiters of choice, or movement, and even of life and death. Already every day commerce is conducted through voice mail or e-mail. People are able to communicate through machines which have become household appliances, invading our living rooms, dens, studies and even bedrooms.

All of this communication and commerce is conducted in total isolation, without one ever seeing, touching, or being with another real live person. Moreover, the detached person, the one with whom one is communicating or dealing can not be trusted to be whom he or she claims or appears to be. There is no assurance that the projected persona of the person on the other end of the electronic impulse is a person or is real in age, gender, interest or whatever.

In such a setting, people will increasingly yearn for human touch and contact. Faith communities established by the Board can provide such safe contact space and opportunity. (Youth Women's Division, Memorial United Methodist Church, "The church is my safety zone. I feel safe there.")

All of us know of stories which are tragic, and sometimes disgusting of contacts made, meetings arranged between persons engaged in computer conversations. The churches and community centers and other places of mission and ministries must be retained as the points of contact for the human touch, places of human caring, places where human sensitivity and love are both real and trustworthy. In such settings, people will no longer have to make life-wrenching decisions in isolation, bereft of either human counsel or human caring, but rather will be able to make decisions which are highly personal in a context that is intensely communal: where love is intense and caring is genuine.

In a world in which medical concepts such as triage have become the operational basis for making decisions about human life who shall live and who is expendable the mission of the church will offer trinity as an answer to triage, pointing toward a future in which God in Christ Jesus makes all things new and all things possible through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

The mission of the church must be intentional in issuing the invitation to all people to live a new life in Christ Jesus. If the mission is intentionally designed and determined to provide the human touch, all humans must be invited and welcomed to share the contact. The invitation to live a new life in Christ must be issued from a context and a community which is clearly distinguishable from the standards, practices, and values reflected by those still mired in the old life. The old life is based on exclusion, a conscious separation of people based on race, birthplace, ethnic identity, gender or sexual orientation. Under the standards and practices of the old life, some persons are sacrificed upon the altar of exclusion for sins judged to make them unacceptable. But the new life in Christ Jesus is based on inclusion because He who is both the basis and model for new life has already made the full and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The sacrifice of the Son of God means that none other of God's children need ever again be sacrificed upon any altar of human construction.

New life of inclusion is marked by empathy rather than apathy; by solidarity rather than separation. The new life of total inclusion recognizes that all members of the human family are interrelated. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. The poor of any nation cannot be dismissed as insignificant or irrelevant nor can their health be ignored. The health of the poor in every place in the world affects the health of every person in the world. Whatever takes place in the hidden communities of the poor within every nation will sooner or later take place within all nations of the world. (TB Russia Prisons)

Under the standards and practices of the old life, food, medicine and a safe environment are considered to be available in abundance only for the rich. But new life in Christ Jesus promulgates the understanding that the One who fed the five thousand using only the five loaves and two fish shall also feed us. The invitation to the table is open to all, but the invitation carries with it the reminder that we dare not fill our own stomach while the stomach of our neighbor in the next room, next town, next nation or next continent is empty.

As we move into the mission future of a new millennium, we will be called increasingly to embody and demonstrate the new life in Christ in which we invite all to share. And in so doing we will be challenging the practices, the assumptions, the priorities and the solutions offered by those still mired in the old life. Here in the United States, a nation without peer in the industrialized world in the warehousing of people called criminals in institutions called prisons, where such people are locked into pens six feet by six feet for 23 and sometimes 24 hours a day, we are called to intensify our challenge to the old life with the new life reminder that in spite of their past deeds and whatever appellation they are given be it prisoner, convict, offender, or whatever they are, in God's eyes, God's own children, persons for whom Christ died. They too are recipients of God's call to a new life of redemption.

We shall be called to the modern equivalent of the mines and shantytowns of yesteryear, namely the city streets, to embody hope and demonstrate the new life in Christ to those who have been jaded and made to seem and feel of lesser worth and value. We shall be called to the very places where drugs are peddled and violence reigns to offer the new life in Christ Jesus to those so deeply enmeshed and ensnared by the standards and practices of the old life that they cannot envision themselves becoming old in their own lives. We shall be called to demonstrate how and in what ways God in Christ Jesus is a better solution and answer to problems than crack cocaine, heroin, alcohol, or any other chemical substance. We shall be called to demonstrate why Jesus is more readily available and of greater efficaciousness than any over the counter drug or any pharmaceutical requiring the prescription of a physician. We shall be called upon to demonstrate and to prove that the church is a stronger, more available, more present and supportive family than the gangs and other groups now being offered to youth as places of acceptance and belonging. I would here want to make a remark concerning a special need.

The same demonstration will be required on the continent of Africa where we will be called to come to grips with the reality and the consequences of AIDS. The terrible plague of AIDS on that continent has resulted in thousands upon thousands of children left without parents. There are so many households and there shall be many more where children are caring for other children. These children caregivers have no families where they might learn the values they will need to not only survive but thrive, grow, and mature. Here too we shall be called to be their family in Christ Jesus and to provide nurture in the name of the One who said, "Let the children come to me, and forbid them not."; and we will be asked to do this on a continent in which we may all feel at home, for here is the home from whence all of us have come. This place is our mother and our father.

There is a scene from the wonderful play and movie Mass Appeal which I think sets the context for our mission challenge in the new millennium. A young seminary intern named Mark Dolson has been assigned to work in a suburban well- to-do parish in California. In the scene I have in mind, young Mark Dolson, a deacon, gives his trial sermon in the parish, and it went like this:

"I had a tank of tropical fish. Someone turned up the tank heater and they all boiled. I woke up on Friday morning went to feed them and there they were all of my beautiful fish floating on the top. Most of them split in two. Others with their eyes hanging out. It looked like violence, but it was such a quiet night. And I remember wishing I had the kind of ears that could hear fish screams because they looked as if they suffered and I wanted badly to save them.

"That Sunday in church, I heard that Christ told his apostles to be fishers of persons. From then on, I looked at all the people in the church as fish. I was young so I saw them as beautiful tropical fish and so I knew they were all quiet screamers. Church was so quiet. And I thought everyone was boiling. And I wanted the kind of ears that could hear what they were screaming about, because I wanted to save them. A few years later . . . I drowned out whatever I might be able to hear. I made my world my tank so hot that I almost split. So now I'm back listening listening listening for the screams of angels."

So it is also with us, we who would embody and demonstrate the new life in Christ Jesus, in a world of violence, a world boiling and bubbling with hatred and hostility, avarice and greed. We gather in the shadow of the Cross of Christ, listening, listening for the needs of people, hearing in the voices and seeing in their eyes the cries of hope, and the call for redemption. Each of them belongs to God.

May our hearts be attentive to their need, in the new quadrennium as in this one.

Randolph Nugent
General Secretary