New Funds for Mission

1. Bishop W.T. Handy, Jr., Young Adult Missioners $4,000,000

The Mission Personnel Program Area will send 800 new missionaries in an initiative to develop a new generation of mission leadership. By the year 2010, the majority of current United Methodist career missionaries will have retired. The trend from the 1970s to the present has been for the majority of new missionaries to complete their service in periods of less than ten years. This initiative includes an effort to increase opportunities for globalization of the church's mission, as well as to enable more Americans to have personal involvement in missions. It will also assist the church as it prepares to meet the challenges of mission in the new millennium.

This initiative is dedicated to the memory of Bishop W.T. Handy, Jr., who from 1992 to 1993 served as interim director of the Mission Resource Center. For many years, Bishop Handy was personally involved in the training and commissioning of young adults for global missions. He was inspired by their enthusiasm and idealism, and their commitment to the service of Christ. Bishop Handy died on April 12, 1998, Easter Sunday.

2. Mission Personnel/Missioners of Hope $1,000,000

The Mission Personnel Program Area will send 100 new missionaries to serve in Africa, with specific emphasis on ministries with children. Ministries will include rebuilding schools, training and equipping classroom teachers, providing hospitals and clinics with needed equipment and pharmaceuticals, working in other mission institutions, providing land mine avoidance education and advocacy for banning land mines, restoring recreational facilities, caring for displaced and orphaned children, developing community health and nutritional programs, and rebuilding houses of worship and establishing new ones where church communities can gather and children can be nurtured spiritually in the faith. This program will coincide with the Bishops Appeal, Hope for the Children of Africa, and the Millennium Fund. It is proposed as a five-year program, with the first missioners being commissioned in 1998. Missioners are expected to serve for at least two years.

3. Innovative Mission Volunteers $2,500,000

The Volunteers in Mission movement represents the fastest growing participative movement in the life of our church in the United States.

The objective of this proposal is to provide funding to develop and implement a program that seeks to advance the commitment to mission in the whole church by enabling a larger number of church members/leaders to experience crosscultural, global, and reciprocal mission. The program will develop specially targeted plans to attract the growing number of newly retired as well as youth and young adults who truly desire to participate in volunteer programs and have much to offer. It would involve the selection of sites and programs in which a variety of opportunities can be developed: recruitment, training, and orientation programs for participants; an infrastructure of mission personnel and volunteers who will provide continuing networking services; and a promotional effort to make the program fully understood and accessible throughout the church.

4. Deaconess Vision 2000 $80,000 (Women's Division funds)

These funds have been used toward the implementation of some very exciting and creative ideas/strategies. One of the major goals of Deaconess Vision 2000 is the recruitment of 200 new deaconesses. A new video, entitled "Love, Justice, and Service--The Ministry of Deaconesses," and a new brochure in English, Spanish, and Korean have been developed and widely distributed across the church. Special teas for a number of women (young and mid-career) are being held in strategic parts of the country and a variety of publicity materials are being distributed across The United Methodist Church informing persons at various levels that the deaconess movement is being revitalized.

5. Partnership Fund Latin America/Caribbean and Asia $5,000,000

The purpose of this fund is to provide support for programs in churches and regions where little or no support can be anticipated from existing permanent funds to further the mission of God. The program will provide funding, technical support, and other resources to churches and projects in the Latin America/Caribbean area and in Asia, particularly the Philippines. The programs to be funded will address present and emerging opportunities in the region and develop means for effectively reaching constituencies with the gospel.

Attention will be given to programs focusing on situations in which increased wealth and increased poverty develop simultaneously, generating deep rifts in the human family and resulting in deepened human misery that expresses itself in the form of violence, addictions, family disintegration, despair, and hopelessness. The uncommon wisdom of common people in battling these human disasters can help the church understand ways in which the gospel can become effective in lifting hope, as people struggle to break the chains of misery and oppression.

A major feature of these programs will be a partnership approach that brings together churches and people in these regions with churches and people from other regions. This will provide an opportunity for sharing resources across church and national boundaries through funding and personnel and make possible joint prayer, study, reflection, and action that nourish the soul. The kind of partnership envisioned here may lead to the development of appropriate indigenous resources which transcend the usual donor/recipient relationships and in which each participant is understood to be a contributor as well as a discoverer of the grace, love, and care of God in Jesus Christ.

6. Inner City Development Program $5,000,000

There are increasing numbers of people who live in the urban areas of nations. Often, at the center of these urban areas is an inner city area. Such areas are the places to which migrants are shuttled or the first places and communities where they settle. These inner cities may serve as springboards for the invitation of God, through Jesus Christ, to persons who will be long-term residents of the nations to which they have migrated. Moreover, they provide a place in which the hospitality of God may be demonstrated by the church. Major program development should take place within these communities for new migrants and the poor.

A concerted and strong evangelistic program, established and initiated in several of the inner cities of the world, will provide a new or renewed United Methodist presence. Some of the inner city locations are communities where we may not have been previously in ministry. On the other hand, some of the communities will be places in which we may have previously been in ministry and into which we must move again with renewed evangelistic vigor. Whatever the situation, The United Methodist Church has a large reservoir of experience upon which it may draw for its missionary outreach. Fundamental to the nature of the ministries will be the need to proclaim the gospel and address the needs of people in these areas.

7. East Africa Annual Conference $500,000

In 1994, the General Board of Global Ministries led a major effort to minister to more than 2 million Rwandan refugees. These persons fled conditions of ethnic violence and genocide. For several years, many of the survivors lived in refugee camps in the northeast corridor of (then) Zaire, while others hid in the forests and mountains. Through this effort, a faith community emerged that has since returned to Rwanda. Before, there was no United Methodist presence in Rwanda. Today, however, the Rwanda District is gaining a stronghold on western Rwanda. For many years, there was no direct cooperation in Rwanda between the Tutsis and the Hutus, but today the Rwanda District of The United Methodist Church represents the major model for interethnic cooperation in a country still torn by civil strife. Today, the Rwanda District numbers more than 32,000 members and is growing daily.

Even more remarkable is the flowering of United Methodist districts in Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya. The displacement of millions of people has taken United Methodism into communities and countries where the denomination had little or no presence in the past. These funds will assist in the development of these districts and provide for pastors' salaries, office equipment, telecommunications, and leadership development for a period of three years.

8. Agricultural Development $2,500,000

Agricultural development on a scale necessary to influence the growth of local communities should once more gain the interest of mission outreach. Many communities have enough cultivated land to supply food for the local community and, where possible, to export.

At one time the Board provided excellent leadership in the area of agricultural development. The time has come for renewed efforts in the agricultural arena. Projects and churches have requested such involvement on the part of the Board. Resources in this area will once again enable the church to participate in agricultural initiatives that are immediately helpful to people.

9. Central Conference Pensions Support $2,500,000

The block grant program of the former World Division permitted conferences and churches in a mission relationship with The United Methodist Church to administer an annual appropriation according to their organizational needs and priorities. Over the years, the amounts available for block grant funding diminished in size and dollar value. Many of the conferences in economically depressed locations have been unable to maintain their benefits programs for their employed staff and clergy. They have only limited assets available for contributing to pension programs; the financial security of their retired personnel has been jeopardized. For instance, a special pension program developed for the Liberia Annual Conference was only partially funded by the General Board of Global Ministries so that the value of the initial investment was soon lost to other critical fund needs. It is proposed that the amount recommended be placed in the custodial care of the General Board of Pensions for the support or establishment of pension programs for the affected central conferences in Africa and Asia. The General Board of Global Ministries will study the pension programs of the conferences in these regions and consult with the General Board of Pensions regarding recommended levels of funding within the approved amount to be invested and managed on behalf of the participating conferences.

10. Oklahoma Indian Mission Conference Pension Funding $1,000,000.

Provides funds for prior years of service liability for Oklahoma Indian Mission Conference pastors.

11. GBGM Missionaries Health Benefits Funding (Unfunded Liability) $10,000,000

12. GBGM Missionaries Increase in Pension Benefits $15,000,000

GBGM directors acted at the Fall, 1998 meeting to increase the missionary pension payment per service year of GBGM missionaries. This action will increase the Missionary Pension Rate to a level comparable to that of pastors in the U.S.

13. Regional Offices $500,000

As the General Board of Global Ministries moves into the arena of nongovernmental organization program development, it becomes essential for regional presence and program deployment to be part of the Board's missionary stance. In nongovernmental organization program development, great credence is given to the regional structure of the organization competing for the grant. The global nature of the United Methodist denomination is inclusive of significant regional possibilities and structure.

Moreover, the Board has had experiences which have demonstrated the importance of regional structure (e.g., Nairobi). Churches are seeking to deploy Board presence across the globe on a regional basis in order to support mission more effectively where the conferences desire such service. In addition to the office already in Nairobi, UMCOR programs and mission-related programs suggest that regional offices should be opened in Europe and Asia. These funds will provide for project initiative in other places.

14. Harare Fund $600,000

The bishops of the Africa Central Conferences and representatives of the General Board of Global Ministries met in Harare, Zimbabwe, August 16-19, 1997, to discuss the shape of the mission effort for the next five years in Africa. The meeting began with a thorough analysis of the African contexts, as reported by United Methodist bishops, focusing on the destructiveness of war, the tens of millions of refugees, and the ruin of governments. The accounts of people returning to Liberia and Mozambique, after years of war, with nothing in their hands and nothing to return to gives new meaning to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Children missing limbs--the result of land mine explosions during innocent games on fields in Angola--and children begging for one meal a day on city streets in the Democratic Republic of Congo challenge us to adopt the compassion of the One who said, "Let the children come unto me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Mark 10:14). Bishop Christopher Jokomo described Zimbabwe as a "nation of children," with 60% of the population below the age of 20.

The Hutus oppose the Tutsis; the civilian government has been replaced in Sierra Leone; a clash of cultures exists between the old and the new; but faith thrives in South Africa, hope in Namibia, and love in Uganda. Today in Mozambique the people sing the Lord's song with new fervor.

From the discussions, ten principal areas of rehabilitation, reconstruction, renewal, and development emerged:

The Harare Fund hopes to respond to the challenges that came out of the meeting and to the proposals presented to GBGM by the bishops.

15. Africa Office $175,000

A General Board of Global Ministries office was established in Nairobi in 1994 to provide logistical support for Board-funded programs in the East Africa region, which has been severely impacted by political and economic instability. Personnel related to this office provide refugee programs for displaced populations from Rwanda and Burundi; new church development programs in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Sudan; and material resourcing and volunteer support for programs in all of these locations. Episcopal supervision has been provided by retired Bishop Forest Stith and Bishop Alfred Ndoricimpa. The office staff also provides a communications network for personnel working throughout this extended region.

16. Millennium Fund $9,000,000 plus matching funds

A fund of $9 million was set aside from realized investment gains for emerging needs in Africa, Eastern Europe, newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, and inner city ministries within the United States.

A program of soliciting matching grants from churches, conferences, and districts participating in this initiative is being developed. Grants have already helped with the completion of the Baltic Mission Center and the Agape Center in Estonia; the new church in Budapest (Hungary); the remodeling of the mother church of Methodism in Kaunas, Lithuania; the down payment for property for the new seminary and conference office in Moscow; and restoration of properties and ministries in the Congo, West Angola, Sierra Leone, and Burundi.

17. GBGM Web Page Development and Online Magazine $930,000

The World Wide Web presents unprecedented possibilities for communicating the good news of Jesus Christ and supporting God's mission throughout the world. Historically, God's people have been creative in their use of media, from storytelling to the printed word to pictures. Today's version of these creative media is digital communication--the World Wide Web. As millions throughout the world begin to use it, the web becomes a fast way to communicate globally. The churches are also beginning to use the web. After the General Board of Global Ministries pioneered free web space to local churches, more than 3,200 of them have pages on the GBGM site. This number includes districts, conferences, and United Methodist Women units.

But the value of the Web to mission lies not only in its internal use. Many more come to the GBGM Web page from the outside. These readers arrive via search engines like Yahoo and Infoseek. They read pages on current events, help organizations, United Methodism, and new resources. The average daily number of "hits" to the GBGM page in August, 1998, was 48,700. It is clear that users are seeking current information on specific issues and topics. Many of these are missional, such as disaster relief, the ramifications for the church of political decisions in certain countries, and United Methodist mission initiatives.

In order to provide this kind of current, relevant information, the Board approved $930,000 to develop its Web pages in a variety of ways--"This Week in Mission," more audio and video capacity, a global map, and many other features. As part of this development, the Board is also proposing an online magazine that will be a digital version of a mission magazine but with shorter items created daily for the Web.

New personnel are needed who have the technical ability to design pages, do hypertext makeup, and handle other technical details. The online magazine must have new staff whose responsibilities are strictly limited to the Web in order to maintain timely relevance. The Board will also employ volunteers, consultants, and some existing staff whose responsibilities can dovetail into this effort.

Finally, funds are needed for tools like the global map, special graphics, and audio and video capacity. These program funds will enable the new reality to take place. To use the Web effectively requires a major investment in funds and skilled personnel, but the benefits for church and mission will be great.

Top of List