US-2 Program: Changing Lives
by A. Victoria Hunter
It was May 18, 1951, when the Rev. Nancy Grissom Self was interviewed and accepted for the US-2 program. She remembers the date because it was her 22nd birthday.
Ms. Self was in the first group of young adults selected as US-2s, a program created to expose women and men ages 20-30 to hands on mission in the United States. Participants agree to serve two years.
For many of the young people, becoming a US-2 is a way to explore ministry as vocation. Ms. Self chose the US-2 program to prepare to be a campus minister.
Following her graduation from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a degree in home economics, she took six weeks of US-2 training at Scarritt College in Nashville, Tenn. She was initially assigned to Far Texas to work with children, then moved to Frances DePauw in Hollywood, Calif., to work with young Mexican-American women. She had never been west of Fort Wayne, Ind.
The post World War II world had labeled her generation the silent generation. College campuses were inundated with young men returning from military service.
"The classroom had a different sense to it," she said. "There was optimism and an enormous surge in church participation. They went as boys and came back as men. There was a new image of women, which influenced the church. Women who had worked outside the home during the war, were expected to stay home. Ladies Home Journal appeared. It was 27 years after women had gotten the vote."
Ms. Self, who would eventually become of the United Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women and an ordained minister rejected such narrow parameters for women’s work. And so she became a US-2, a program that would, over the next 50 years, see 2,500 young women and men pursue the opportunity to grow through first-hand mission experience.
The program continues today. Katie Goetz, 22, a member of this year’s US-2 class, like Ms. Self embraced the program as a way to explore ministry as vocation. She is serving as an employment counselor to homeless individuals at Samaritan House, an employment-readiness program in Atlanta, Ga. Ms. Goetz is a graduate of Willanetta University in Salem, Ore., where she majored in economics.
She chose the US-2 program because it was an opportunity to give something back, she said. She first heard about the US-2 program at Exploration 94, a United Methodist event for youth and adults considering ordained ministry. Originally from California, she is considering ordained ministry because she feels called to work with people.
"Being a US-2 is proving challenging," she said. "It’s opened my eyes. The work is difficult. It means seeing past stereotypes and prejudices that go deeper than I ever thought they did. I know we are all children of God, equally valued and precious in God’s eyes, but now I need to recognize us as equal in my own eyes. I have a feeling that this is something I will struggle with on a daily basis while I am here."
Like Ms. Self, Ms. Goetz began her time as a US-2 in training -- three weeks at the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries’ Mission Resource Center in Atlanta, Ga. Ms. Self was on hand for that training, this time as a trainer, helping the young mission workers prepare to be alone in new places with unfamiliar people.
She noted that this training component has been added over the years.
"When I was a US-2, there was no training in sexuality," Ms. Self said. "These young people talked about dealing with loneliness and touch deprivation. It was so real."
Ms. Self’s US-2 training included field trips to Red Bird Missionary Conference in Kentucky and to Cherokee, NC, where US-2 trainees learned of the Trail of Tears during which American Indians were forcibly moved from the Southeast United States to the West. Her US-2 class also visited Bethlehem Center in Atlanta, GA, and had Bible study.
Being US-2s has impacted the lives of 2,500 young women and men in many ways. Some have gone on to become missionaries, some deaconesses, some church and community workers. Others have become ordained ministers, Christian educators and key lay leaders in the denomination.
"The US-2 program has changed lives of those who have served and those who have been served," Ms. Self said. "It was a passage point for me. Twenty-two is very young. I was naive. I was in over my head. I didn’t have theory or analysis at the time. But I used discretionary time to find out more about campus ministry even though there were no women in the field."
In 1960, Ms. Self became a campus minister at California State University in Long Beach, Calif. She also worked for the Methodist Church’s Board of Missions, a predecessor to the General Board of Global Ministries. In that role, she visited 136 college campuses to recruit short-term missionaries, including US-2s.
Ms. Self spent 18 years -- from 1973 to 1991 as a member of the General Secretaria of the United Methodist General Commission on the Status and Role of Women in Evanston, Ill. In 1989, she was ordained an elder. She recently she retired as a clergy person at University United Methodist Church in Redlands, Calif.
"Peace of mind comes when you know that you made a difference," Ms. Self said.
A. Victoria Hunter is senior writer for Response. Portions of this article came from a United Methodist News Service release.