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Tonga to host partnership gathering

Does money drive mission? Or is it only one among the many resources with which the church is richly gifted for ministry worldwide?

The General Board of Global Ministries will discuss these and other issues with international partners, starting at the Pacific Islands Regional Gathering in Tonga, May 20 to 24.

The gathering is the first of six sponsored by the United Methodist mission agency to sound out partner churches in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Representatives of mission projects in the US will get a chance to weigh in during the fourth Global Gathering, to be held in Birmingham, AL, in April 2003.

Weaving palm leaves in Vava'u, Tonga

The conversation began February last year at the "Mission and Ministry Together" conference in Los Angeles, CA. There the Board, its mission partners in the central conference, and partner churches from some 75 countries asked how they could affirm and accompany one another at local, national and international levels in the third millennium of Christianity.

Inequities in financial resources and how they've affected partnership emerged as a key issue. "The resources are so U.S.," said GBGM's Executive Secretary for Conference Relations John Nuessle. "Partnership presumes equal status."

The LA conference identified the effects of the resulting inequality of power: patronizing relationships, excessive control by the "rich" partner, dependency, and the tendency to see financial resource as the primary—if not sole—resource. Mission and ministry under these conditions are no longer marked by mutual respect and shared objectives. The church's oneness in the Body of Christ is severely compromised.

For the GBGM's eight Pacific Islands church partners, the enduring environmental impact of nuclear testing is another major concern. The autonomous, affiliated churches in Tonga, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Guinea, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are also worried about the effects of tourism, the mainstay of the South Pacific's economy.

According to Nuessle, new partnerships are needed because Pacific Island emigrants to Australia, New Zealand and the US want to be involved in mission in their countries of origin.

The Methodist presence in the Pacific Islands is strongest in Tonga. One of the two board directors on the 11-member GBGM team is Eddie Kelemini, an ethnic Tongan.

The five day gathering will end May 24th with an audience with King Taufa' ahav Tupou IV of Tonga. A member of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, which is hosting the gathering at the Tongan National Council of Churches Center inNuku'alofa, the King is a licensed preacher and Biblical scholar.

"That's one reason we decided to have the gathering in Tonga," Nuessle said.