Øyvind Aske: Bishop Yambasu’s Driver

This piece is written by Rev. Øyvind Aske, Secretary of Metodistkirkens Misjonsselskap (the Mission Society of The United Methodist Church in Norway). The Norway Annual Conference has a long-standing partnership with Sierra Leone Annual Conference. This article originally appeared on the website of Misjonsselskapet. It has been translated by UM & Global’s David Scott and is republished here with permission.

One rainy Sunday morning, August 16, 2020, Bishop Yambasu was on the way to a funeral outside Freetown. The evening before, he had called Abdul Kamara, his driver, and asked him to drive. He had chosen not to drive together with others who were going to the same funeral the day before.

There was little traffic on the road. On the way north, not far outside the city, the unthinkable happened. A car traveling in the opposite direction on the four-lane divided road hit the median, which is at least 20 cm (8 inches) high, bounced up in the air, hovered over the left lane, and hit the bishop’s jeep in the right lane. We know the tragic outcome: this accident caused Bishop Yambasu’s all too early death. Abdul emerged from the accident with serious injuries in his head and leg.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we from Norway had not visited Sierra Leone in mission for over two years. Only now, in March 2022, were we able to see the accident site, meet with Bishop Yambasu’s widow Millicent, visit the grave site, and get to see Abdul Kamara.

Abdul was born in September 1987 and has worked with CELAD (Community Empowerment for Livelihood and Development, The Sierra Leone-Norway Partnership) for several years, most recently before 2020 as the bishop’s driver. His education beyond primary school is some car mechanics. There was a good relationship between them, and the bishop put great value on Abdul, who lined up at all hours of the day.

He was a skilled driver. That fateful Sunday, he held a steady course until he saw the shadow of something come in abruptly from the left. The car that came flying met the left side of the bishop’s car with enormous force. The driver’s side door was knocked in, met Abdul, and knocked him unconscious.

He lay unconscious at the hospital a long time but woke up and survived. His vision in the left leg is impaired, and his left leg was broken in several places. The doctor explained that he could no longer drive a car. Abdul has in addition struggled with guilt after the accident. It was he who was the driver for the bishop who died that day.

The United Methodist Church in Sierra Leone has not turned its back on Abdul. After the treatment at the hospital, he has gone back to his old workplace and “hung out” with his colleagues. They have tried to take care of him even if he can no longer drive a car. Eventually he got a job as an office assistant and does odd jobs for $100 a month.

On Sunday, March 20, after church service, we traveled up to Leicester Peak where the bishop is buried. The grave is covered with a roof and has brick and mortar walls and a gate that is locked. We had the CELAD staff with; Anne, Tove Odland, and I were there, and Abdul was also along. It was a very emotional moment.

Abdul knelt by the grave and afterwards fetched water and a cloth and washed the grave of dust and dirt. Andrew led the little ceremony. Joe sang, and we Norwegians said some personal words. We finished with the Lord’s Prayer and a blessing. Farewell, Bishop John K. Yambasu. Thanks for all the good memories. Rest in peace, and we will meet again in the heavenly home!

As for Abdul, he offers thanks for all the prayers and support from Norway. He himself says that he is now strong enough in his leg that he can drive cars again and hopes to be able to get the doctor’s statement on this eventually. He has a clear mark on the left side of his face, a dent that he thinks will heal eventually. What about his eye? He does not have the means to seek out an ophthalmologist or optician.

We may continue to pray for Abdul – a fellow human being with extra large challenges in our sister church in Sierra Leone.

Recommended Viewing: Bishop John Yambasu videos

United Methodist Communications has put out a series of six short (1-2 min.) video interviews with Bishop John Yambasu of the Sierra Leone Episcopal Area.

In the videos, Bishop Yambasu discusses divisions in the church over human sexuality. He affirms support for traditional understandings of marriage as between a man and a woman, though he also notes African discomfort with talking about sex in general. He indicates that Africans could support the One Church Plan, since a contextual approach makes sense, but only if they were able to separate support for the One Church Plan and support for homosexuality. He affirms the unity of the church, but also speaks about how Africans are preparing for the implications, including the financial implications, of divisions in the American church that are already apparent. Finally, he calls on the general church to stop "legislating sex" and instead to focus on the church's attention and money on mission to the world, including the hungry, sick, illiterate, and uneducated.

The videos are as follows:

United Methodist bishop: "It is God's church"

United Methodist bishop: "Marriage should be between man and woman"

Bishop discusses One Church Plan implications for Africa

Sierra Leone bishop looks at all three plans for GC2019

United Methodist bishop: What a church split means for Africa

United Methodist bishop: "Rethink our calling as a church"

Making Sense of UMC Membership Numbers

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

GCFA recently released delegate counts for the 2020 General Conference along with the membership and clergy numbers on which these delegate counts are based. UMNS put out a news story based on this membership data, and I’m sure many others will be combing through it. I wanted to share several observations not highlighted in the UMNS article.

1. The Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to be the great driver of membership growth in the UMC. The Congo Central Conference added nearly half a million members in the last four years, and total membership in the Congo Central Conference now stands at 3 million. This is further evidence that we need to be more specific when we talk about “African” church growth. Even more so than becoming a US-African denomination, the UMC is becoming a US-Congolese denomination.

2. The Congo Central Conference and West Africa Central Conference were the only two central conferences/jurisdictions showing numeric growth in the last four years. West Africa’s growth was driven by very strong membership growth in Liberia and good growth in Sierra Leone. Both countries are seeing the fruits of rebuilding after long civil wars. It’s significant that, although there were individual annual conferences here and there in other central conferences/jurisdictions that grew, overall the trend lines for the UMC were down around the world. Some of that may have been due to new reporting standards (see below), but it complicates the simplistic narrative of “the US and Europe are declining, and Africa and the Philippines are growing” and thus should lead United Methodist leaders to pay more attention to specific dynamics on the ground in various places around the world.

3. This was the first time that membership numbers (and therefore delegates) outside the US were based off of local congregation records instead of numbers provided by annual conference as a whole. Though not without problems, this approach is a more accurate reporting fashion. There was a lot of curiosity as to how this new approach would affect the overall membership numbers, especially in Africa. There were places where the numbers seem to have declined because of this new procedure (East Africa, South Mozambique), but overall the African numbers proved fairly consistent with past figures. Interestingly, there was a much larger drop in the numbers from the Philippines. The membership figures under the new system were 1/3 lower than under the old. My sources tell me this is more reflective of the change in reporting rather than any large defections from the Filipino UMC, but more research could be done.

4. According to these figures, the denomination has 12.5 million members and 66 active bishops serving 66 episcopal areas. Still, not all episcopal areas are the same. The four largest episcopal areas are all in Africa (North Katanga with 1.23 million members, South Katanga with 985,000, Cote d’Ivoire with 677,000, and East Congo with 447,000). Over 1/3 of United Methodists live in just these four episcopal areas. Over 1 in 12 United Methodists worldwide lives in the North Katanga episcopal area alone.

5. The second smallest episcopal area membership-wise is also in Africa. The Eastern Angola episcopal area has a mere 7500 members in it. It is the only one of the five smallest episcopal areas not in Europe. I’m sure there are political/ethnic/historical reasons why the Eastern Angola episcopal area exists, and I don’t expect it to be eliminated. Nevertheless, the discrepancies between it and the largest episcopal areas in Africa indicate some of the challenges the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters faces as it tries to decide where to put four new African bishops. These most recent membership figures will surely feed into that process. It will be interesting to see what comes out.

Whither the central conferences in a "loosened" connection? Part 2

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

The Commission on a Way Forward has been worked to develop plans for a new way of structuring The United Methodist Church to preserve some degree of connection and shared ministry while accommodating different and at times fundamentally opposed views of homosexuality. The commission has indicated that their plan will likely entail a “loosening” of the current UMC connection. If the connection will change, it’s worthwhile to carefully examine the question of what the various central conferences might do in such a loosening of the connection. A previous piece looked at how these issues might play out in Europe and the Philippines. This piece looks at the three African central conferences.

Congo Central Conference
The Congo Central Conference is the largest, fastest-growing, and most cohesive of the central conferences in Africa. It contains the largest annual conference in the denomination (North Katanga). The Congo Central Conference has more members than the Southeast Jurisdiction and thus potentially has significant clout at General Conference. As with the Philippines, national boundaries and ecclesiastical boundaries largely overlap (though Zambia and Tanzania are also part of the Congo Central Conference), thus reinforcing a sense of shared identity, despite at times violent differences between ethnic and linguistic groups.

In general, Africans have one of the most conservative sets of views about homosexuality of any group globally. That does not, however, mean they are monolithically opposed to homosexuality, nor does it mean that this issue is the most important in the African context. Often, overwhelming opposition actually means that the issue is not important in the day-to-day life of the church in Africa, since such opposition can just be assumed without reinforcement. This is largely true in the Congo.

Often in recent years, the Congolese have voted at General Conference with conservative leaders from the Southeast Jurisdiction. This connection, however, goes back before recent debates about sexuality and other American culture war issues. Half of the Congolese church stems from mission work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and thus there has been a close connection between Congolese and Southern US-Americans since the start of Methodism in the Congo. That relationship continues today. For example, newly elected bishop Kasap Owan is close friends with conservative North Georgia leader Joe Kilpatrick. Whatever their connections to the SEJ, though, the Congolese are their own people with their own interests and agendas, and it is an unhelpful stereotype to simply assume that they will support a plan simply because the SEJ wants them to.

One of the agendas for the Congolese UMC is continued financial support from the US. The Democratic Republic of Congo is an extremely poor country (perhaps the poorest in the world), and US money pays for churches, schools, hospitals, and even pastors’ salaries. The Congolese UMC is capable of raising their own money at times – they built a $2 million cathedral in Lubumbashi with their own money – and attitudes about dependency are beginning to change. Nevertheless, the Congolese church as a whole would be hurt if they lost funding from the US.

Moreover, the SEJ is not the only region to have close relations with Congolese United Methodists. The West Ohio Annual Conference, for instance, also has a close relationship, especially with North Katanga. West Ohio has, for instance, sponsored the critically important Wings of the Morning aviation ministry in North Katanga, along with Greater New Jersey.

Thus, it is reasonable to expect the Congo to continue as a unit, with the possible exception of its English-speaking annual conferences in Zambia and Tanzania. It is unlikely that the Congolese would support a plan to change standards on homosexuality for the denomination as a whole. Nevertheless, the Congolese might support some sort of plan that would change the denomination if it allowed them to continue to collaborate in mission with a variety of annual conferences across the US. Thus, the Congolese might be receptive to a multiple US denominations approach if it left their relations with the rest of the denomination relatively intact.

Retired Congolese bishop David Yemba’s role as a moderator of the Commission on a Way Forward and Congolese bishop Mande Muyombo’s and Wings of Caring pilot Jacques Umembudi’s role as members of the Commission on a Way Forward will carry significant weight in promoting the plan to their fellow Congolese United Methodists. In the Congo, as in much of Africa, United Methodists generally follow their bishop’s leadership. Hence, Congolese (and other African) support will depend on whether their bishops see such a plan as beneficial to them and their regions.

West Africa Central Conference
The West Africa Central Conference contains United Methodists in four main countries – Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire – along with smaller mission work in Senegal and the Gambia. Three of the countries in West Africa are English-speaking, while Cote d’Ivoire is primarily French-speaking and was not part of the denomination prior to 2008.

While relations between United Methodists in Liberia and Sierra Leone are often tight, connections among Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, and the other two countries are less robust. The West Africa Central Conference does not collaborate much beyond its quadrennial meetings. National branches have a degree of leeway in selecting their own bishops, reinforcing a national-level sense of identity. There have, however, been instances in which the WACC has disregarded national-level opinions in episcopal elections, which has only served to create tensions amongst the national branches.

Civil wars and unrest in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria have left churches there reliant on international economic assistance to rebuild damaged infrastructure, though the Liberia and Sierra Leone Annual Conferences in particular have shown an interest in achieving greater self-sufficiency, meaning they are perhaps less threatened by the economic ramifications of a loosening of the connection than the Congolese might.

In general, views on homosexuality are conservative, as in the rest of Africa. Jerry Kulah, one of leaders of the Africa Initiative and an outspoken voice for maintaining strong opposition to homosexuality in the UMC, is from Liberia. Nevertheless, views are not monolithic. Reconciling Ministries has had productive visits to Liberia.

Still, it is unlikely that West Africans would vote to change the denomination’s stance on homosexuality. West Africans, however, might be willing to go along with a plan for several denominations under an umbrella of the UMC. There are no Liberians or Sierra Leoneans on the Commission on a Way Forward, which could hurt the plan’s chances in West Africa, especially if Jerry Kulah comes out in opposition to it. Bishop John Wesley Johanna’s membership on the Commission will help the plan’s fate in Nigeria.

What will also be interesting to see is whether the West Africa Central Conference would continue to exist in its present formation in a new UMC. The Central Conference is not plagued by the same tensions as the Africa Central Conference (see below), so inertia might be enough to carry it forward. Yet if things are changing in the UMC, it may be a chance for national branches of the UMC in West Africa to reassess the value to them of collaborating through a common central conference. Such reassessment is more likely if they are asked to write a common Book of Discipline. National differences may yield little interest in such a common Book of Discipline.

Africa Central Conference
The Africa Central Conference is the least cohesive of all the central conferences. It contains three lingua francas, five episcopal areas, ten or more different countries, and dozens of ethnic groups and local languages. All this diversity yields a central conference that, quite frankly, has little in common amongst itself. The quadrennial meetings of the central conference are often marked with difficulties regarding language, meeting location, and procedural questions, and the central conference as such has no existence beyond these meetings in the form of joint ministry.

As with most of the rest of Africa, views on homosexuality tend to be conservative, though South Africa, which has relatively liberal views on homosexuality is in this region, too. Forbes Matonga from the Africa Initiative is from Zimbabwe, though the issue of sexuality is not a top priority for most in the region.

Annual conferences here are less likely to be in close relationship with the Southeast Jurisdiction. ACC annual conferences partner with a variety of American annual conferences. For example, the Mozambique Episcopal Area has a close relationship with Missouri. Moreover, for Portuguese-speaking annual conferences, connections to the autonomous Methodist Church in Brazil are important along with UMC connections.

The episcopal areas are also varying degrees of economically self-sufficient. All countries still have economic struggles and benefit from US support, especially for medical infrastructure, but the basic operations of the annual conferences (pastors’ salaries and theological education) are not as heavily subsidized by the US as elsewhere in Africa. The East Africa Episcopal Area has been operating without much US funds for the last several years because of financial disputes between Global Ministries and US annual conferences on the one hand and Bishop Daniel Wandabula on the other.

Thus, the Africa Central Conference might be quite open to a loosening of the connection, not only with United Methodists elsewhere, but amongst itself, especially if that yields more autonomy for national or regional level groups. Even before the Commission on a Way Forward, there were proposals to split the Africa Central Conference into four. If the Commission proposes an approach that allows sub-units of the UMC to craft their own Books of Discipline, there is no reason to expect that the Africa Central Conference would try to do that together. Instead, look for up to four separate Books of Discipline for this region – Angola, Zimbabwe, Southeast Africa, and East Africa.

Conclusion
As stated in the introduction, the debate over homosexuality might be primarily American, but if the church is revamping its structures, that process can play out in different ways around the globe. It would be wrong to think that changes in the structure of the church in the US will not lead to any changes in the structure of the church elsewhere.

In summary, look for Europeans to strengthen their connections to each other while connections loosen elsewhere, perhaps implementing a local option to accommodate differences over homosexuality among themselves. Look for the Philippines to continue as is in terms of structure and stance on homosexuality or possibly to seek full autonomy from the denomination. Look for the map of African Central Conferences to be reshaped, especially in the south and east, while all branches uphold current teachings on sexuality.

Why Sierra Leonean apportionments matter

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

The Sierra Leone Annual Conference held its annual meeting a month ago. At the meeting, Bishop John Yambasu declared he wants churches in Sierra Leone to pay their apportionments so that the annual conference is less dependent on American (and German) money. You can read three slightly different versions of this story, all from Phileas Jusu, from the West African Writers blog, from UMNS, and from the Annual Conference report.

Annual conferences which are part of the Central Conferences, like Sierra Leone, are being asked to contribute to global apportionments for the first time this quadrennium. Bishop Yambasu mentioned this new factor in the church's finances, but the majority of apportionment dollars will stay in the Sierra Leone Annual Conference and support its work. Yambasu stressed the importance of this money for the annual conference as well as its global obligations.

This story is significant for several reasons:

1. Yambasu explicitly tied his instructions to a possible split in the UMC.

As the first line of the UMNS story reads, "The United Methodist Church in Sierra Leone needs to reduce its reliance on overseas support in case the global denomination splits over the issue of homosexuality, Bishop John K. Yambasu told members of the conference at their annual meeting."

First, it's significant to see a bishop being this blunt about the possible future of the denomination in an annual conference meeting.

Second, while it's easy to read the debate over homosexuality as a US-centric issue and identify the ways in which Americans are strategizing for a possible post-split future, it is important to remember that Americans are not the only ones doing so. Planning by those outside the US means that Americans will not control all of the outcomes, should a split occur.

2. Yambasu means business about collecting apportionments.

Current annual conference policy stipulates "only pastors who pay their apportionments in full shall receive salaries at the end of the month. Further, only congregations who pay their apportionments in full will have their pastors and members considered for election as delegates to Central, General and other international conferences ... Bishop’s cabinet has also agreed that district superintendents who fail to pay full apportionments for the year will be moved and replaced" (from the West African Writers piece). Yambasu intends to start enforcing this policy and has already withheld salaries from November and December of last year for pastors who did not collect and turn over apportionments.

While not paying pastors and firing district superintendents might seem severe penalties to United Methodists used to their regular incomes, these consequences are clear signs that Yambasu is very serious about collecting apportionments and will use whatever leverage he has to do so. This shift is not about beginning to think about starting to collect apportionments. This shift is about producing immediate results.

3. Sierra Leone isn't the only annual conference outside the US moving away from dependency.

As this blog has previously noted, the Liberia Annual Conference is also taking steps to achieve financial independence, and that was before General Conference 2016. The savvy leaders of the UMC in West Africa know that greater financial self-sufficiency increases their leverage in negotiations regarding the future of the UMC. Furthermore, whatever comes with regard to the future of the UMC, it will increase their self-determination and further their ministry.

Why Julu Swen & Phileas Jusu' top UMC communicators award is significant

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

In case you missed it, United Methodist News Service reported earlier this week that Julu Swen of Liberia and Phileas Jusu of Sierra Leone were awarded the United Methodist Association of Communicators' 2014 United Methodist Communicators of the Year Award.  In bestowing the award, the UM Association of Communicators cited Swen and Jusu's work in covering the Ebola epidemic.  This award is a significant story for at least two reasons.

First, it's significant that two Africans won the top award.  All of the other awards announced by the UM Association of Communicators were given to Americans working for one of the American annual conferences, UMNS, UM Communications, umc.org, or UMW.  In part, this reflects the resource differential between American annual conferences and annual conferences from the Central Conferences.  American annual conferences have more money to pay staff to focus on communications for the annual conferences.  But both Jusu and Swen work (at least in part) for annual conferences as well.  We should not assume that annual conferences in the United States are the only ones with messages to share or the resources and savvy to share them.

Second, it's significant that Swen and Jusu won by reporting on an issue of international significance.  Much of the communication generated by annual conferences is directed at internal audiences - ministers and members of those annual conferences.  That's usually appropriate.  Nevertheless, we should remember that what we do in annual conferences can matter to the rest of the connection as well.  Indeed, that's one reason why United Methodism's connectional system is significant - it allows for sharing and communication beyond geographic boundaries.  Certainly the serious nature of and international interest in Ebola helped garner Jusu and Swen's reporting attention, but there are other stories coming out of annual conferences that are worth being shared beyond the boundaries of the conference, even if they are less dire than Ebola.

Congratulations, then, are in order to Swen and Jusu.  This blog has been a fan and supporter of Swen in particular since before the Ebola outbreak, and it's nice to see him so recognized.  May we all be inspired by their work.

Ebola in the UMC Twitterverse

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

One of the things that I do on a regular basis for the sake of this blog and the related Twitter feed and online newspaper is read through tweets put out by UMC sources.  I do so to find and retweet international United Methodist news, but it's always a fascinating window into what United Methodists in the US and beyond are talking about.

I have been struck in the past couple of weeks by how much coverage the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has gotten in UMC press coverages.  Much credit goes to E. Julu Swen, a United Methodist journalist from Liberia, for providing stories, pictures, and videos relaying how United Methodists are impacted by and responding to the Ebola outbreak.  You can see his material on his blog or his Twitter account.  Of course, it's not only Mr. Swen who has been reporting on the Ebola crisis, but also umc.org, UMCOR, and the United Methodist Reporter.

I think that amount of coverage is entirely deserved.  This is a big story and directly affects United Methodists in Sierra Leone and Liberia.  United Methodists are dying from the disease.  United Methodists are praying for those affected by Ebola.  United Methodists are helping prevent the spread of the disease.  United Methodists are providing assistance in the fight against Ebola.

What has surprised me about the United Methodist coverage of the Ebola outbreak has not been the merit of the story, but the immediacy and extent of the coverage that a combination of a global denomination and social media make possible.  In the past week or two, there have been stories every day and often several times a day relating the latest developments in this horrific story.  That's almost as much coverage as immigration reform or discussions of schism, two notably headline-grabbing issues in the UMC, are able to generate.

Although the Ebola outbreak is a horrible occurrence, I think the coverage given it in United Methodist social and online media has shown that United Methodists in the United States have an interest in and appetite for news from elsewhere in the connection that can, at times, rival their interest in news from the US.  Certainly the horrific nature of this disease has made the story particularly gripping.  Yet the point remains, United Methodists want to know not just about United Methodists elsewhere around the world but larger events around the world too.

In my academic life, I've done a lot of historical research looking at old American Methodist newspapers from the 19th century.  When first I began to read them, I was surprised to discover how much secular international news that these papers contained.  They reported not just on Methodist affairs in the US or Methodist missions, but also religious, political, economic, scientific, and military news from around the globe.  With the rise of other news outlets, Methodist newspapers gradually reduced the breadth of their coverage and focused more on Methodist news and American news.

While the 19th century is past and gone, the coverage of the Ebola outbreak shows that there is still a desire for the church to be a conduit of information about what's happening around the world, not just what's happening around the denomination.  To that end, I highly recommend two other United Methodist social media sources.  The UMC in France has an excellent Twitter feed that carries many international news stories (many in French, but those can be easily translated with online services), often highlighting the role of religion.  The UMC in the Philippines also has an active Twitter feed sharing stories from the Philippines, the US, and beyond.  United Methodists from any country would benefit from reading the materials posted by these two Methodist news sources.

The impact of Imagine No Malaria

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

Last Friday was World Malaria Day for those of you who missed it, though I doubt many of you did.  The day dedicated to the fight against malaria, undertaken in the UMC by our Imagine No Malaria campaign, received a lot of press.  In fact, in my informal observations of the Methodist Twitterverse, World Malaria Day was one of the most tweeted-about topics ever outside the liturgical year.  While Easter, which came the Sunday before, received more attention, the comparison was closer than I had expected.  Not only did the general agencies promote it on a daily basis for two weeks ahead of time, but most of the Annual Conferences with active Twitter feeds were strongly promoting it as well.  Individual United Methodists added their digital voices too.

That's a good thing.  It's a good thing because it puts The United Methodist Church's focus where it should be: on mission.  When we are in the season of celebrating Jesus' resurrection and triumph over death, it makes sense for us to live out our discipleship by defeating death and promoting life for those in malaria-stricken areas.  Moreover, the Imagine No Malaria campaign has been a great example of international cooperation by the denomination as a whole.  The campaign has depended not only on Western finances or expertise, but African expertise and connections on the ground as well.  Moreover, Imagine No Malaria has taken the church out into the world to collaborate with a wide range of government, non-profit, and business partners.  Finally, the campaign has been a success thus far and will likely continue being a success.

If you'd like a glimpse at some of the success stories of Imagine No Malaria, the church has put out a series of great articles and videos about how the campaign has played out in Sierra Leone.  I highly recommend you check them out if you haven't already:

Imagine No Malaria to Distribute Nets in Sierra Leone: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/imagine-no-malaria-to-distribute-nets-in-sierra-leone
Seeing Beauty in Sierra Leone: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/seeing-beauty-in-sierra-leone
Villagers Testify to Imagine No Malaria's Impact on Lives: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/villagers-testify-to-imagine-no-malarias-impact-on-lives
Thanks to You, We Can Imagine No Malaria: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/thanks-to-you-we-can-imagine-no-malaria

Recommended Reading: Norway-Sierra Leone Partnerships

A bit belatedly, I'd like to pass along this news story posted by UMConnections last week.  It's about rural development projects in Sierra Leone sponsored by the United Methodist Church in Norway and the Norwegian government, working with the Sierra Leone Annual Conference as a local partner.

I think this story is worth noting for a couple of reasons.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, stories about how non-US branches of the UMC are engaged in mission remind us that mission doesn't only flow from the US out to the rest of the world.  Mission is a many-directional phenomenon in the present world.  That's true of Christianity in general, and it's true of the UMC as well, as US-centric as the church remains.  This story should challenge our US-centric understandings of mission even more so than previous stories I've shared because no US-based Annual Conferences or agencies are part of this project.  It's just Norwegians and people of Sierra Leone connecting directly.

Second, it's important to note that this project isn't just a fly-by project for the UMC of Norway.  It's part of an on-going relationship with the Sierra Leone Annual Conference that dates back from before 2008.  The project comes out of a history of cooperation and partnership that makes this an example of Norwegians engaged in ministry with people from Sierra Leone, not ministry to them.

Finally, it's interesting to note that it's not just branches of the UMC that are involved in this project, but the Norwegian government.  In the United States, we have certain deeply-held notions about the relationship between churches and government, but as we think about The United Methodist Church, we have to understand that not all countries will share these same assumptions.  While the church must always be wary of submitting itself to too great of government influence, it is possible that government may be a positive partner in other countries in ways that are not conceivable in the United States.