Today's post is by regular contributor Rev. Lisa Beth White, doctoral student at Boston University School of Theology.
In a previous post here on UM & Global, the question was raised about U.S. Christians helping to solve problems they have helped to cause. This is a question that deserves some thought and consideration. Although the article mentions the work of UMCOR, I believe the question also points to the complexity of short term mission.
United Methodist short term mission participants are often deeply committed to living out their faith and to showing the love of neighbor in tangible ways. Revealing that the ways in which our U.S. culture and habits of consumption contribute to the very problems our short term mission work seeks to solve is difficult for short term mission participants. Volunteers who spend their vacation time and money in service have very little training in the complexities of cross-cultural encounters or in critical theological reflection. Critiques such as “solving problems you have helped to cause” can sound personal and far harsher than intended.
The critique points to structural sin, in which we as individuals benefit from economic, political or social systems in which others are trapped in cycles of poverty. The Social Creed found in the United Methodist Book of Discipline (2012) can be used as a starting point for revealing the ways in which our individual actions function in structural sin and systems of oppression, but this statement alone is nearly 40 pages long and quite complex. Short term mission team training often does not include the time needed for engaging such a lengthy document with critical theological reflection on one’s own practice of mission.
The World Council of Churches document Together Towards Life begins to articulate another complexity found in short term mission as well. In paragraph 76 it states that “increasingly popular short-term ‘mission trips’ can help to build partnerships between churches in different parts of the world but in some cases place an intolerable burden on poor local churches or disregard the existing churches altogether”. Short term mission has the potential to build relationships between Christians across borders in ways that were not possible before the availability of air travel, the internet and smart phones.
However, as indicated above, short term mission practiced without engaging structures of sin and oppression carry the potential of simply reinforcing boundaries between Christians. When short term mission is conducted in ways that diminish the agency of host churches – or at worst, disregards the local churches where short term mission teams travel – then the practice of short term mission serves to benefit those who travel rather those who receive. In this way, the purpose of short term mission is subverted, and can no longer be considered mission.
However, the short term mission participants that I have encountered in my research would be surprised and mortified to learn that their mission work contributed to a problem rather than solving it. I see in this complex problem of short term mission the possibility of living more fully into the Together Towards Life call to “live out the faith and hope of the community of God’s people” (paragraph 78). U.S. short term mission participants express their desire to be faithful to Christ in their short term mission work. Many use the terminology of being the “hands and feet of Christ” to people who need help.
Together Towards Life states that “[t]hrough service the church participates in God’s mission, following the way of its Servant Lord” (paragraph 78). The challenge is to help short term mission participants learn how to manifest “the power of service over the power of domination” through learning their own participation in those structures of domination. Short term mission trips have the potential for education and transformation of U.S. Christians, but only if time and attention are given to thoughtful and careful revelation of the ways in which we contribute to the problems we seek to solve.
International short term mission has potential for both the power of service and the power of domination. I believe that U.S. short term mission participants desire to live into the potential of building relationships and partnerships. They have the capacity to critically reflect on their participation in God’s mission.
Church leadership can walk with short term mission participants through the hard work of revealing structures and systems of oppression, reflecting theologically on their mission work, and examining whether they are truly working with host churches to build partnerships. In this way, short term mission can address the critique of “solving problems they helped to cause” and at the same time meet the challenge to “find ways of exercising spiritual gifts which build up the whole church in every part” (Together Towards Life, paragraph 76).
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label Together towards Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Together towards Life. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Kemper, Friday reflect on Together Towards LIfe
This blog has attempted to provide specifically United Methodist reflections on Together Towards Life, the new mission document adopted by the World Council of Churches. I am pleased to share links to two more of these with you.
First, GBGM General Secretary Thomas Kemper, writing back in March, briefly introduces the document and suggests three questions for further study of it:
Second, Rev. Patrick Friday, director of the In Mission Together program for GBGM, also writing back in March, reflects on the theme of mission from the margin, which is an important emphasis of Together Towards Life. He holds up the 50/50 Partnerships promoted by the In Mission Together team as an example of the ways in which United Methodists can be in mission with, not in mission to, those on the margins.
First, GBGM General Secretary Thomas Kemper, writing back in March, briefly introduces the document and suggests three questions for further study of it:
- How do you celebrate the awareness that the gospel of Jesus Christ is “good news for all” in the contemporary, always changing, social and political landscape?
- In what areas might ecumenical mission collaboration be most productive: church planting, disaster relief and/or health ministries?
- How does mission awareness keep your church alive and on the move? How broad is your mission movement?
Second, Rev. Patrick Friday, director of the In Mission Together program for GBGM, also writing back in March, reflects on the theme of mission from the margin, which is an important emphasis of Together Towards Life. He holds up the 50/50 Partnerships promoted by the In Mission Together team as an example of the ways in which United Methodists can be in mission with, not in mission to, those on the margins.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Recommended reading: Mary Ellen Kris on ministry from the margins
Mary Ellen Kris, a consultant for the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) on the Ministry with the Poor Area of Focus, has written a great reflection on the connection between the UMC's focus on the Ministry with the Poor and the call for mission from the margins found in the WCC's Together towards Life document. It's entitled "Ministry With the Poor at Its Best: Ministry from the Margins," and you can find it online here. For more posts related to Together towards Life, click on the tag at the bottom of this post.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Glory Dharmaraj: Transformative Learning and Transformative Spirituality
Today's piece is written by Dr. Glory E. Dharmaraj, a consultant for United Methodist Women. It is the third of a three-part series. Dr. Dharmaraj contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in
Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] This final blog piece explains the connection between transformative learning, described in the previous piece, and transformative spirituality.
Equally important as the intersectional oppressions of mission study participants I described previously is the spiritual identity of the adult learner as a child of God. Recalling one’s baptism, naming one’s baptismal identity as a child of God, and claiming it as a call for all the baptized believers to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves …,” as the United Methodist Service of Baptism articulates it.[ii]
Transformative spirituality includes addressing personal sins as well as corporate sins and systemic evil. The hall mark of transformative spirituality is addressing sin as well as sinned againstness, the systems that perpetuate poverty, war, conflict, and that constantly push people to the margins of society and living.[iii] A key characteristic of transformative spirituality, as stated in Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, is “Disturbed by the asymmetries and imbalances of power that divide and trouble the church and world, we are called to repentance, to critical reflection on systems of power, and to accountable use of power structures.” This is the only sentence taken from Edinburgh 2010 Common Call, and used in Together Towards Life in its specific treatment of transformative spirituality.[iv] Interestingly enough, in formulating the final version of this particular sentence in the Common Call, Harriett Olson, the General Secretary of the United Methodist Women, spoke from among the audience, emphasizing “critical reflection” and the “accountable use of power and structure” at the 2010 Edinburgh Missionary Conference in Scotland.
Transformative spirituality undergirds transformative learning in addressing the cry of the needy, the sinned against people here and elsewhere. Creating the environment for the Holy Spirit to renew the participants through prayer and learning is an opportunity intentionally created in the facilitating of the mission studies. The pedagogical core intentionally promoted in facilitating mission studies is that teaching is learner-centered, and learners themselves are agents of change and interveners in places of injustice to transform them. Study leaders are not unquestioned authorities; they examine their own presuppositions and social locations; they are enablers and creators of environments for transformation.
Mission educational settings prepare the way for the church to be in the world in new ways, facilitating a conversation between the center and the margins. The center creates and facilitates spaces for multiple voices and the margins shape and influence the center. Facilitating mission study is more than the act of studying; it is study that leads to action in order to make a difference. A story in the Babylonian Talmud captures this timeless truth. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon debate the question, “Which is greater, study or action?” Rabbi Tarfon answered saying that action is greater. Rabbi Akiva answered saying that study is greater. The listening elders agreed with Rabbi Akiva that study is greater than action because it leads to action.[v]
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] This final blog piece explains the connection between transformative learning, described in the previous piece, and transformative spirituality.
Equally important as the intersectional oppressions of mission study participants I described previously is the spiritual identity of the adult learner as a child of God. Recalling one’s baptism, naming one’s baptismal identity as a child of God, and claiming it as a call for all the baptized believers to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves …,” as the United Methodist Service of Baptism articulates it.[ii]
Transformative spirituality includes addressing personal sins as well as corporate sins and systemic evil. The hall mark of transformative spirituality is addressing sin as well as sinned againstness, the systems that perpetuate poverty, war, conflict, and that constantly push people to the margins of society and living.[iii] A key characteristic of transformative spirituality, as stated in Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, is “Disturbed by the asymmetries and imbalances of power that divide and trouble the church and world, we are called to repentance, to critical reflection on systems of power, and to accountable use of power structures.” This is the only sentence taken from Edinburgh 2010 Common Call, and used in Together Towards Life in its specific treatment of transformative spirituality.[iv] Interestingly enough, in formulating the final version of this particular sentence in the Common Call, Harriett Olson, the General Secretary of the United Methodist Women, spoke from among the audience, emphasizing “critical reflection” and the “accountable use of power and structure” at the 2010 Edinburgh Missionary Conference in Scotland.
Transformative spirituality undergirds transformative learning in addressing the cry of the needy, the sinned against people here and elsewhere. Creating the environment for the Holy Spirit to renew the participants through prayer and learning is an opportunity intentionally created in the facilitating of the mission studies. The pedagogical core intentionally promoted in facilitating mission studies is that teaching is learner-centered, and learners themselves are agents of change and interveners in places of injustice to transform them. Study leaders are not unquestioned authorities; they examine their own presuppositions and social locations; they are enablers and creators of environments for transformation.
Mission educational settings prepare the way for the church to be in the world in new ways, facilitating a conversation between the center and the margins. The center creates and facilitates spaces for multiple voices and the margins shape and influence the center. Facilitating mission study is more than the act of studying; it is study that leads to action in order to make a difference. A story in the Babylonian Talmud captures this timeless truth. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon debate the question, “Which is greater, study or action?” Rabbi Tarfon answered saying that action is greater. Rabbi Akiva answered saying that study is greater. The listening elders agreed with Rabbi Akiva that study is greater than action because it leads to action.[v]
[i] A fuller version of this article was presented as a paper in the 2014 American Society of Missiology, Association of Professors of Mission. See Glory Dharmaraj, "Transformative Learning versus Informative Learning in Facilitating Mission Studies." http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/37
[ii] “The Baptismal Covenant I” and “The Baptismal Covenant II” in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville, TN: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 34 and 40.
[iii] Raymond Fung, “Human Sinned-Againstness “ in International Review of Mission, vol. LXIX, no. 275 (July 1980): 332-333.
[iv] Jooseop Keum, ed. Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 2013), 14. The document was approved earlier in 2012.
[v] Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 40 B. http://on1foot.org/text/babyloniantalmud-kiddushin-
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Glory Dharmaraj: Transformative learning as an educational model
Today's piece is written by Dr. Glory E. Dharmaraj, a consultant for United Methodist Women. It is the second of a three-part series. Dr. Dharmaraj contributed this
piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] Last week’s article explained the history of United Methodist mission studies as a site of struggle. This week, I will look at the approach to transformative learning used used in facilitating the Mission Studies sponsored by the United Methodist Women.
Transformative learning is a key process outlined in the adult education aimed at emancipatory knowledge in the late mid-twentieth century in Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire where he emphasizes education as a process which centers around critical reflection on one’s personal and collective reality that leads to engagement in actions. Critical reflection is a component integral to transformative learning methods used in facilitating United Methodist mission education.
Using the spiritual growth study for 2012, Immigration and the Bible by Joan M. Maruskin, as an example, let me examine some of the ways in which the study leaders were trained to facilitate at the regional levels.
The pedagogical strategy we have used is to reading the bible through the eyes of the migrant, immigrant, and refugee in this particular study. In fact, Maruskin’s central thesis is that the “Bible is the ultimate immigration handbook. It was written by, for, and about migrants, immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.”[ii] Enabling reading through the perspectives of people at the margins offers a range of insights into the pain and cry of the least of these. Reading the stories from the Bible, as a community of people from different cultural backgrounds inside a class setting, and reflecting on what God is saying in specific contexts is both an individual and collective learning process.
Braiding the stories of immigrants, along with the insights from reading the biblical stories, the adult learners are led to further reflection. As reflections unfold, the participants identify patterns, similarities, differences in the stories they hear from each other. The facilitator makes sure that while reflection takes place voices of those not present at the table are included, since in analyzing the relations of power in the interconnected structures of class, race, gender etc., it is vital to include a diversity of voices. This part of the learning process is often known as critical reflection or critical thinking.
Diagrammatically, the process of critical reflection can be represented by a spiral, starting with sharing one’s experiences relating to the issue, reading the Bible through the eyes of the migrant and immigrant, locating patterns of similarity and dissimilarity, naming the barriers and resistance to change, discerning God’s voice in the readings and at work in the world, looking for clues of transformation, and coming up with actions. The process is repeated again with the cycle of experience, reflection, and action. The spiral image captures the flow of the transformative method as it involves experience, reflection on experience, social analysis, strategies for transformation and action. The spiral is not a closed one.
In the critical reflection, a key component is social identity and location of the person doing the analysis. Often social identities are connected to each other, and they are not isolated entities. The term “intersectionality” is both a revealer of the layered and complex nature of issue at hand, and also a tool available to address the issue. The term intersectionality was first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. A lawyer by profession who worked among battered women, Crenshaw named an experience which several of the women whom she encountered embodied. These women underwent multiple layers of oppression due to their race, class, sexuality, language, locality etc. In their daily lived existence, these multiple oppressions intersected.
Crenshaw has identified the site of multiple oppressions and named the place of such an experience. A woman of color, with no education, and who has difficulty living above the poverty line embodies the impact of many strikes against her.[iii] It is important to address the convergence of these knotted oppressions as a whole using the lens of intersectionality. Intersectionality is both a revealer of the complexity of the issue at hand, as well as a tool for addressing it.
Intersectional oppressions and God’s shalom are mutually exclusive. In order to engage in the work of shalom, fullness of life for everyone, it is helpful to shape our tools for greater engagement in God’s mission by naming the intersectional and fluid nature of identities, and not compartmentalize the various categories. Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonialist query, “Can the subaltern speak?”[iv] is still a powerful one in the context of intersectional oppressions. Amplifying the vocal silence of those at the margins is done by walking in solidarity with them, creating an environment for them to speak, and holding the microphone to them.
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] Last week’s article explained the history of United Methodist mission studies as a site of struggle. This week, I will look at the approach to transformative learning used used in facilitating the Mission Studies sponsored by the United Methodist Women.
Transformative learning is a key process outlined in the adult education aimed at emancipatory knowledge in the late mid-twentieth century in Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire where he emphasizes education as a process which centers around critical reflection on one’s personal and collective reality that leads to engagement in actions. Critical reflection is a component integral to transformative learning methods used in facilitating United Methodist mission education.
Using the spiritual growth study for 2012, Immigration and the Bible by Joan M. Maruskin, as an example, let me examine some of the ways in which the study leaders were trained to facilitate at the regional levels.
The pedagogical strategy we have used is to reading the bible through the eyes of the migrant, immigrant, and refugee in this particular study. In fact, Maruskin’s central thesis is that the “Bible is the ultimate immigration handbook. It was written by, for, and about migrants, immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.”[ii] Enabling reading through the perspectives of people at the margins offers a range of insights into the pain and cry of the least of these. Reading the stories from the Bible, as a community of people from different cultural backgrounds inside a class setting, and reflecting on what God is saying in specific contexts is both an individual and collective learning process.
Braiding the stories of immigrants, along with the insights from reading the biblical stories, the adult learners are led to further reflection. As reflections unfold, the participants identify patterns, similarities, differences in the stories they hear from each other. The facilitator makes sure that while reflection takes place voices of those not present at the table are included, since in analyzing the relations of power in the interconnected structures of class, race, gender etc., it is vital to include a diversity of voices. This part of the learning process is often known as critical reflection or critical thinking.
Diagrammatically, the process of critical reflection can be represented by a spiral, starting with sharing one’s experiences relating to the issue, reading the Bible through the eyes of the migrant and immigrant, locating patterns of similarity and dissimilarity, naming the barriers and resistance to change, discerning God’s voice in the readings and at work in the world, looking for clues of transformation, and coming up with actions. The process is repeated again with the cycle of experience, reflection, and action. The spiral image captures the flow of the transformative method as it involves experience, reflection on experience, social analysis, strategies for transformation and action. The spiral is not a closed one.
In the critical reflection, a key component is social identity and location of the person doing the analysis. Often social identities are connected to each other, and they are not isolated entities. The term “intersectionality” is both a revealer of the layered and complex nature of issue at hand, and also a tool available to address the issue. The term intersectionality was first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. A lawyer by profession who worked among battered women, Crenshaw named an experience which several of the women whom she encountered embodied. These women underwent multiple layers of oppression due to their race, class, sexuality, language, locality etc. In their daily lived existence, these multiple oppressions intersected.
Crenshaw has identified the site of multiple oppressions and named the place of such an experience. A woman of color, with no education, and who has difficulty living above the poverty line embodies the impact of many strikes against her.[iii] It is important to address the convergence of these knotted oppressions as a whole using the lens of intersectionality. Intersectionality is both a revealer of the complexity of the issue at hand, as well as a tool for addressing it.
Intersectional oppressions and God’s shalom are mutually exclusive. In order to engage in the work of shalom, fullness of life for everyone, it is helpful to shape our tools for greater engagement in God’s mission by naming the intersectional and fluid nature of identities, and not compartmentalize the various categories. Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonialist query, “Can the subaltern speak?”[iv] is still a powerful one in the context of intersectional oppressions. Amplifying the vocal silence of those at the margins is done by walking in solidarity with them, creating an environment for them to speak, and holding the microphone to them.
[i] A fuller version of this article was presented as a paper in the 2014 American Society of Missiology, Association of Professors of Mission. See Glory Dharmaraj, "Transformative Learning versus Informative Learning in Facilitating Mission Studies." http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/37
[ii] Joan Maruskin, Immigration and the Bible: A Guide for Radical Welcome (New York: Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2012), 3.
[iii] Kimberlé Crenshaw in “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, 43.6 (1989):1241-1299.
[iv] Gayatri Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in its updated version in Reflections
on the History of an Idea: Can the Subaltern Speak? Ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University,
2010): 21-80.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Glory Dharmaraj: Mission Studies as a Site for Transformative Learning
Today's piece is written by Dr. Glory E. Dharmaraj, a consultant for United Methodist Women. It is the first of a three-part series. Dr. Dharmaraj contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] I begin this week with a history of mission studies as a site for transformative struggle and learning.
Story of mission studies
The story of mission studies, originating as an ecumenical women’s venture, has found its parochial home now in the United Methodist Women. The ecumenical roots of the current mission studies go back to the Central Committee on United Study in 1900. Beginning in 1901, the committee published a mission study annually for the use of women interested in mission in the local churches.[ii] Ecumenical Schools of Christian Mission, with an emphasis on the preparation for teaching, began in 1904, thanks to the efforts of the Federation of Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions. The Federation and the Council of Women for Home Missions started a National School for the training of trainers in the spring for two weeks for the summer schools of mission.[iii]
As with all the women’s mission boards, due to overall structural changes and mergers, the work of the annual mission studies came to be housed within the Federal Council of Churches, and its later version, the National Council of Churches in the U.S., till 1999. With the disbanding of the Friendship Press which published the annual mission studies, the ecumenical endeavor became a United Methodist shared endeavor by the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries and GBGM. In 2006, the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries took on the major responsibility for the work. The story of mission studies is a story of survival, though it may look like a regressive journey, seen through ecumenical eyes.
However, in the educational pedagogy used by the United Methodist Women, critical analysis plays a key role: a legacy of ecumenical learning. Critical analysis is conceived by Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and serves as an educational concept “aimed at freeing the parochial mentality from its limitations and at participation and change.”[iv]
Struggles and Sites
A transformative learning experience which precedes the use of critical analysis is the collective resistance of Methodist women in the teaching of mission studies in the wake of the creation of the Central Jurisdiction in 1939. This Central Jurisdiction was created as a segregated structure for the black Methodists during the unification of the Methodist Church, South and North. While five of the jurisdictions across the U.S. were geographically structured, the sixth one was racially based exclusively for black Methodists.
This was a challenge to the teaching of mission studies. The Methodist women leadership insisted that the then Schools of Christian Mission be held on a regional basis and not on a racially segregated jurisdictional basis. Hence the Regional Schools of Christian Mission (emphasis mine) were conducted in five places subverting the segregated structure of the larger Church.[v]
Until 2012, the Regional Schools of Christian Mission were held in the five geographically divided regions, long after the Central Jurisdiction was abolished in 1968. The name, Regional Schools of Mission, however, remains in memory as an act of subversion of and resistance to the unjust structure imposed on the African American Methodist members. Now due to strategic investment of time and personnel, the regional level training is offered in three places across the country, with a name change Mission u, while keeping the component of “how-to-teach” as a core component. The Mission educational settings for the mission studies are often known as university without walls.
“Transformative Spirituality” is one of the key concepts in the new ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism by the World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Times. In this series of articles, I would like to share how I have adapted and applied this concept as a pedagogical practice in facilitating the annual United Methodist mission studies.[i] I begin this week with a history of mission studies as a site for transformative struggle and learning.
Story of mission studies
The story of mission studies, originating as an ecumenical women’s venture, has found its parochial home now in the United Methodist Women. The ecumenical roots of the current mission studies go back to the Central Committee on United Study in 1900. Beginning in 1901, the committee published a mission study annually for the use of women interested in mission in the local churches.[ii] Ecumenical Schools of Christian Mission, with an emphasis on the preparation for teaching, began in 1904, thanks to the efforts of the Federation of Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions. The Federation and the Council of Women for Home Missions started a National School for the training of trainers in the spring for two weeks for the summer schools of mission.[iii]
As with all the women’s mission boards, due to overall structural changes and mergers, the work of the annual mission studies came to be housed within the Federal Council of Churches, and its later version, the National Council of Churches in the U.S., till 1999. With the disbanding of the Friendship Press which published the annual mission studies, the ecumenical endeavor became a United Methodist shared endeavor by the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries and GBGM. In 2006, the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries took on the major responsibility for the work. The story of mission studies is a story of survival, though it may look like a regressive journey, seen through ecumenical eyes.
However, in the educational pedagogy used by the United Methodist Women, critical analysis plays a key role: a legacy of ecumenical learning. Critical analysis is conceived by Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and serves as an educational concept “aimed at freeing the parochial mentality from its limitations and at participation and change.”[iv]
Struggles and Sites
A transformative learning experience which precedes the use of critical analysis is the collective resistance of Methodist women in the teaching of mission studies in the wake of the creation of the Central Jurisdiction in 1939. This Central Jurisdiction was created as a segregated structure for the black Methodists during the unification of the Methodist Church, South and North. While five of the jurisdictions across the U.S. were geographically structured, the sixth one was racially based exclusively for black Methodists.
This was a challenge to the teaching of mission studies. The Methodist women leadership insisted that the then Schools of Christian Mission be held on a regional basis and not on a racially segregated jurisdictional basis. Hence the Regional Schools of Christian Mission (emphasis mine) were conducted in five places subverting the segregated structure of the larger Church.[v]
Until 2012, the Regional Schools of Christian Mission were held in the five geographically divided regions, long after the Central Jurisdiction was abolished in 1968. The name, Regional Schools of Mission, however, remains in memory as an act of subversion of and resistance to the unjust structure imposed on the African American Methodist members. Now due to strategic investment of time and personnel, the regional level training is offered in three places across the country, with a name change Mission u, while keeping the component of “how-to-teach” as a core component. The Mission educational settings for the mission studies are often known as university without walls.
[i] A fuller version of this article was presented as a paper in the 2014 American Society of Missiology, Association of Professors of Mission. See Glory Dharmaraj, "Transformative Learning versus Informative Learning in Facilitating Mission Studies." http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/37
[ii] See pages 156-157 in R. Pierce Beaver, American Protestant Women in World Mission: A History of the First Feminist Movement in
North America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980). First ed., published in 1968 under title, All Loves Excelling.
[iii] Beaver,
157.
[iv] Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1994), 21.
[v] See To a Higher Glory: The Growth and Development of Black Women Organized for Mission in the Methodist Church, 1940-1968 by the Women’s Division and the Task Force on the History of the Central Jurisdiction Women’s Organization (Cincinnati, OH: Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 1978), 55.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Hendrik Pieterse: Make Disciples, Transform the World: Reflections on United Methodist Mission (Pt. 2)
Today's post is written by Dr. Hendrik R. Pieterse, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and World Religions at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Dr. Pieterse contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
Given the danger of focusing too much on human initiative in mission, as I outlined in my last post, what should we do, then? For a denomination wracked by anxiety over perceived decline, is the temptation to take matters into our own hands simply too great, unwittingly perpetuating the distortions of which Bosch and others have warned? Therefore, should we abandon the Matthean commission in favor of, say, Johannine or Lucan themes of mission and discipleship? Some have argued as much.
I, for one, am not yet persuaded. What we need, I think, is not a new mission statement but a coherent ecclesiology to give our disciple-making task the theological depth and missional flexibility fit for a global context. And to that end Grace Upon Grace and GBGM’s Theology of Mission, reflective of the ecumenical consensus summarized in Together Towards Life (TTL), offer important resources. I will mention just one or two.
We should pause to insist, however, that we dare not do our ecclesial reflection without substantive exegetical attention to Matt. 28:19-20—and to do so in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. This exegetical work serves not only to resist the all-too-common habit of using “making disciples for the transformation of the world” as a free-floating mantra in denominational discourse, deliberation, and communication. It serves also—and more importantly—to anchor our mission statement in Matthew’s total account of Jesus’ identity and mission. Surprising, perhaps even transformative, insights might result.
Take, for example, the fact that Matthew intends chapter 28:19-20 as a summary of his Gospel. “[T]eaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (v. 19) thus lifts up the entirety of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, recounted in the preceding chapters, as the pattern of discipleship. The result lends discipleship a prophetic, even costly, edge. Comments Bosch: “To become a disciple is to be incorporated into God’s new community through baptism and to side with the poor and the oppressed. . . . This is what Jesus has commanded his disciples . . .”
As a further example, consider that verse 20, promising Christ’s abiding presence with the disciples is not intended as a spiritual “back up” for however the church happens to define its mission. Rather, it reminds the disciples of mission as divinely generated and directed gift and promise. The church’s mission depends upon and endures as long as Christ’s promised presence.[1] To use mission parlance: the church’s mission is always and forever a function of and a grateful response to the missio Dei. Does the absence of this concluding promise in the Discipline’s citation of the Great Commission confirm the above suspicion that United Methodists tend to sublimate the priority of grace in mission?
Which brings us, briefly, to Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission as resources in constructing a coherent missional ecclesiology. In both documents, and beautifully and succinctly in the latter, United Methodists encounter at least three crucial affirmations:
(1) Mission is always and irreversibly the work of the triune God. Mission is a function of the doctrine of God. Mission is missio Dei.
(2) This means the church’s mission is always and irreversibly derivative, as instrument and servant of the divine mission. Foregrounding the church’s disciple-making charge at the expense of the divine initiative contradicts the logic of the missio Dei and compromises the church’s call.
(3) Mission is a journey of discovery, surprise, repentance, and transformation, as the church encounters in the neighbor a divine initiative that always and irreversibly precedes even our loftiest visions and best-laid plans. Thus mission regains its sense of expectancy and unpredictability. And, as the GBGM document notes, the virtues appropriate to an ever-surprising divine initiative is “openness” and “gratitude,” as we “await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way.”
This understanding of mission, and these virtues of missional discipleship, we Methodists once knew well. Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission are ready resources in recovering these seminal affirmations, however counterintuitive to a denomination so anxious to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
Given the danger of focusing too much on human initiative in mission, as I outlined in my last post, what should we do, then? For a denomination wracked by anxiety over perceived decline, is the temptation to take matters into our own hands simply too great, unwittingly perpetuating the distortions of which Bosch and others have warned? Therefore, should we abandon the Matthean commission in favor of, say, Johannine or Lucan themes of mission and discipleship? Some have argued as much.
I, for one, am not yet persuaded. What we need, I think, is not a new mission statement but a coherent ecclesiology to give our disciple-making task the theological depth and missional flexibility fit for a global context. And to that end Grace Upon Grace and GBGM’s Theology of Mission, reflective of the ecumenical consensus summarized in Together Towards Life (TTL), offer important resources. I will mention just one or two.
We should pause to insist, however, that we dare not do our ecclesial reflection without substantive exegetical attention to Matt. 28:19-20—and to do so in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. This exegetical work serves not only to resist the all-too-common habit of using “making disciples for the transformation of the world” as a free-floating mantra in denominational discourse, deliberation, and communication. It serves also—and more importantly—to anchor our mission statement in Matthew’s total account of Jesus’ identity and mission. Surprising, perhaps even transformative, insights might result.
Take, for example, the fact that Matthew intends chapter 28:19-20 as a summary of his Gospel. “[T]eaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (v. 19) thus lifts up the entirety of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, recounted in the preceding chapters, as the pattern of discipleship. The result lends discipleship a prophetic, even costly, edge. Comments Bosch: “To become a disciple is to be incorporated into God’s new community through baptism and to side with the poor and the oppressed. . . . This is what Jesus has commanded his disciples . . .”
As a further example, consider that verse 20, promising Christ’s abiding presence with the disciples is not intended as a spiritual “back up” for however the church happens to define its mission. Rather, it reminds the disciples of mission as divinely generated and directed gift and promise. The church’s mission depends upon and endures as long as Christ’s promised presence.[1] To use mission parlance: the church’s mission is always and forever a function of and a grateful response to the missio Dei. Does the absence of this concluding promise in the Discipline’s citation of the Great Commission confirm the above suspicion that United Methodists tend to sublimate the priority of grace in mission?
Which brings us, briefly, to Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission as resources in constructing a coherent missional ecclesiology. In both documents, and beautifully and succinctly in the latter, United Methodists encounter at least three crucial affirmations:
(1) Mission is always and irreversibly the work of the triune God. Mission is a function of the doctrine of God. Mission is missio Dei.
(2) This means the church’s mission is always and irreversibly derivative, as instrument and servant of the divine mission. Foregrounding the church’s disciple-making charge at the expense of the divine initiative contradicts the logic of the missio Dei and compromises the church’s call.
(3) Mission is a journey of discovery, surprise, repentance, and transformation, as the church encounters in the neighbor a divine initiative that always and irreversibly precedes even our loftiest visions and best-laid plans. Thus mission regains its sense of expectancy and unpredictability. And, as the GBGM document notes, the virtues appropriate to an ever-surprising divine initiative is “openness” and “gratitude,” as we “await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way.”
This understanding of mission, and these virtues of missional discipleship, we Methodists once knew well. Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission are ready resources in recovering these seminal affirmations, however counterintuitive to a denomination so anxious to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
[1] David J. Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16-20,” in Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner, eds., The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church (Eerdmans, 2008), 84, 87-91.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Hendrik Pieterse: Make Disciples, Transform the World: Reflections on United Methodist Mission (Pt. 1)
Today's post is written by Dr. Hendrik R. Pieterse, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and World Religions at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Dr. Pieterse contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
In reading Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) alongside Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission (the mission statement of the United Methodist mission agency), it is heartening to note the resonance of major themes in mission theology and practice over the past several decades: mission as initiative of the triune God; the church as missionary by nature and so servant of the missio Dei; mission as holistic (i.e., embracing “dynamism, justice, diversity, and transformation” within the divine aim of “abundant life” for all creation [TTL, 6, 7]), and more.
One difference is striking, though—the absence of the so-called Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) in the ecumenical statement. This passage seems to play no interpretive role in TTL; in fact, it appears nowhere in the document. Instead, Lucan and Johannine commission themes predominate. Now, arguments from silence are notoriously shaky; and so I will resist the temptation to divine the document’s motives for the omission. Yet, given that the Matthean commission serves as the basis for United Methodism’s mission statement (Book of Discipline, ¶¶120-21), its absence in TTL should at least prompt United Methodists to ponder the implications of the emerging ecumenical consensus about church and mission for our continued appeal to the Great Commission as an aspiring global denomination.
Most readers of this blog are well aware of the checkered, and often deeply troubling, career of the Great Commission in the history of Western mission, especially in its heyday during the late 1880s and into the first third of the twentieth century. Interpreted as a command to be obeyed (“Go!”), and riding the tide of Western social, economic, and political power in league with a taken-for-granted inferiority of the receiving cultures, Matt. 28:19-20 was often pressed in the service of Western Christian expansionism. At least in part bolstering this Western missionary chauvinism and its resultant cultural tone-deafness, as David Bosch has pointed out, was a gradual foregrounding of human autonomy and agency, reflecting the contest with divine providence and power in some quarters of Enlightenment thought. Tellingly for us Methodists, Bosch calls this foregrounding of human agency “the gradual ‘Arminianization’ of Protestantism, evidenced . . . by the rapid growth of (Arminian) Methodist and Baptist churches in the United States . . .”[1]
Now, we would surely want to debate Bosch’s claim. Yet it is worth noting that a significant cadre of United Methodist scholars have detected a similar dynamic at work in our current employment of the Matthean commission. The foregrounding of “making” language in the Discipline’s description of our mission (¶¶ 120-122), they complain, obscures the priority of grace in mission, focusing on “what ‘we’ do, rather than the primacy of God’s grace and power.” In so doing, and perhaps inevitably, disciple-making becomes a “system,” with disciples as “output” or “product.”[2]
Should it surprise, then, given the deep anxiety in the U.S. church, fuelled by decades-long rhetoric of decline, that the already tenuous depiction of the grace-faith dynamic noted above should deteriorate into a full-blown obsession with “fixing”—with rightsizing church structures, with membership metrics and “dashboards”?
Buried in this frenzy is our deep-seated Methodist commitment to an accountable faith—a discipleship that is actively guided and shaped in all its dimensions, from individual devotion to denominational structures, by the rhythms of the means of grace. As Randy Maddox and others have reminded us, at our best, “making disciples” is always the function of that delicate synergy of divine initiative and human response.[3]
In reading Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) alongside Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission (the mission statement of the United Methodist mission agency), it is heartening to note the resonance of major themes in mission theology and practice over the past several decades: mission as initiative of the triune God; the church as missionary by nature and so servant of the missio Dei; mission as holistic (i.e., embracing “dynamism, justice, diversity, and transformation” within the divine aim of “abundant life” for all creation [TTL, 6, 7]), and more.
One difference is striking, though—the absence of the so-called Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) in the ecumenical statement. This passage seems to play no interpretive role in TTL; in fact, it appears nowhere in the document. Instead, Lucan and Johannine commission themes predominate. Now, arguments from silence are notoriously shaky; and so I will resist the temptation to divine the document’s motives for the omission. Yet, given that the Matthean commission serves as the basis for United Methodism’s mission statement (Book of Discipline, ¶¶120-21), its absence in TTL should at least prompt United Methodists to ponder the implications of the emerging ecumenical consensus about church and mission for our continued appeal to the Great Commission as an aspiring global denomination.
Most readers of this blog are well aware of the checkered, and often deeply troubling, career of the Great Commission in the history of Western mission, especially in its heyday during the late 1880s and into the first third of the twentieth century. Interpreted as a command to be obeyed (“Go!”), and riding the tide of Western social, economic, and political power in league with a taken-for-granted inferiority of the receiving cultures, Matt. 28:19-20 was often pressed in the service of Western Christian expansionism. At least in part bolstering this Western missionary chauvinism and its resultant cultural tone-deafness, as David Bosch has pointed out, was a gradual foregrounding of human autonomy and agency, reflecting the contest with divine providence and power in some quarters of Enlightenment thought. Tellingly for us Methodists, Bosch calls this foregrounding of human agency “the gradual ‘Arminianization’ of Protestantism, evidenced . . . by the rapid growth of (Arminian) Methodist and Baptist churches in the United States . . .”[1]
Now, we would surely want to debate Bosch’s claim. Yet it is worth noting that a significant cadre of United Methodist scholars have detected a similar dynamic at work in our current employment of the Matthean commission. The foregrounding of “making” language in the Discipline’s description of our mission (¶¶ 120-122), they complain, obscures the priority of grace in mission, focusing on “what ‘we’ do, rather than the primacy of God’s grace and power.” In so doing, and perhaps inevitably, disciple-making becomes a “system,” with disciples as “output” or “product.”[2]
Should it surprise, then, given the deep anxiety in the U.S. church, fuelled by decades-long rhetoric of decline, that the already tenuous depiction of the grace-faith dynamic noted above should deteriorate into a full-blown obsession with “fixing”—with rightsizing church structures, with membership metrics and “dashboards”?
Buried in this frenzy is our deep-seated Methodist commitment to an accountable faith—a discipleship that is actively guided and shaped in all its dimensions, from individual devotion to denominational structures, by the rhythms of the means of grace. As Randy Maddox and others have reminded us, at our best, “making disciples” is always the function of that delicate synergy of divine initiative and human response.[3]
[1] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts In Theology of Mission (Orbis, 1991), 343. See also David J. Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16-20,” in Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner, eds., The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church (Eerdmans, 2008), 84, 87-91.
[2] Thomas Frank, Polity, Practice, and the Mission of the UMC (Abingdon, 2006), 163. See also Sarah Heaner Lancaster, “Our Mission Reconsidered: Do We Really ‘Make’ Disciples?”, Quarterly Review 23/2 (Summer 2003): 117-30.
[3] See Randy Maddox, “Wesley’s Prescription for “Making Disciples of Jesus Christ”: Insights for the TwentyFirst-Century Church,” Quarterly Review 23/1 (Spring 2003): 7-14.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Arun Jones: Some Thoughts on Together towards Life
Today's post is written by Dr. Arun Jones, Dan and Lillian Hankey Associate Professor of World Evangelism at Candler School of Theology. Dr. Jones contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
There is much to admire about this statement on mission and evangelism put out by the World Council of Churches. Some of these admirable points are its emphasis on the importance of life in all its fullness; its ecological concerns; its holding together the necessity of evangelism and of working for justice, peace and freedom; its concern for the poor and the marginalized; its condemnation of idolatrous treatment in some quarters of current global capitalism (as an ideology and not, I assume, as an economic arrangement); its call to conduct mission and evangelism in humility and with respect for others. Responding to the persisting importance of Pentecostalism and charismatic forms of Christianity around the world, it lays heavy stress on explicating (from a WCC point of view) the work of the Holy Spirit in mission and evangelism.
I am going to respond to the treatment in Together Towards Life (TTL) of the topic of missions from and to the margins, which has become an interest of mine. In this regard, I find TTL a rather frustrating work, because it wants to make the case for the importance of mission from the margins, while itself seemingly unaware of its location in the center of western Christian world. Allow me to illustrate.
Early on (¶ 6) the document says that “mission has been understood as a movement taking place from the centre to the periphery, and from the privileged to the marginalized.” This in itself is a highly debatable claim. In the book of Acts, for example, while geographically the gospel goes from the Jewish center (Jerusalem) to the margins (Rome), in terms of the privileged in society the movement is exactly the opposite: the apostles in Jerusalem are socially insignificant while those who hear and positively respond to the gospel at the geographic margins (the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, the priest of Zeus at Lystra, Lydia) are socially more privileged. Geographic and social marginality do not always coincide. And Christian history is full of marginal people – from slaves like Patrick in Ireland in the 5th century to 20th century catechists, teachers, Bible women, and ordinary lay Christians in the non-western world – who have been the keys to Christian mission. So when TTL continues, “Now people at the margins are claiming their key role as agents of mission and affirming mission as transformation,” this actually is not a contemporary phenomenon. In fact Christian mission has ordinarily been conducted by marginal persons. It seems to me that the authors of TTL are unaware of how much their perspective of mission is molded by their location in the centers of Christian thought and practice.
My suspicions are not allayed in ¶ 37: “Mission from the margins calls for an understanding of the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, and local contextual realities.” Actually, it is precisely those of us who are located in the centers of educational, political and economic power that try to understand the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, etc. Those carrying on missions at the margins typically do not have access to the resources of the centers to engage in such analysis. Thus Samuel Escobar writes, “These days in Spain, mission is taking place in new and creative forms. I know several Latin American evangelical women migrants who earn their living caring daily for old people in Madrid or Valencia and who share with them spontaneously about the Good News of God’s love in Christ” (International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38:4 (Oct. 2014): 193). Such is the mission taking place at the margins, by hundreds of millions of poor and underprivileged Christians all over the world, some of whose theologies would profoundly trouble me, I am sure. Don’t get me wrong: I strongly believe that “the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, and local contextual realities” need to be understood. I make my living trying to understand them. But I do so from a place of privilege at the center: not as a Latin American maid in Spain or a Filipina maid in Bahrain. I do not want to presume to speak for the missionaries at the margins, which parts of TTL seem to do (¶ 38, for example). Moreover, I also strongly believe that conversation, communication, and all sorts of exchanges between Christians at various locations of power need to take place all the time in order for the health of the mission of the church universal. Ironically, we can isolate mission at the margins by romanticizing it and claiming we are for it without really engaging it.
Finally, the perspective and voice of the center erupts once again in ¶ 101: “We are servants of the Triune God, who has given us the mission of proclaiming the good news to all humanity and creation, especially the oppressed and the suffering people who are longing for fullness of life.” It is hard to see how this affirmation squares with the warning against mission “directed at people on the margins of societies” (¶ 41).
I hope my criticisms of one part of TTL do not leave the impression that I believe that the statement is not worth reading, thinking about or engaging in theory and practice. Obviously, I have engaged the document myself! It is precisely because TTL is such an important document, with so much that is salutary in it, that I believe it should be carefully studied by students and practitioners of mission.
There is much to admire about this statement on mission and evangelism put out by the World Council of Churches. Some of these admirable points are its emphasis on the importance of life in all its fullness; its ecological concerns; its holding together the necessity of evangelism and of working for justice, peace and freedom; its concern for the poor and the marginalized; its condemnation of idolatrous treatment in some quarters of current global capitalism (as an ideology and not, I assume, as an economic arrangement); its call to conduct mission and evangelism in humility and with respect for others. Responding to the persisting importance of Pentecostalism and charismatic forms of Christianity around the world, it lays heavy stress on explicating (from a WCC point of view) the work of the Holy Spirit in mission and evangelism.
I am going to respond to the treatment in Together Towards Life (TTL) of the topic of missions from and to the margins, which has become an interest of mine. In this regard, I find TTL a rather frustrating work, because it wants to make the case for the importance of mission from the margins, while itself seemingly unaware of its location in the center of western Christian world. Allow me to illustrate.
Early on (¶ 6) the document says that “mission has been understood as a movement taking place from the centre to the periphery, and from the privileged to the marginalized.” This in itself is a highly debatable claim. In the book of Acts, for example, while geographically the gospel goes from the Jewish center (Jerusalem) to the margins (Rome), in terms of the privileged in society the movement is exactly the opposite: the apostles in Jerusalem are socially insignificant while those who hear and positively respond to the gospel at the geographic margins (the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, the priest of Zeus at Lystra, Lydia) are socially more privileged. Geographic and social marginality do not always coincide. And Christian history is full of marginal people – from slaves like Patrick in Ireland in the 5th century to 20th century catechists, teachers, Bible women, and ordinary lay Christians in the non-western world – who have been the keys to Christian mission. So when TTL continues, “Now people at the margins are claiming their key role as agents of mission and affirming mission as transformation,” this actually is not a contemporary phenomenon. In fact Christian mission has ordinarily been conducted by marginal persons. It seems to me that the authors of TTL are unaware of how much their perspective of mission is molded by their location in the centers of Christian thought and practice.
My suspicions are not allayed in ¶ 37: “Mission from the margins calls for an understanding of the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, and local contextual realities.” Actually, it is precisely those of us who are located in the centers of educational, political and economic power that try to understand the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, etc. Those carrying on missions at the margins typically do not have access to the resources of the centers to engage in such analysis. Thus Samuel Escobar writes, “These days in Spain, mission is taking place in new and creative forms. I know several Latin American evangelical women migrants who earn their living caring daily for old people in Madrid or Valencia and who share with them spontaneously about the Good News of God’s love in Christ” (International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38:4 (Oct. 2014): 193). Such is the mission taking place at the margins, by hundreds of millions of poor and underprivileged Christians all over the world, some of whose theologies would profoundly trouble me, I am sure. Don’t get me wrong: I strongly believe that “the complexities of power dynamics, global systems and structures, and local contextual realities” need to be understood. I make my living trying to understand them. But I do so from a place of privilege at the center: not as a Latin American maid in Spain or a Filipina maid in Bahrain. I do not want to presume to speak for the missionaries at the margins, which parts of TTL seem to do (¶ 38, for example). Moreover, I also strongly believe that conversation, communication, and all sorts of exchanges between Christians at various locations of power need to take place all the time in order for the health of the mission of the church universal. Ironically, we can isolate mission at the margins by romanticizing it and claiming we are for it without really engaging it.
Finally, the perspective and voice of the center erupts once again in ¶ 101: “We are servants of the Triune God, who has given us the mission of proclaiming the good news to all humanity and creation, especially the oppressed and the suffering people who are longing for fullness of life.” It is hard to see how this affirmation squares with the warning against mission “directed at people on the margins of societies” (¶ 41).
I hope my criticisms of one part of TTL do not leave the impression that I believe that the statement is not worth reading, thinking about or engaging in theory and practice. Obviously, I have engaged the document myself! It is precisely because TTL is such an important document, with so much that is salutary in it, that I believe it should be carefully studied by students and practitioners of mission.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Thomas Kemper on Together towards Life
Last week, this blog began an examination of Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, the new affirmation on mission and evangelism adopted by the World Council of Churches. While our examination of this document will be primarily focused on its use as a teaching tool, especially in United Methodist contexts, I thought it appropriate to refer readers to a theological assessment of the document by Thomas Kemper, general secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries.
Mr. Kemper's remarks originally appeared in the October 2014 edition of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, but they can also be accessed on GBGM's webpage. In the piece, Kemper affirms and analyzes four themes from Together towards Life, "the concept of missio Dei, mission theology grounded in the Holy Spirit, “mission from the margins,” and the inclusion of health, healing, and wholeness". Kemper's piece is well worth a read for United Methodists interested in engaging with this document as a way to stimulate fresh thinking, reflecting, and learning about mission.
Mr. Kemper's remarks originally appeared in the October 2014 edition of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, but they can also be accessed on GBGM's webpage. In the piece, Kemper affirms and analyzes four themes from Together towards Life, "the concept of missio Dei, mission theology grounded in the Holy Spirit, “mission from the margins,” and the inclusion of health, healing, and wholeness". Kemper's piece is well worth a read for United Methodists interested in engaging with this document as a way to stimulate fresh thinking, reflecting, and learning about mission.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Reflecting on Together towards Life
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.
I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in a consultation organized by the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) two weeks ago in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The consultation was focused on discussing ways to develop curricula to help teach the WCC's new affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. The affirmation was adopted by the WCC Central Committee in Crete in 2012 and presented to the entire WCC at their assembly last year in Busan, Korea.
Not only was the experience of being in South Africa with mission scholars and practitioners from around the world an exciting experience for me, I found Together towards Life itself to be an exciting and challenging document. The document shows real theological and spiritual depth in its focus on the missio Dei, the self-giving love of the Trinity, and the role of the Holy Spirit in mission. It reflects contemporary mission thinking in affirming the value of a diversity of cultures, noting the impact of migration, and highlighting the important place the poor and those on the margins have as agents of, and not just recipients of, mission. The document challenges its readers in its call to think of mission and being from the whole creation to the whole creation, in its strong criticism of the system of global capitalism, and in the questions it raises about God's activities in other religions.
There is much to praise, critique, and dissect in this document, a process that has already begun in other forums. This blog, as a project of the United Methodist Professors of Mission, will be looking at Together towards Life over the next couple of months as well. We will not be giving it a thorough read as we did with Grace Upon Grace. Our examination of that document reflected our identities as United Methodists. Our treatment of Together towards Life will instead reflect our identities as professors of mission. We will be continuing the discussion begun in Pietermaritzburg and elsewhere of how this document can be used to train clergy, missionaries, and laity. Although the document is an ecumenical document with wide appeal, we will focus primarily on its applications within United Methodist contexts. I hope you will join us as we see what the Spirit may be seeking to teach us through this document. Look for the Together towards Life tag to follow posts in this new series.
I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in a consultation organized by the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) two weeks ago in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The consultation was focused on discussing ways to develop curricula to help teach the WCC's new affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. The affirmation was adopted by the WCC Central Committee in Crete in 2012 and presented to the entire WCC at their assembly last year in Busan, Korea.
Not only was the experience of being in South Africa with mission scholars and practitioners from around the world an exciting experience for me, I found Together towards Life itself to be an exciting and challenging document. The document shows real theological and spiritual depth in its focus on the missio Dei, the self-giving love of the Trinity, and the role of the Holy Spirit in mission. It reflects contemporary mission thinking in affirming the value of a diversity of cultures, noting the impact of migration, and highlighting the important place the poor and those on the margins have as agents of, and not just recipients of, mission. The document challenges its readers in its call to think of mission and being from the whole creation to the whole creation, in its strong criticism of the system of global capitalism, and in the questions it raises about God's activities in other religions.
There is much to praise, critique, and dissect in this document, a process that has already begun in other forums. This blog, as a project of the United Methodist Professors of Mission, will be looking at Together towards Life over the next couple of months as well. We will not be giving it a thorough read as we did with Grace Upon Grace. Our examination of that document reflected our identities as United Methodists. Our treatment of Together towards Life will instead reflect our identities as professors of mission. We will be continuing the discussion begun in Pietermaritzburg and elsewhere of how this document can be used to train clergy, missionaries, and laity. Although the document is an ecumenical document with wide appeal, we will focus primarily on its applications within United Methodist contexts. I hope you will join us as we see what the Spirit may be seeking to teach us through this document. Look for the Together towards Life tag to follow posts in this new series.
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