This is the second of several posts presenting a roundup of General
Conference actions related to the foci of this blog. This second post
looks at the General Conference actions related to mission in The United Methodist Church.
General Conference celebrated the commissioning of 29 new missionaries and the consecration of 26 deaconesses and home missioners.
General Conference approved a name change for One Great Hour of Sharing to UMCOR Sunday to better reflect the purpose of the special offering.
General Conference recognized mission centers at Gulfside Assembly and the Lambuth Family Pearl River Church as Heritage Landmarks of the UMC.
General Conference approved a resolution calling for more ministries with migrants, along with several other mission-related resolutions.
While the General Conference rejected divestment from companies doing business in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, it did adopt a petition on behalf of Wadi Foquin, a Palestinian village threatened by encroaching settlements. Global Ministries supports mission work in Wadi Foquin.
Global health is a significant area of mission work for the church, but enough happened at General Conference related to global health that it deserves its own post. The next roundup, which will be posted later this week, will look at actions related to global health.
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label UMCOR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UMCOR. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Giving Tuesday, the Advance, and Kickstarter
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.
Let me begin this post by encouraging you to donate to the UMC's global work on this Giving Tuesday. I'll even put the link here for you to do so. In fact, do that now, before you read the rest of this article. If you want to encourage others to donate as well, both the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) have resources to assist in that.
Now that you've donated, I want to talk to you about the Advance, which is the system through which individual donations to denominational projects of the UMC are collected. The Advance is in many ways a fantastic system. 100% of donations go right to those projects; there's no overhead taken out. The system has been around since 1948, having proven to be a durable model. Over 3 million gifts totaling more than $1 billion have been given through the Advance.
The way the Advance works is that donors look up the individual project(s) they want to give to and direct money specifically to that project/those projects. There's even a handy search interface that allows donors to search by missionary, region, type of work, population, or disaster. Donors can also give to general needs for either GBGM or UMCOR.
This approach to giving has a lot in common with Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which have become popular sites for facilitating an approach to collecting donations and raising money known as "crowdfunding." Yes, that's right, the UMC was crowd-funding through the Advance 60 years before it became popular.
Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and the Advance all have the great advantage that they're a democratic approach to deciding what gets funded. If people want a Veronica Mars movie or a Tesla museum and are willing to help pay for it, they happen. If people want wells and toilets in Liberia and are willing to help pay for them, they get built.
But here's where the analogy breaks down. Kickstarter and Indiegogo help fund things that will (presumably) benefit the people donating. Donors get to choose the ways in which they want to benefit. With the Advance, it's largely Americans choose what will benefit people elsewhere around the world. People don't get to choose what will benefit them. It's a little bit like if Bolivians were allowed to decide whether or not there would be a Veronica Mars movie or a Tesla museum.
That doesn't mean that Americans always make bad decisions or that Americans shouldn't donate to the UMC's work elsewhere around the world, but it does put people elsewhere around the world at the mercy of American donors, which creates a power inequality. There are many inequalities in how the UMC is structured and operated, but this inequality in donation money is an important one to notice because it shapes other inequalities. So, on this Giving Tuesday, donate, but donate and be aware of how your donations shape the UMC.
Let me begin this post by encouraging you to donate to the UMC's global work on this Giving Tuesday. I'll even put the link here for you to do so. In fact, do that now, before you read the rest of this article. If you want to encourage others to donate as well, both the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) have resources to assist in that.
Now that you've donated, I want to talk to you about the Advance, which is the system through which individual donations to denominational projects of the UMC are collected. The Advance is in many ways a fantastic system. 100% of donations go right to those projects; there's no overhead taken out. The system has been around since 1948, having proven to be a durable model. Over 3 million gifts totaling more than $1 billion have been given through the Advance.
The way the Advance works is that donors look up the individual project(s) they want to give to and direct money specifically to that project/those projects. There's even a handy search interface that allows donors to search by missionary, region, type of work, population, or disaster. Donors can also give to general needs for either GBGM or UMCOR.
This approach to giving has a lot in common with Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which have become popular sites for facilitating an approach to collecting donations and raising money known as "crowdfunding." Yes, that's right, the UMC was crowd-funding through the Advance 60 years before it became popular.
Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and the Advance all have the great advantage that they're a democratic approach to deciding what gets funded. If people want a Veronica Mars movie or a Tesla museum and are willing to help pay for it, they happen. If people want wells and toilets in Liberia and are willing to help pay for them, they get built.
But here's where the analogy breaks down. Kickstarter and Indiegogo help fund things that will (presumably) benefit the people donating. Donors get to choose the ways in which they want to benefit. With the Advance, it's largely Americans choose what will benefit people elsewhere around the world. People don't get to choose what will benefit them. It's a little bit like if Bolivians were allowed to decide whether or not there would be a Veronica Mars movie or a Tesla museum.
That doesn't mean that Americans always make bad decisions or that Americans shouldn't donate to the UMC's work elsewhere around the world, but it does put people elsewhere around the world at the mercy of American donors, which creates a power inequality. There are many inequalities in how the UMC is structured and operated, but this inequality in donation money is an important one to notice because it shapes other inequalities. So, on this Giving Tuesday, donate, but donate and be aware of how your donations shape the UMC.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
UMCOR, Armenia and Global UMC Ecclesiology
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.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) recently published this story about a scholarship program that they administer in Armenia. Many United Methodists probably didn't realize that UMCOR was working in Armenia. Perhaps some of them couldn't even say where Armenia is. (It's in the Caucus mountains north of Turkey and south of Russia.) Few probably realize that Armenia is actually one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, Christianity having become the official religion in 301AD by decree of King Tridates III. UMCOR has been there for the last twenty years after Armenia became independent of the Soviet Union.
So UMCOR is operating in what may seem like a surprising place. What makes UMCOR's presence perhaps more surprising is that there are no United Methodist congregations in Armenia. UMCOR is not there as part of a proselytizing mission. Really, Armenia doesn't need that sort of mission, having had Christianity for a millennia and a half longer than the United States. What Armenia does need, though, is the health, agricultural, anti-human trafficking, nutrition/food security, small reconstruction, education, microfinance, and disaster risk reduction work carried on by UMCOR Armenia. And because Armenia has these needs, UMCOR is there, carrying out the mission of God.
It is interesting to reflect on the work of The United Methodist Church through UMCOR in Armenia not just for the sake of geographical curiosity but also for the insights this work can give us into United Methodist ecclesiology and in particular the connection and distinction between the church as a membership group and the church as a mission.
In the United States, we tend to think of the church as a organization composed of members along with the associated institutions. We might think of the UMC mainly in terms of the local church, the annual conference, or the denomination as a whole, but whatever the level of focus, we think of it as an organization made up of members. As many of the posts in the Grace Upon Grace series on this blog have pointed out, though, it is possible to think of the church in another way: as a group defined not my membership or institutional structures but by its mission, or rather, by its role in carrying out God's mission (the missio Dei) in the world.
As the Grace Upon Grace series has contented, there is a connection between the membership of the church and the mission of the church. Ideally, the membership of the church and the structures they create are what allow the church to carry out God's mission. Yet Armenia is interesting because it points out that while membership and mission are connected at a theological level, they are not always at a geographical level. The United Methodist Church has members in about 50 countries worldwide. Yet The United Methodist Church is in mission in over 120 countries. The church is in mission far beyond where it has members.
This points out an important difference in two ways in which the UMC is a global church. First, we are a global church because we have membership in countries around the globe. Second, we are a global church because we are in mission around the globe. Historically, our global membership stemmed from the global mission of American Methodists. Yet today, our global membership is not synonymous with global mission. Members outside the US are not missions. They are parters in mission. Nor do missions imply the presence of members, at least in local worshipping communities. Mission overlaps geographically with membership (including mission in the US), but it extends beyond as well. Being able to separate between these two meanings of the global UMC is important to formulating a global ecclesiology for the church.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) recently published this story about a scholarship program that they administer in Armenia. Many United Methodists probably didn't realize that UMCOR was working in Armenia. Perhaps some of them couldn't even say where Armenia is. (It's in the Caucus mountains north of Turkey and south of Russia.) Few probably realize that Armenia is actually one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, Christianity having become the official religion in 301AD by decree of King Tridates III. UMCOR has been there for the last twenty years after Armenia became independent of the Soviet Union.
So UMCOR is operating in what may seem like a surprising place. What makes UMCOR's presence perhaps more surprising is that there are no United Methodist congregations in Armenia. UMCOR is not there as part of a proselytizing mission. Really, Armenia doesn't need that sort of mission, having had Christianity for a millennia and a half longer than the United States. What Armenia does need, though, is the health, agricultural, anti-human trafficking, nutrition/food security, small reconstruction, education, microfinance, and disaster risk reduction work carried on by UMCOR Armenia. And because Armenia has these needs, UMCOR is there, carrying out the mission of God.
It is interesting to reflect on the work of The United Methodist Church through UMCOR in Armenia not just for the sake of geographical curiosity but also for the insights this work can give us into United Methodist ecclesiology and in particular the connection and distinction between the church as a membership group and the church as a mission.
In the United States, we tend to think of the church as a organization composed of members along with the associated institutions. We might think of the UMC mainly in terms of the local church, the annual conference, or the denomination as a whole, but whatever the level of focus, we think of it as an organization made up of members. As many of the posts in the Grace Upon Grace series on this blog have pointed out, though, it is possible to think of the church in another way: as a group defined not my membership or institutional structures but by its mission, or rather, by its role in carrying out God's mission (the missio Dei) in the world.
As the Grace Upon Grace series has contented, there is a connection between the membership of the church and the mission of the church. Ideally, the membership of the church and the structures they create are what allow the church to carry out God's mission. Yet Armenia is interesting because it points out that while membership and mission are connected at a theological level, they are not always at a geographical level. The United Methodist Church has members in about 50 countries worldwide. Yet The United Methodist Church is in mission in over 120 countries. The church is in mission far beyond where it has members.
This points out an important difference in two ways in which the UMC is a global church. First, we are a global church because we have membership in countries around the globe. Second, we are a global church because we are in mission around the globe. Historically, our global membership stemmed from the global mission of American Methodists. Yet today, our global membership is not synonymous with global mission. Members outside the US are not missions. They are parters in mission. Nor do missions imply the presence of members, at least in local worshipping communities. Mission overlaps geographically with membership (including mission in the US), but it extends beyond as well. Being able to separate between these two meanings of the global UMC is important to formulating a global ecclesiology for the church.
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