Today’s piece is by Lester Dornon, M.D. Dornon is a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries, assigned as senior physician at the Tansen Hospital in western Nepal in Asia.
My path towards medical missions started when I was growing up as a missionary’s kid (MK) in Japan. Seeing the hours that my father was away from home counseling young people rather than coming home to play with me, I proclaimed to my mother with as much conviction as a pre-school boy can muster, “I’m never going to be a missionary!” But there is no doubt, when I look back, that the seed of my desire to serve others, to make my life matter, was planted while watching how my parents lived, worked, and served for 45 years in Japan.
My enjoyment of the sciences led naturally to medical school, and a desire to serve took me through family medicine training. God’s call was to serve those who had no one else to care for their medical needs. So, in July of 1990, I found myself in Kathmandu, starting into language studies, in preparation for a term of service in the mission hospital at Tansen in rural Western Nepal. My wife and I even had our two young children in tow! A three-year commitment has now extended into 21 years of service over these past 31 years. It is a good thing that we were not given the long-term plan at the beginning, which would surely have scared us away!
We are sometimes asked how many people we have converted over all these years in Nepal. We don’t think we have “converted” anyone. (It is actually illegal in Nepal.) We have had people say how they appreciated something we did or said that helped them during a difficult time. Often, we don’t even remember doing what they are remembering. This reminds us that even though we speak about our faith when we can, it is God who brings someone to saving faith in Jesus. Our mission is of course to proclaim the Gospel, using words when necessary. Our lives are our message. The incarnational lives we live, by being among those we minister to, living with them and alongside them through their ups and downs, allows God to show seekers what their life might be like as a Christian, and what difference it might make to choose to follow this Jesus.
I believe that just as faith without action is dead (James 2:26), proclamation without service is at best unproductive, and at worst counterproductive, because it hardens the hearts of those who hear us. (“How can we believe in this God of love they speak about, if they don’t even care enough about us to help us in our need?”)
Others might similarly argue that service without proclamation is pointless, since it doesn’t bring anyone to faith if they don’t hear about Jesus (Romans 10:14). But our experience is not so. This hospital, which has served the poor for 67 years, is known as the mission hospital, where help is available for all. The initial missionaries, who were also forbidden to proselytize, left behind a congregation of believers who came to faith in Jesus through the healing ministry in the hospital and through seeing the lives of the Christians.
John Stott wrote, “We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We live. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situation, and communities. Yet the reason for our acceptance of social responsibility is not primarily in order to give the gospel either a visibility or a credibility it would otherwise lack, but rather simple uncomplicated compassion. Love has no need to justify itself. It merely expresses itself in service whenever it sees need.”[1]
All service to neighbors can be and is used by God to advance His Kingdom. Yet there is something unique about medical missions. Physical illness or injury causes an immediate and deeply internal anguish, which the healthcare provider can assuage with compassion. And the death, either of oneself or of a family member, is so universally feared, that we all need help in facing it, whatever our nationality or faith. Being there during those times when life is hanging in the balance, doing whatever can be done to help, we have a chance to minister to the deepest needs of a person’s soul. I have truly been blessed to have the opportunity to work in this field.
Yet the longer we are in Nepal, the more I have come to realize that what I do impacts others much less than who I am and how I live. We often complain about the “fishbowl” living that happens here. Nepal is traditionally a very community-based society: every detail of everyone’s life is known to everyone else. It is considered normal conversation to ask what we would consider highly personal questions about income, child rearing, marriage, and personal habits. Those of us from Western countries long to be invisible in the crowd or left alone inside our houses at times, but even what we do at home is often watched, questions asked, and talked about in the community. Even more than how I treat patients and visitors at the hospital, people notice how I treat my family at home, or those who come to our door.
We talk about how all our works will be judged and rewarded at the end times (1 Corinthians 3, Revelations), but in Nepal at least, all our works are scrutinized each day, sometimes every minute of the day, by the people around us who are watching. Some are just curious at seeing a life that is different and novel, but others are looking for a different kind of life, to see if we have something worth listening to our not. Our prayer is often for our actions and words to not get in the way of someone seeing Jesus.
And what better place to show God’s love than in the family? There were four of us when we came, and we added one more while we were here. Now the children are grown and on their own. Some people might say that my family responsibilities took me away from the “real ministry” that was happening in the hospital or in the local church. But I would reply that the priority that I gave to my family, and how I treated my wife and children, especially in dealing with difficulties like discipline, illness or injury, disappointments, or failures, was a much more important ministry than anything else that happened here. Do they want to know about a God who loves them and forgives them? They will be able to believe in him when they see how we forgive each other and love each other even in our failings.
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label social service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social service. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2021
Monday, January 27, 2020
A Primer on UMC Assets: Church-Related Institutions
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. Dr. Scott is neither a lawyer nor an accountant, and thus the following should not be interpreted as legal advice.
As indicated in a previous post on the ownership of church assets, there is a lack of clarity in how the trust clause applies to one particular set of assets: those of church-related institutions. United Methodists and their predecessors have been persistent founders of a variety of non-profit institutions and organizations: colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals, nursing homes, social service agencies, camps, retreat centers, and more.
Many such institutions founded by United Methodists and their predecessors have since become independent of The United Methodist Church. They may still recognize their Methodist or EUB heritage, but there are no longer any formal ties between them and the denomination.
Yet many such institutions do still maintain some sort of formal connection to the denomination. The trust clause in ¶2552 refers to “[t]rustees of schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, homes, orphanages, institutes, and other institutions owned or controlled by any annual, jurisdictional, or central conference or any agency of The United Methodist Church,” indicating that such institutions may be bound by the trust clause.
These connections raise a host of related questions: How does one know if an institution is bound by the trust clause? Are such institutions also bound by the Book of Discipline? If there is some sort of split within the denomination, does that effect the assets of these institutions? What happens if these institutions try to cut their ties to the denomination as a result of the church’s turmoil? And of course, how could conflicts over control of these institutions lead to lawsuits?
Conflict over control of church-related institutions has already generated one high-profile lawsuit: the South Central Jurisdiction of the UMC is suing Southern Methodist University over SMU’s unilateral decision to sever (most of) its ties to the jurisdiction. This case has served to increase the questions and anxieties around the relationship of the denomination to its church-related institutions: Will SMU be a pattern for other cases?
Several factors influence the answer to this question.
As previously noted in this series, assets can only be owned by legal persons, including corporations. All or nearly all church-related institutions are established as their own legal corporation, most of them 501(c)3 corporations, i.e., non-profits. This status as legal corporations gives these institutions the legal standing that they need to own assets and do business. It also requires them to have articles of incorporation, which lay out the basic structures and rules by which each institution will function.
These articles of incorporation may also establish some sort of relationship with The United Methodist Church. There is not, however, any formulaic version of that relationship. In writing articles of incorporation, each institution draws upon its own unique history, purpose, church context, and time of writing in laying forth what (if any) formal relationship it has with The United Methodist Church (or predecessor body, if the articles were written before 1968). Thus, each institution’s relationship with the UMC is in many ways unique to that institution.
In general, however, it is useful to think about the sorts of relationships church-related institutions have with the UMC as dealing with one or both of two major issues: ownership and control.
Under ownership provisions, the articles of incorporation would stipulate a body of the UMC that is itself a legal entity as the owner of the church-related institution. This could be a local church, an annual conference, a jurisdiction, or a board or agency. Part of the issue in the SMU case is that SMU’s articles of incorporation previously said that SMU was “owned … by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference.”
Ownership gives a church body some right to the assets of the church-related institution. But that right can mean various things, according to the durability of the institution and the exact wording in its articles of incorporation.
Since each institution is itself a corporation capable of holding assets, ownership can be a largely theoretical concept if the institution is likely to endure indefinitely and has the right to keep all of its assets for itself, which legal persons generally do. On a practical level, an on-going, autonomous institution would continue to manage and control all its own assets, even if the church theoretically owned them.
The articles of incorporation would have to include an unusually strong ownership clause for a church body to take assets from a still-functioning, on-going church-related institution. Such provisions may exist for church-related institutions that are directly overseen and operated by church bodies, such as camps, retreat centers, and perhaps some social service agencies or clergy retirement homes (though I’m not certain about that). Yet for colleges, schools, seminaries, hospitals, and most social service agencies that are not directly run by church bodies, such strong ownership clauses are very unlikely.
Ownership becomes more relevant if an institution closes or dissolves. Who gets the remaining assets? Who assumes the remaining debts? Shutting down might seem like a remote possibility for a large university like SMU, but it might be a more realistic possibility for a church-related camp or retreat center.
Questions of what happens when an institution closes can be answered by a survivor clause in the articles of incorporation that stipulates who assumes assets and debts. If an ownership provision is accompanied by a survivor clause specifying that a part of the church would be the legal successor to that institution, should it ever cease to exist, that gives the church a good claim to the assets of the institution. Without such a clause, it might be hard for a church body to actually benefit tangibly from its theoretical ownership of an institution.
In addition to ownership, the other main avenue of relationship for church-related institutions is control. Here again, SMU’s articles of incorporation are illustrative. They also stipulated that the school would be “controlled by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference.”
Control can come in a variety of forms related to personnel or policy. One common form is the power to appoint some portion of the institution’s trustees, who then exert big-picture control over the institution. Another possible form of control would be the power to appoint staff leadership for the institution, which might be the case for annual conference-related camps, retreat centers, and social service agencies. Yet another possible form of control is the power to approve or veto certain decisions by the institution. Alternatively, the articles of incorporation could require an institution to adhere to certain denominational policies for the institution, perhaps related to some provisions of the Social Principles. Again, the possibilities are many, and the exact arrangements vary from institution to institution.
Moreover, it is also possible for an institution to be church related without that being spelled out in its articles of incorporation. There may be historical ties, on-going funding patterns, missional collaborations, or other bonds between an institution and a body of the UMC. If those relationships are not spelled out in the articles of incorporation, however, then the church has very little leverage in asserting any claims of ownership or control over the institution. It would be easy for the institution (or the church body) to break such connections.
So, is the SMU case indicative of things to come? The answer is likely yes and no. It is possible that there will be other cases wherein ownership and control are contested and even litigated, but each case is likely to play out differently because of the unique relationship established between each church-related institution and the UMC in that institution’s articles of incorporation. SMU had relatively strong language in its articles of incorporation connecting it to the South Central Jurisdiction. Most church-related institutions will not have such a strong connection laid out in their founding documents. Indeed, three other colleges have disaffiliated without triggering lawsuits.
Moreover, while church-related institutions directly run by church bodies (such as camps) may allow those church bodies to claim the institution’s assets for their own use, assets for most church-related institutions will remain in the hands of those institutions and cannot be transferred to the church itself. Thus, the fights that do occur are more likely to be fights about control over institutions rather than fights about ownership of property, as is mostly the case for SMU.
As indicated in a previous post on the ownership of church assets, there is a lack of clarity in how the trust clause applies to one particular set of assets: those of church-related institutions. United Methodists and their predecessors have been persistent founders of a variety of non-profit institutions and organizations: colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals, nursing homes, social service agencies, camps, retreat centers, and more.
Many such institutions founded by United Methodists and their predecessors have since become independent of The United Methodist Church. They may still recognize their Methodist or EUB heritage, but there are no longer any formal ties between them and the denomination.
Yet many such institutions do still maintain some sort of formal connection to the denomination. The trust clause in ¶2552 refers to “[t]rustees of schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, homes, orphanages, institutes, and other institutions owned or controlled by any annual, jurisdictional, or central conference or any agency of The United Methodist Church,” indicating that such institutions may be bound by the trust clause.
These connections raise a host of related questions: How does one know if an institution is bound by the trust clause? Are such institutions also bound by the Book of Discipline? If there is some sort of split within the denomination, does that effect the assets of these institutions? What happens if these institutions try to cut their ties to the denomination as a result of the church’s turmoil? And of course, how could conflicts over control of these institutions lead to lawsuits?
Conflict over control of church-related institutions has already generated one high-profile lawsuit: the South Central Jurisdiction of the UMC is suing Southern Methodist University over SMU’s unilateral decision to sever (most of) its ties to the jurisdiction. This case has served to increase the questions and anxieties around the relationship of the denomination to its church-related institutions: Will SMU be a pattern for other cases?
Several factors influence the answer to this question.
As previously noted in this series, assets can only be owned by legal persons, including corporations. All or nearly all church-related institutions are established as their own legal corporation, most of them 501(c)3 corporations, i.e., non-profits. This status as legal corporations gives these institutions the legal standing that they need to own assets and do business. It also requires them to have articles of incorporation, which lay out the basic structures and rules by which each institution will function.
These articles of incorporation may also establish some sort of relationship with The United Methodist Church. There is not, however, any formulaic version of that relationship. In writing articles of incorporation, each institution draws upon its own unique history, purpose, church context, and time of writing in laying forth what (if any) formal relationship it has with The United Methodist Church (or predecessor body, if the articles were written before 1968). Thus, each institution’s relationship with the UMC is in many ways unique to that institution.
In general, however, it is useful to think about the sorts of relationships church-related institutions have with the UMC as dealing with one or both of two major issues: ownership and control.
Under ownership provisions, the articles of incorporation would stipulate a body of the UMC that is itself a legal entity as the owner of the church-related institution. This could be a local church, an annual conference, a jurisdiction, or a board or agency. Part of the issue in the SMU case is that SMU’s articles of incorporation previously said that SMU was “owned … by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference.”
Ownership gives a church body some right to the assets of the church-related institution. But that right can mean various things, according to the durability of the institution and the exact wording in its articles of incorporation.
Since each institution is itself a corporation capable of holding assets, ownership can be a largely theoretical concept if the institution is likely to endure indefinitely and has the right to keep all of its assets for itself, which legal persons generally do. On a practical level, an on-going, autonomous institution would continue to manage and control all its own assets, even if the church theoretically owned them.
The articles of incorporation would have to include an unusually strong ownership clause for a church body to take assets from a still-functioning, on-going church-related institution. Such provisions may exist for church-related institutions that are directly overseen and operated by church bodies, such as camps, retreat centers, and perhaps some social service agencies or clergy retirement homes (though I’m not certain about that). Yet for colleges, schools, seminaries, hospitals, and most social service agencies that are not directly run by church bodies, such strong ownership clauses are very unlikely.
Ownership becomes more relevant if an institution closes or dissolves. Who gets the remaining assets? Who assumes the remaining debts? Shutting down might seem like a remote possibility for a large university like SMU, but it might be a more realistic possibility for a church-related camp or retreat center.
Questions of what happens when an institution closes can be answered by a survivor clause in the articles of incorporation that stipulates who assumes assets and debts. If an ownership provision is accompanied by a survivor clause specifying that a part of the church would be the legal successor to that institution, should it ever cease to exist, that gives the church a good claim to the assets of the institution. Without such a clause, it might be hard for a church body to actually benefit tangibly from its theoretical ownership of an institution.
In addition to ownership, the other main avenue of relationship for church-related institutions is control. Here again, SMU’s articles of incorporation are illustrative. They also stipulated that the school would be “controlled by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference.”
Control can come in a variety of forms related to personnel or policy. One common form is the power to appoint some portion of the institution’s trustees, who then exert big-picture control over the institution. Another possible form of control would be the power to appoint staff leadership for the institution, which might be the case for annual conference-related camps, retreat centers, and social service agencies. Yet another possible form of control is the power to approve or veto certain decisions by the institution. Alternatively, the articles of incorporation could require an institution to adhere to certain denominational policies for the institution, perhaps related to some provisions of the Social Principles. Again, the possibilities are many, and the exact arrangements vary from institution to institution.
Moreover, it is also possible for an institution to be church related without that being spelled out in its articles of incorporation. There may be historical ties, on-going funding patterns, missional collaborations, or other bonds between an institution and a body of the UMC. If those relationships are not spelled out in the articles of incorporation, however, then the church has very little leverage in asserting any claims of ownership or control over the institution. It would be easy for the institution (or the church body) to break such connections.
So, is the SMU case indicative of things to come? The answer is likely yes and no. It is possible that there will be other cases wherein ownership and control are contested and even litigated, but each case is likely to play out differently because of the unique relationship established between each church-related institution and the UMC in that institution’s articles of incorporation. SMU had relatively strong language in its articles of incorporation connecting it to the South Central Jurisdiction. Most church-related institutions will not have such a strong connection laid out in their founding documents. Indeed, three other colleges have disaffiliated without triggering lawsuits.
Moreover, while church-related institutions directly run by church bodies (such as camps) may allow those church bodies to claim the institution’s assets for their own use, assets for most church-related institutions will remain in the hands of those institutions and cannot be transferred to the church itself. Thus, the fights that do occur are more likely to be fights about control over institutions rather than fights about ownership of property, as is mostly the case for SMU.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Recommended readings on Methodism in Cuba
United Methodist News Service has recently posted a series of well-done articles about Methodism in Cuba. The Methodist in Cuba is historically related to, but autonomous from, The United Methodist Church. The articles give a sense of the opportunities and challenges faced by this growing branch of the world Methodist movement. The eight total articles provide a depth of information about Methodism outside the US not often available to those without first-hand experience.
Series Home Page
Cuban Methodists are Packing the Pews on the history and growth of Methodism in Cuba
Providing a Home for the Elderly on a church-run home for retired pastors and spouses
Going Digital at Havana Seminary on technology use at the Methodist seminary
Cuban Worship: Music, Prayer and Passion on worship styles in the Methodist Church in Cuba
"Lord, I'm Here", a biographical piece on a Cuban missionary
Building a Church Growth Strategy in Cuba on cell group evangelism
Solidarity and Service in Cuba on social services provided by the Methodist Church in Cuba
For Methodists in Cuba, "These Are the Good Times", profiling a young clergy couple and detailing the increase in US-Methodist ties
Slideshow: Singing the Spirit in Cuba including pictures from the series set to Cuban music
Flikr stream of pictures from the Methodist Church in Cuba
Series Home Page
Cuban Methodists are Packing the Pews on the history and growth of Methodism in Cuba
Providing a Home for the Elderly on a church-run home for retired pastors and spouses
Going Digital at Havana Seminary on technology use at the Methodist seminary
Cuban Worship: Music, Prayer and Passion on worship styles in the Methodist Church in Cuba
"Lord, I'm Here", a biographical piece on a Cuban missionary
Building a Church Growth Strategy in Cuba on cell group evangelism
Solidarity and Service in Cuba on social services provided by the Methodist Church in Cuba
For Methodists in Cuba, "These Are the Good Times", profiling a young clergy couple and detailing the increase in US-Methodist ties
Slideshow: Singing the Spirit in Cuba including pictures from the series set to Cuban music
Flikr stream of pictures from the Methodist Church in Cuba
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