The Three Greatest Challenges Facing Us in the Next Decade

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. As noted a couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of being recognized by Boston University School of Theology as a Distinguished Alumni in the Emerging Leader category. Along with that recognition, I participated in a panel discussion on "The Three Greatest Challenges Facing Us in the Next Decade." The following is a formal version of my remarks for that panel. The full panel can be viewed here.

As a good academic, I am trained to question the question, so I would like to begin by questioning and clarifying who the "us" is in the "Three Greatest Challenges Facing Us." I will take the us to refer to American Christians. While I recognize that not everyone listening will be both American and Christian, I presume the majority will be one or the other. It's also a group to which I feel I can speak, since I myself am an American Christian.

I recognize that I am more specifically an educated, straight, white, male, Protestant (and United Methodist) American Christian, and that other American Christians who differ in some or all of these additional characteristics will have their own perspectives on the topic. Therefore, I offer here only my own perspective on what these three challenges are, which I will frame as questions.

First, can American Christians love each other and other Americans, especially in a deeply divided country?

The United States is indeed a deeply divided country at the moment, along the lines of race, gender, immigrant status, rural/urban, and a host of other factors. All of these divisions correlate with our deep political divisions.

Indeed, political scientists and others have begun to speak of political identity as a primary form of identity, one which determines other forms of identity, including religion. Thus, at least a sizable number of Americans do not form their political opinions based on their religious convictions but rather choose their religious convictions to fit with their sense of political identity.

What then can the church do or say in this divided country, where religion is frequently determined by politics? Is Christianity doomed to become merely a secondary phenomenon, or is there power yet in the gospel message of the One who preached love for and by the Samaritan - the religious, political, and ethnic Other?

Note that in suggesting that American Christians need to love each other and other Americans, I am not suggesting a "Can't we all just get along?" approach. There are important issues of justice in the divisions within American society, and those should not be ignored.

Yet the thought of BU alumnus and prophet of justice Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., should push us to think about the goal of our work toward justice. King saw the end of his work as reconciliation within the national community, not just defeat of his enemies. Not everyone who worked with him agreed on this point, and I realize that this is easy for me to say as a person of privilege. Yet whatever our views and identity, we will continue to live in a country with those different from us. If we seek merely to defeat and not to reconcile (with justice), we only set ourselves up for ongoing conflict.

Second, can American Christians love Christians from other countries, even in a deeply unequal world?

The world is deeply unequal. It is unequal in terms of power and money, both among individuals and among countries. But those inequalities of power and money result in further inequalities of attention and understanding. We pay no attention to and do not understand those without power and money. Without attention or understanding, it becomes too easy to ignore, co-opt, dismiss, and/or demean those on the margins.

This is a general problem of the world, but it is also a problem for Christianity in particular, which is a global religion and proclaims a global fellowship of believers. It is furthermore a special problem for denominations like The United Methodist Church that are international denominations. The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest, yet these are the two countries with the greatest numbers of United Methodists.

How then can we love our fellow Christians across inequalities? And in order to do so, how can we understand them better? Certainly the answers must include listening, learning other languages and cultures, seeking to inform ourselves, and trying to avoid stereotyping and oversimplifying others. Yet these are more easily said than done.

Moreover, we must be clear that our goal as American Christians in loving Christians from other countries must not be just so that we can better "help" them, but so that we can learn with and from them about the gospel we share.

Third and finally, what will American Christians do in a world of climate change?

Note that this is not a question of whether or how we can avoid climate change. Climate change is now. Record temperatures and record storms show that climate change is already affecting us. The joke in my hometown of Decorah, Iowa, is that five hundred year floods now happen every 10 years.

In this world of climate change, American Christians must ask ourselves how we can work with others to limit future change. Although American Christians have an important role to play, this issue is much larger than we can tackle on our own, so our work must be in partnership with others.

Among those partners should be Christians from other countries. It is interesting to note that climate change is not controversial for Christians from other countries. A Christian from Zimbabwe or the Philippines, no matter how theologically conservative, will not question whether climate change is happening or whether humans play a role in it. This is one of the ways in which American Christians can learn from our sisters and brothers elsewhere.

In addition to mitigating further change, we must ask ourselves how we can respond with compassion and justice to those affected by changing climates now. That may be those suffering from storms, flooding, droughts, or other effects. Often, these people are among the poorest. Ashley Anderson, a student of mine at BUSTH, taught me of the plight of small island nations in the Pacific who will become uninhabitable because of rising waters. How do treat with justice and compassion those whose ways of life become impossible because of climate change?

Another thought from Martin Luther King has been on my mind as I have reflected on all three of these challenges. It comes from his fourth and final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The world these days, at least to me, often feels chaotic. But in that book, King affirmed that in the midst of struggle, even when chaos seems to surround us, we must have hope. Hope is central Christian virtue.

The challenges facing American Christians in the next decade are significant. Yet we should face them with hope and with faith in Jesus Christ, who entered into the challenges of the world for our sake. He will be with us as we seek to walk the path before us as his disciples.

William Taylor, reconsidered

Today’s post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott. It is the fourth of a four-part series on money and relationships in the global church. Dr. Scott is Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent official positions of Global Ministries.

Over the past few weeks, I have been raising the question of how United Methodists can face the problem of vast economic inequality in the church in a way that preserves relationship between rich and poor without turning those relationships into ones of dependence solidifying inequalities of power. After looking at asset-based approaches to sharing resources and reducing the amount of structure poorer branches of the church need to pay for, this post will look at means by which poorer United Methodists can generate their own resources, thus reducing long-term dependency of the poor upon the rich.

As it turns out, United Methodists have one of the best exemplars of such an approach to church economics in our own history: Bishop William Taylor. You may never have heard of William Taylor. Yet he was one of the most influential architects of nineteenth century Methodist mission and the global nature of the church that is with us today.

Taylor came to prominence as a frontier preacher in California, global evangelist, and originator of Methodist mission in many countries around the world. He was also well-noted as a proponent of what he called self-supporting mission. Taylor thought that Westerners should not pay for missionaries or new churches around the world. They should be financed through local resources. Essentially, Taylor favored implementing the self-financing pillar of three-self mission theory from the very beginning, not when new churches had reached a certain level of development. Self-support for Taylor was about more than giving by congregations on the mission field, though. It also involved entrepreneurial approaches to church and church-run businesses, so-called tent-making.

Taylor based his theory of self-supporting mission both on the tent-making apostle Paul and on his own life experiences. Neither Taylor nor the dozens of missionaries he recruited and deployed ever practiced this theory in a pure form, but Taylor was the most significant proponent of this approach in his day. He and his missionaries influenced the development of Methodism in India, Southeast Asia, Angola, the Congo, and South America.

There are risks to this approach. The participation of the church in the economy may create moral hazards – opportunities for the church to end up on the wrong side of business ethics. Businesses can and do fail, and church-run businesses are no different. Successful church-run businesses require a good deal of expertise and effort that could go into other aspects of the church. Moreover, this approach requires the local economy to be sufficiently developed to provide sufficient resources and opportunities for successful tent-making businesses. Some of Taylor’s own missions failed for lack of sufficient tent-making business opportunities.

Yet this self-supporting approach undoubtedly gives churches that take it greater autonomy than would be offered by outside funding. The independence of Taylor and his missionaries often created headaches for the mission board, which wanted to exercise tighter control over its missions, but in a post-colonial world in which we seek greater equality between branches of the church, that independence and autonomy are positives. Autonomy need not be antithetical to accountability to the broader church, even as it is opposed to control by outsiders.

Taylor’s ideas and approach were largely marginalized and forgotten in Methodism after his death. They lived on in the approach to mission taken by faith missions. Faith missions, however, became increasingly associated with evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism. Current business-as-mission models, popular in many evangelical circles, are in part heirs of Taylor.

Yet West African United Methodists today are creating some projects that would undoubtedly make Taylor proud. Through church-run office buildings and agricultural projects, these churches are seeking to generate revenues for themselves and reduce their dependence on Western partners. And although such UMC countries as Liberia are poor by global standards, the economy in much of sub-Saharan Africa is growing quickly, meaning there are economic opportunities that the church could seize if it were able.

Where does this financial model leave wealthy Westerners who want to partner with their poorer fellow United Methodists? How can they support other’s efforts at self-support in ways that don’t undermine that very self-determination? Providing financing, including microcredit, and business consulting are certainly two important ways to do so. These must be done, however, in ways that leave the initiative, ownership, and control with locals and ways that respect locals’ own business skills and knowledge and don’t presume that Americans know business best.

Beyond direct support of tent-making endeavors, this approach also suggests the importance of supporting peace-building efforts and infrastructure development as an approach to mission partnerships, as these create the bases for sustained local economic growth. Again, locals must take the lead, but there are still opportunities for the rich who are willing to listen and be led by the poor.

Indeed, a willingness by the rich to listen to and be led by the poor must be at the heart of any attempt to deal with the problem of economic inequality in The United Methodist Church. Yet if the rich are willing to do so, they will find that the rewards include not just a more equitable global church but spiritual blessings for themselves as well.

How much Methodist structure is necessary globally?

Today’s post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott. It is the third of a four-part series on money and relationships in the global church. Dr. Scott is Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent official positions of Global Ministries.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been raising the question of how United Methodists can face the problem of vast economic inequality in the church in a way that preserves relationship between rich and poor without turning those relationships into ones of dependence solidifying inequalities of power. Last week’s post examined the asset-based development approach, which is a way of relativizing the economic resources shared by the rich by recognizing the value of other, non-economic resources. Today’s approach, reducing the church structures required globally, is a means to reduce the need for economic resources to be shared from the rich to the poor.

The United Methodist Church and its predecessors, along with Western Protestant missionaries generally, have promoted through their civilizing missions a rather expensive model of being church based on Western modernity. People joke about the UMC being nothing but committees. Yet this joke gets at a truth: The United Methodist Church is organized in a particular way that presumes various aspects of a modern voluntary organization – committees, officers, by-laws, etc. And this is to say nothing about the buildings, programming, and paid staff that also go along with how we understand church.

The rub is that all of these – buildings, programming, paid staff, non-local committee meetings – require financial resources. As detailed last week, other assets are necessary for the work of the church, and these other assets must be recognized as such and valued accordingly. Still, financial assets are needed, and the more buildings, programming, paid staff, and non-local committee meetings you have, the more money you need to fund them. Such buildings, programming, staff, and meetings are not necessarily bad, but we make a mistake if we assume they must characterize the church everywhere and at all times.

If the church in all locations is required to have a certain level of these expenses that exceeds local abilities in poor countries to pay for them, then the church in those countries must rely on the church in rich countries to underwrite this approach to church. In this case, the church in poor countries must not only beg for money to help carry out ministries in society such as health and education ministries, it must rely on the church in rich countries for the basic operations of the church. When the church in a poor country cannot pay for its on-going basic operations, it becomes dependent on the church in rich countries in ways that psychologically, morally, and spiritually distort both poor and rich.

If a church (either a congregation or a regional body) lacks the funds to pay for all of its basic operations, there are two solutions to that problem: increase revenues or decrease costs. I’ll look at possible ways to increase revenues in next week’s post, but for this week, I want to talk about the other half of the equation: decreasing costs.

I would like to make a distinction between decreasing costs and cutting costs. The latter is a management technique arising out of modern capitalism that seeks to do the same things while spending less by realizing greater efficiencies in process. By the former I mean a wholesale rethinking of what costs are necessary in all parts of the church around the globe and jettisoning those that are not necessary in particular local contexts.

While United Methodists are tied to a modern, organizational understanding of the church, it is important to point out that the church hasn’t meant the same thing in all places and times. While the church has certainly required some level of resources to operate and the church in some places and times has had great wealth relative to its surrounding society, that is not to say that all churches have always required the same level of resources that are required to pay for several full-time staff, a modern building with utilities, an array of professionalized ministries, and frequent national and international travel.

One way to decrease the costs of being church is to decide that some of these components are not universally necessary or not necessary in the same quantities as we currently have them in the UMC. This could mean reducing professionalized ministries, full-time ministers, required committee meetings, etc. I say this not to make a case for getting rid of any particular one of these options, but to give a sense of the range of what could be possible.

Moreover, I am not calling for rich Western United Methodists to unilaterally tell poor United Methodists, either in other countries or in their own home countries, that they will no longer pay for things that the poor United Methodists hold dear. What I am suggesting is that all United Methodists support and encourage local adaptation and contextualization of the church that takes into consideration the economic conditions of the church along with its social, political, and religious conditions.

To some extent, such adaptation already happens. Church does means something different in a village church in Mozambique than it does in a suburban megachurch in Texas, and that is well and good.

Yet to continue this process of adapting the church to its local economic and other conditions would also require some changes to the Book of Discipline, which often stipulates a model of church based on a presumed American level of financial wherewithal. Such changes are part of what’s going on with the effort to create a Global Book of Discipline. Thus, that effort is to be commended and encouraged.

In this process of adaptation, rich United Methodists must not presume to determine for poor United Methodists what structures they should have locally. They should listen to poor United Methodists to find out what parts of church structure they find necessary, relevant, and sustainable in their contexts. In so doing, rich United Methodists must adopt a posture of listening and learning. Certainly, they can engage poor United Methodists in conversations about financial sustainability, but these much be conversations and not proclamations on the part of the rich.

Adopting less expensive local adaptations of church and its ministries would mean that money is less a factor in relationships between different branches of The United Methodist Church, since fewer poorer branches would be dependent upon richer branches for their very existence. Moreover, to the extent that money does flow from richer United Methodists to poorer United Methodists, it can be part of asset-based partnerships to transform the world and not just keep the lights on. Thus, adaptation of church structures can yield not only greater equality, but greater mission as well.

What are your assets?

Today’s post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott. It is the second of a four-part series on money and relationships in the global church. Dr. Scott is Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent official positions of Global Ministries.

Last week, I raised the question of how United Methodists can face the problem of vast economic inequality in the church in a way that preserves relationship between rich and poor without turning those relationships into ones of dependence solidifying inequalities of power. I noted the importance of the rich sharing with the poor, for not to do so would destroy relationship by implying that the rich did not care for the poor. If the rich must share, then, how can they share without creating dependency?

One approach to sharing without creating dependency is asset-based partnerships. Asset-based partnerships can involve partners with varying levels of financial resources working together to address issues in the church and the world, but in a way that is intended to create more equal partnership between all participants, regardless of their level of financial resources.

The key to asset-based approaches is realizing that money is only one form of asset. While Americans are socialized to understand assets in economic terms, an asset can be defined as anything of value, or anything that is helpful for accomplishing work. In Christian theological language, an asset is any gift or grace given us by God.

Certainly, money is an asset, and most undertakings require a certain amount of money. But the important insight of asset-based approaches is that money is far from the only asset. Other assets include knowledge, skills, abilities, relationships, networks, authority, physical resources, and even prayer and spirituality. All of these assets can be necessary to accomplish a project, and thus all of them have value. Therefore, all of them should be recognized as valuable. If we think of assets as treasure, then they should not be understood only as economic riches, but as anything which we actively treasure, which we hold in high value.

The other important tenet of asset-based approaches to partnership is that not only is there a wide variety of assets, but all people and groups have some assets. Not all individuals may have the same level of financial assets, but the poor have other assets along with whatever meager amount of financial assets they do have. They also have knowledge, skills, abilities, relationships, networks, and spirituality. Asset-based partnerships recognize the assets that are contributed by all who participate.

Asset-based partnerships thus shift the mentality of partnership from “We, the rich, have the money; therefore, we will make the decisions,” to “We are all contributing necessary assets to this project; therefore, we all have a say in how the project will go, since it would not work without all of us.” Asset-based partnerships thus require give and take, listening, and mutual understanding.

Such an approach requires some spiritual effort and humility on the part of the rich. One of the ways in which wealth negatively affects the rich is that it distorts their views of themselves, creating the conditions for pride from assuming that their wealth means that they also have more of other assets than other people – knowledge, skills, networks, and even spirituality. The rich must be willing to not only give up their riches but give up their sense of superiority.

For the rich to open themselves up to recognize and receive the assets of the poor requires some kenosis – some self-emptying. Yet, as Christians, we have the greatest example of self-emptying in Jesus who, “though he was in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8) Rich Western United Methodists must ask ourselves how we can empty ourselves and become obedient, both to God and to the poor. To do so will require vulnerability, which may run counter to American culture, but it is a direct response to the gospel call.

Despite the spiritual and psychological challenges to the rich in adopting this model, it has been an important one promoted by Global Ministries, the World Council of Churches, and secular development organizations. One expression of such an approach is mission roundtables, which seek to bring together partners around an issue on a relatively equal footing that recognizes the assets of all.

Asset-based approaches do not remove all inequalities. Asset-based partnerships still usually involve rich Christians and poor Christians working together in poor Christians’ countries, not rich Christians’ countries. Rich Christians have by and large not yet recognized that poor Christians may have something to contribute to the ministry of rich Christians in their own home contexts, perhaps an inevitable reflection of a world in which not only wealth, but health, peace, education, and well-being are inequitably distributed.

Persistent inequalities in wealth and well-being that create rich and poor are not God’s desire for the world. Yet, while inequalities do persist, asset-based partnerships address the important and biblical injunction for the rich to share of their wealth with the poor. They are an important part of the solution, especially when combined with other partial solutions, such as my post next week will explore.

Money is the biggest problem in the global church today

Today’s post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott. It is the first of a four-part series on money and relationships in the global church. Dr. Scott is Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent official positions of Global Ministries.

The United Methodist Church has a big problem.

No, it’s not the debate over sexuality.

No, it’s not the long-term membership decline in the US or flat membership most places in the world.

It’s not overly bureaucratic boards or creeping congregationalism or theological confusion or any of the other problems commonly named in the denomination.

It’s a huge problem that stabs at the heart of how we relate to each other as a global church, yet it’s also a problem that we don’t talk about. It makes us so uncomfortable, that we avoid even recognizing this problem as one.

This problem is money.

Specifically, the problem is the vast economic inequalities between the different branches of the church and the relational and spiritual distortions caused by these inequalities.

To be fair, The United Methodist Church is not alone in this problem. We live in a world of vast disparities in wealth, the result of a capitalist system designed to accumulate ever greater amounts of wealth for those who already have it. Many indicators show that wealth distribution globally is becoming ever more unequal. The tiny number of ultra-wealthy hoard every larger percentages of the world’s total wealth, while millions live on pennies a day.

Yet even taking the ultra-wealthy out of the picture, the financial disparities between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, or between Norway and Liberia, are still stark. The US’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is 72 times that of the Congo. Norway’s is 78 times that of Liberia.

The UMC operates in several of the world’s wealthiest countries, but also in several of the poorest countries in the world. The world’s inequalities are our inequalities. We cannot pretend that the problem of wealth is a problem only for the Bill Gates of the world; it is a problem for the Western church generally. While our missionaries may come from everywhere and go everywhere, our money does not.

Again, this problem affects more than just United Methodists. This problem applies to World Christianity as a whole. The World Council of Churches has been wrestling with how Christians can be in partnership with one another across vast economic inequalities for decades. Yet the World Council of Churches has at least been facing and trying to come to grips with this problem. Despite statements in the Book of Resolutions, The UMC as a whole has yet to fully acknowledge this problem as such.

Wealth inequality in the church is a problem for several reasons. To begin with, there are the many, many biblical teachings on wealthy, poverty, and economic justice that speak of God’s concern for the poor. Money is an overriding concern for Jesus and the rest of the Bible, but rarely for the Western church. A full review of the Bible’s teachings on money is beyond the scope of this post but suffice it to say that our current capitalist world does not reflect the biblical ideals of a just economic community. Moreover, John Wesley reflected this biblical concern for the poor in his own ministry.

Second, as Jonathan Bonk and others have pointed out, wealth disparities in mission can distort the very message of the Gospel and how it is heard and understood, both by those with wealth and by those without wealth who encounter wealthy ambassadors of the Gospel. Many United Methodists would disparage the prosperity gospel, but how often do wealthy Western United Methodists unwittingly propagate just such a gospel by implying that the result of becoming Christian is to become like wealthy Americans?

Vast wealth inequalities also make it impossible to have healthy relationships among branches of a global church with dramatically different financial resources. Wealth inequality places the church in a dilemma:

On the one hand, were rich United Methodists not to share any of their resources with poor United Methodists, it would destroy relationship because it would imply that the rich did not care about the poor.

Yet, if rich United Methodists do share their resources with poor United Methodists, it is difficult to do so in a way that does not create patron-client relationships between rich and poor. In such relationships, the poor become subservient to and dependent upon the rich, who then have disproportionate power over the poor. Such power imbalances are difficult to reconcile with a Gospel and a polity that theoretically affirm the worth of all, regardless of how much money they have.

As I said at the beginning, the problem of money is a big problem. There are not a lot of easy solutions. The problem of money may even be more difficult to resolve than the debate over sexuality in the church.

Nonetheless, over the next three weeks, I will look at three possible partial solutions. The first is asset-based approaches to relationship building; the second is reducing the amount of church structure required in all locations; the third is a self-supporting approach to church and mission. The first approach seeks to create more equitable approaches to sharing. The second and third seek to reduce dependency by poorer branches of the church on the richer branches. None of them is the entire solution, but all may be pieces of how we as the church can build a just, loving, and equitable global fellowship.

The Nordic Theory of Giving

I recently read Anu Partanen’s book, The Nordic Theory of Everything. One of the arguments she advances in the book is something she calls “the Nordic theory of love.” According to this theory, relationships between people represent the truest expression of love when they are not encumbered by any form of dependency of one party on another. Dependency is seen as introducing power dynamics that negatively affect both giver and receiver. Moreover, it shifts the basis of the relationship from love to need or power.

The alternative to this type of dependency is to guarantee certain things as a right within society so that people are not dependent on family, other individuals, companies, municipalities, etc. to provide them. This “Nordic theory of love” is operationalized within society by creating social and government systems that emphasize the autonomy of individuals and provide basic needs for all through collective programs so that people are not dependent upon one another. Certainly, many Americans are uncomfortable with the state playing such a role in people’s lives, but my point is not to argue for an active state; it is to use Partanen’s ideas about dependency to reflect on the UMC.

To give a few instances of how the Nordic theory of love plays out in the Nordic countries, college students are not required to report their parents’ incomes on financial aid forms, since college students are presumed to be financially independent of their parents and should not be forced to rely on parental assets to determine their futures. The government runs health programs so that people are not dependent on their employers for health insurance and thus forced to continue to work at jobs they hate just to keep their health insurance. Married couples file tax forms separately to avoid fostering financial dependency of one spouse upon the other.

Let’s see specifically how this theory works out with the imaginary example of Wi-Fi. The American system is that everyone should pay for their own Wi-Fi. For those with the resources to do so, that works out great. If someone doesn’t have enough money to pay for Wi-Fi, then they would have to rely upon a neighbor or friend to share their Wi-Fi password with them, perhaps, or go without. The neighbor or friend may ask for favors in exchange or set conditions on the gift – the password recipient may not watch Netflix in the evenings or must wash the password-giver’s car, perhaps. The recipient thus becomes dependent on the giver. As a consequence, they are not free to use their internet and other resources as best they see fit.

The Nordic solution would be to provide Wi-Fi through a municipal utility, as some cities in the US have done. Thus, everyone gets Wi-Fi – the poor are not left behind, but no one is dependent on another person for their Wi-Fi access, since it is a basic service provided to everyone. Note, that this is not charity Wi-Fi for the poor; it’s Wi-Fi for everyone that the poor can use along with the middle class and rich. Moreover, under the Nordic theory, everyone contributes to the Wi-Fi, to the extent they are able (and barring severe temporary circumstances such as loss of a job), through their taxes. Wi-Fi is thus not an issue of charity; it’s a basic public service.

I was thinking about this system as I was thinking about dependencies that are created through mission giving in the UMC. There are many instances in which American or European United Methodists share generously with their fellow believers in Africa and the Philippines. Yet, like the person giving out his or her Wi-Fi password above, American and European giving can come with conditions or expectations of return favors. These conditions may range from naming rights to restricted uses of donated gifts to expected support for polity positions. When such conditions or expectations are attached to them, the gifts create dependency. As a result, the receivers are not free to use the gifts or their other resources as best they see fit.

There are several ways to move beyond such dependencies. One way is to revamp giving along the lines of the methods described in When Helping Hurts, Toxic Charity, and similar books. This is an important approach to overturning dependency-creating models of mission, and readers are encouraged to explore these books if they have not already.

Yet I wonder whether it would also be possible to institute some Nordic theory of love solutions to the issue of dependency in the UMC. What common services would we want as guarantees for all churches, regardless of location? What services would we want our general agencies to provide to ALL churches or annual conferences – rich or poor, Western or Southern? Construction assistance? Disaster relief coordination? Technical assistance for annual conferences? How could we structure contributions to the World Service Fund or other means such that all annual conferences can contribute to these basic public services, to the extent they are able and barring severe temporary circumstances?

Such a shift would require significant changes in mindset and sacrifice of privilege by American and European churches. It’s nice to be the donor and to be able to dictate the terms or call in favors when needed. There are advantages to being the patron in a patron-client relationship, and Westerners would need to self-sacrificially give up those advantages for the sake of striving toward the gospel equality to which Jesus calls us.

Yet Methodists are supposed to be known as a people of love. It’s worth thinking, therefore, about what Anu Partanen’s Nordic theory of love might have to say to us as we seek to better love our Methodist neighbors as ourselves.

Recommended reading: The relatively wealthy American UMC

The Pew Research Center recently published an info graphic ranking major US religious groups, including The United Methodist Church, by household income. While the UMC isn't the highest on the chart, its American members do make more than the average American family. The UMC has a lower percentage of households making less than $30,000/year and a higher percentage of families making more than $50,000/year than the US average, giving some credence to the old joke, "Q: What does UMC stand for? A: Upper middle class."

Two brief observations about these data are appropriate:

1. These results again raise questions about the UMC's ability to reach out to new population groups within the US beyond its base of mostly white, mostly middle to upper-middle class American members. As this blog has indicated before, the UMC in the US struggles at times to recognize and go beyond its cultural location, and its class base is part of that cultural location.

2. These results raise questions about relationships between relatively wealthy American United Methodists and relatively poorer United Methodists in Asia and Africa. United Methodists everywhere around the world need to be cognizant of the potential distortions and conflicts financial inequalities can introduce into the familial relations of faith.

Rising wealth inequality and the fate of global Methodism

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.

A report on wealth inequality released by Oxfam yesterday included a startling statistic: the world's richest 85 individuals have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population.  This stat and the rest of the findings of the report have been getting a lot of play in the press in the last day and a half, but let me include some of the highlights for those of you who missed them.  The gap between the wealthy and the poor has grown in recent years in all but two countries around the globe, even in traditionally low-wealth inequality countries like the Scandinavian nations.  In the United States, the top 1% collected almost all of the benefits of the financial recovery since 2009, while the poor have gotten poorer in the same time.

This report raises two questions for me about how this rising wealth inequality impacts The United Methodist Church.  The first is this: One of the church's current Four Areas of Focus is "Ministry With the Poor."  What does it mean for us to be in ministry with the poor in a world in which the poor have an ever-decreasing portion of the world's resources?  How does that affect the types of ministry of which the poor are capable, and how does it affect the types of ministry that they poor need?  Does rising global wealth inequality make ministry with the poor more challenging, and if so, how should we as United Methodists respond?

The second question is this: Methodism has historically grown best among a rising middle class and the aspiring working class.  If, as the Oxfam report suggests, the world economic system is becoming increasingly a "winner-takes-all" system separated into the ultra-rich and the struggling masses, where does that leave Methodism's socio-ecclesiastical "niche."  Other have already pointed out the correlation between the decline of the middle class in the US and the decline of United Methodism in the US.  Currently, the middle class is still rising in Africa and other developing nations, but if increased wealth inequality puts a halt to the growth of the middle class there, will it halt United Methodist growth as well?

Please note that I'm not just calling for the government redistribution of wealth as a solution to this problem.  Wealth inequality is a complex problem, and government redistribution a simplistic solution for those who see it as such and a straw man opponent for those who don't see it as a problem.  As the Oxfam report makes clear, government policies do make a difference, especially those that set the rules of the financial playing field.  Yet so do corporate and individual choices in boardrooms and buying centers around the world.  In order to arrive at a set of communal and individual solutions, however, we must first recognize wealth inequality as a problem.

Also, while I've cast this article in terms of how wealth inequality might affect The United Methodist Church, there are plenty of other religious reasons to be leery of wealth inequality.  One can think of the many biblical statements about wealth, including those by Jesus, the prophets such as Amos and Micah, and even some of the Levitical laws, that recognize the spiritual and moral hazards of wealth and wealth inequality.  One can also make arguments based on such religious values as caring for others, the value of persons, and justice.  In my mind, these biblical and other religious reasons for questioning wealth inequality should be our primary reasons for doing so.  Ways in which wealth inequality may affect the UMC should be of interest to Methodists, but of secondary importance to our general call as Christians to live out the gospel of Christ.