| SAN FRANCISCO
— A $40 million campaign to raise money for Presbyterian
Church (USA) overseas missionaries and new churches has received
a $300,000 infusion from the National Korean Presbyterian Council.
The gift to the Mission
Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands (MIJHH) was announced
during the campaign steering committee’s Feb. 3-4 meeting
here by Dr. Yushin Lee, the Korean council’s executive general
secretary.
The gift represents a tithe of the council’s “3M
Campaign,” a $3 million dollar drive marking the 100th anniversary
of Korean immigration to the United States. Lee said it represents
the council’s interest in making the PC(USA) “a missional
church in the 21st century.”
It brings total pledges to the five-year MIJHH to nearly $6.5
million in its first year.
And more help is on the way.
The Rev. Robert
Langwig, former
vice-president
for development
for the Presbyterian
Church (USA) Foundation,
told the committee
that he has recruited
17 former Foundation
regional representatives
to serve as volunteer
fund-raisers for
the MIJHH campaign.
“These folk have 250 years of combined experienced, all
are licensed and credentialed, and have all been part of the Presbyterian
Foundation at one time or another,” said Langwig, who hired
most of them when he was at the Foundation. “They were hired
there for mission and ministry … and they have missed that
mission and ministry. and hearing of the opportunity to serve,
they started calling me.”
Langwig guaranteed that the new volunteers will raise the $40
million, and said flatly: “We’re going to double that.”
The reinforcements will not be working only with their own contacts,
said Jan Opdyke, the new director of the campaign. In a little
over a year, the MIJHH staff has identified more than 1,500 prospective
large-gift donors, she said, and the list is growing.
The Rev. Marian McClure, director of the Worldwide Ministries
Division, said WMD is turning over its donor list of 30,000 names
for “screening” by the MIJHH staff to determine how
many are capable of making large gifts.
The steering committee also welcomed two consultants to the campaign:
the Rev. Tom Norwood, a former development officer at Davidson
College in North Carolina who now runs his own financial consulting
firm; and Elder Scott Buchanan of Sherman, TX, a former development
officer for Austin College with close ties to the Texas Presbyterian
Foundation.
“Initially, they are going to help us with strategic planning,”
Opdyke said of the consultants. “We’re going to rely
on them to help us put a strategic plan together, and then hold
our feet to the fire to make sure we follow it.”
Officials are beginning to develop strategies for spending the
money. The Rev. Doug Wilson, associate director for Presbyterian
evangelism in the National Ministries Division (NMD), outlined
“a very preliminary” plan to deploy Evangelism and
Church Development office staff from Louisville to selected presbyteries
to help bolster new-church development efforts.
Wilson envisions a pilot project in which staffers will identify
the 10 fastest-growing areas in the United States and approach
the presbyteries in those areas “to see how we can help
them develop a vision and strategic plan for planting new churches,
and then assist with the coordinated allocation of resources,
locally and nationally.”
The Rev. David Peterson, of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church
in Houston and the Rev. John Huffman of St. Andrews Presbyterian
Church in Newport Beach, CA, urged Wilson to include congregations
in the plan, citing the growing movement of new-church plantings
spearheaded by congregations rather than presbyteries.
Wilson agreed, saying, “There’s pretty much been
a single model (for starting new churches) around since the 1950s,
and it doesn’t always work.”
At the urging of the Rev. Joanna Adams of Atlanta, John Detterick,
the executive director of the General Assembly Council, said NMD
and MIJHH representatives will be involved in further development
of the plan.
McClure outlined the projected “80-70-500” results
of the campaign for overseas mission personnel. “We strive
to add 80 persons with long-term commitments (two years or more)
and 70 people in short-term (one year or less) commitments,”
she said, adding that some of those missionaries will be volunteers.
“Another way to speak of this,” she said, “is
to think of it as adding 500 person-years of mission service through
the PC(USA).”
McClure went through a list of 15 overseas positions for which
WMD is now recruiting missionaries — from a college administrator
for Forman Christian College in Pakistan, to a community health
nurse in Sudan, to an evangelist in South Korea.
The steering committee successfully navigated its way through
a pointed confrontation between its most liberal and conservative
members that began when Huffman, calling it the “elephant
in the living room,” criticized Adams for recent statements
she made as co-moderator of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians
supporting an effort at this year’s General Assembly to
overturn an “authoritative interpretation” of the
constitution that bans the ordination of “self affirming
practicing homosexuals.”
“I signed on to this campaign with the understanding that
there’s an open window until 2006 (when the Assembly’s
Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church
is scheduled to make its final report on the ordination and other
issues),” Huffman said. “This kind of activity closes
that window.”
In response to Huffman’s charge that their support of the
measure violates a private agreement, Adams and another Covenant
Network board member, the Rev. Tim Hart-Andersen of Minneapolis,
said they had agreed not to pursue the removal of G-6.0106b from
The Book of Order, calling the rescinding of the authoritative
interpretation that buttresses the constitutional ban “a
separate issue.”
Huffman disagreed, calling it “a stealth weapon”
that will bring about “the big blow-up in our church, and
bring down the Mission Initiative with it.” Peterson agreed
that action on ordination standards at this General Assembly presents
a dire threat to the MIJHH’s success.
The committee unanimously adopted the following statement, co-authored
by Huffman, Peterson, Adams and Hart-Andersen:
We, the members of the Steering Committee of the Mission Initiative:
Joining Hearts & Hands, reaffirm our unequivocal and unanimous
support of the goals for the PC(USA) $40 million campaign: expanding
global mission and developing churches.
We represent a range of theological positions and differing perspectives
on some matters that are divisive in the life of the church, including
ordination issues and questions of biblical authority and interpretation.
Yet, we remain united behind the Mission Initiative.
We trust that God will work through the church to resolve these
matters in God’s own time and way. In the meantime, we call
all members of the PC(USA) to step forward and join us in fully
supporting the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign. Together,
by the grace of God, the church will be renewed for the mission
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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