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The gift was announced by Westminster’s pastor, the Rev. Timothy Hart-Andersen, who serves on the MIJHH steering committee. The five-year campaign is seeking to raise $40 million by 2007 for overseas mission personnel and church development in this country, particularly racial ethnic and new immigrant congregations.
Dayton’s gift is the largest individual commitment to date to the MIJHH, which recently reached the halfway point to its goal.
“Mary Lee has a great love for the church,” said Hart-Andersen in announcing the gift. “Her spirit of generosity and her witness of faith will live on through this gift, transforming lives for future generations in ways we can’t even imagine today.”
Dayton’s connection to Cameroon is very personal. Her father began his ministry there in 1912 as a Presbyterian missionary. At that time Cameroon was a German colony. When World War I broke out, Lowe was one of three missionaries who remained and courageously led an effort to protect thousands of Cameroonians from the warring Europeans. Later, he served as pastor of Westminster Church from 1941-1965.
The Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Cameroon, located outside the city of Kumba, has a faculty of 10 and a current enrollment of approximately 70 students. Established in 1952, it offers a four-year, Bachelor of Theology degree program and is one of the few seminaries in all of West and Central Africa to educate both men and women for ordained ministry. Dayton’s gift will increase the seminary’s annual income by approximately 50%.
Specifically, the gift will be used to supplement the salary of a non-Cameroonian professor, underwrite the salary of Cameroonian professors, provide graduate fellowships for Cameroonian professors to study for masters and doctoral degrees outside Cameroon, offer stipends for student assistants, expand library holdings and strengthen academic planning.
“Just think of the continent of Africa, not the turmoil but the potential and the ever-growing need for the church’s presence,” she said. “My father had passion for spreading the Gospel, regardless of where he was called to serve. Now, the work that he began in Cameroon nearly a century ago will continue.”
The Presbyterian Church in Cameroon is one of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s 167 partner churches in 80 countries, relationships which are coordinated and nurtured by the denomination’s Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD).
“This gift will enable the seminary in Cameroon to develop a new and expanded vision for how they train and equip individuals for ministry,” said WMD director the Rev. Marian McClure, “It reaffirms the Rev. Lowe’s deep commitment to the people of Cameroon and is yet again a statement by this family: ‘we stand with you as you build your vision of excellence for the future in faithfulness to God.’”
MIJHH director Jan Opdyke said that Dayton’s pledge — the first endowed gift to the campaign — “truly will have a profound impact.” Mark Klemm, senior vice president for development at the Presbyterian Foundation, concurred: “Because Mrs. Dayton’s gift is endowed, it will undergird the work of the church in Cameroon for years to come.”
Emily Enders Odom is communications director for the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands. |
