07638
October 5, 2007
At a crossroads
Presbyterians seek cooperative, churchwide effort for future mission
Hunter Farrell
LOUISVILLE — Recent advances in technology and changes in the economy and culture have triggered a paradigm shift that’s forcing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to once again decide “how to be engaged in God’s mission in the world,” the Rev. Hunter Farrell said Oct. 3.
The General Assembly Council’s new director of World Mission said he believes “we are at a crossroads, a kairos moment when the very paradigm of our self-understanding as a church can shift from a membership organization, primarily concerned with providing needed services to our members, to that of a missional church.”
Addressing those gathered here for a four-day celebration of PC(USA) global mission, Farrell said the PC(USA) can become a church “that understands itself as being sent into the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ with people across the street and around the globe in ways that are passionate and respectful, and to serve the world’s poor with compassion and justice.”
Or the church can fade away into extinction, he said, “like a dinosaur unable to adapt to a changed environment.”
Farrell said the advent of Internet communications and a marked increase in international travel have opened the door for more broad-based involvement in overseas mission throughout the church.
There has been a significant increase across the denomination in international mission both in financial contributions and in hands-on involvement through short-term mission experiences, he said.
Presbyterians now contribute more dollars to international mission than at any other time in the past 40 years amid a dramatic increase in the number of ways Presbyterians can financially support mission in the world, said Farrell, a career PC(USA) mission worker before taking his new position during the summer.
“Presbyterians are contributing hundreds of millions of dollars each year to parachurch mission agencies, Christian NGOs and other groups, many of which do good work building up Christ’s church around the world,” Farrell said.
There are other factors pushing the “paradigm-shift movement,” he said, such as cultural trends in the United States regarding decentralization, increased individualism, and distrust of institutions and authorities. All of which have contributed to this “post-denominationalism,” he said.
Also contributing to the shift is a decrease in church member identity and loyalty to the denomination, a heightened theological conflict within the PC(USA), and problems in mission funding that have played a major role in reducing financial support for General Assembly Council-related mission.
This crossroads follows a long tradition of mission work for which Presbyterians can be thankful, Farrell said.
He said the Presbyterian Church has defined itself as a church-in-mission during the more than two centuries since Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, French Huguenots and Dutch Reformed Christians first brought the Reformed faith to North American shores.
Since then support for world mission has been “one of the hallmarks of being Presbyterian,” Farrell said.
Being a Presbyterian during the early years of this mission history meant prayerfully and financially supporting Presbyterian missionaries, Farrell said.
In those years hundreds of missionaries were recruited and sent to Liberia, Cameroon, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Colombia, Korea, the Congo and other nations. Presbyterian missionaries translated the Bible into dozens of languages, taught it throughout the world and went on to help establish Bible societies.
Small and struggling churches grew around the world and many people came to know Jesus and joined the Presbyterian Church. Schools were built in rural and urban areas in most countries. Many Presbyterian missionaries were dispatched as doctors, nurses, midwives, leprosy specialists and health educators.
A major shift in the Presbyterian Church’s mission strategy began with national independence movements in Africa and Asia during the 1950s and 1960s, which challenged the traditional formula of mission work.
“After much prayer, reflection and not a little conflict, the Apostle Paul’s model of planting self-sustaining churches moved our church to adopt a new model of relating to the national churches in every place,” Farrell said.
From that point, the Presbyterian Church would do mission in partnership wherever there was a national church partner, he said.
The earlier missionary understanding of planting churches shifted into the new paradigm of nurturing the existing national churches.
“During this second chapter of our church’s mission history, to be Presbyterian meant to prayerfully and financially support Presbyterian missionaries who worked in partnership with national Christians,” Farrell said.
For nearly four decades, the Presbyterian Church has maintained its strong commitment to working in partnership.
Farrell said hundreds of Presbyterian missionaries have worked to accompany Christians as they discern God’s call to mission in their native countries, eventually sending out their own missionaries. Churches in Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, the Congo, Ethiopia and Ghana, which U.S. Presbyterians nurtured are now doing the same around the world.
He said throughout the Presbyterian Church’s mission history the hallmarks of mission have been long-term commitment, an emphasis on local language and culture, the passionate proclamation of the gospel, the training of local Christians, and a holistic understanding that, beginning in the earliest days, wedded a biblical concern for right relationships together with the preaching of God’s word.
Farrell said shaping the way the church organizes itself for world mission involves “sensing a personal call through the chaos.” The General Assembly Council (GAC) clearly understands that the current system of doing mission work is not working and is giving a clear priority to World Mission as being the program area where a widespread cross-section of the denomination is coming together.
Also, he said, GAC leadership is willing to allow World Mission staff and mission coworkers, partner churches, and “mission initiators” to shape the new way the program area will collaborate and network with partners in the United States and around the world.
Farrell said that in many parts of the church there is a growing sense that something is changing in Louisville, that the Spirit is moving in a new way and that many see it tied to the concept of mission.
Farrell said he’s sought input from many Presbyterian mission leaders in an effort to understand what their congregations, presbyteries, networks and organizations are doing in mission; what they need from the World Mission program area to improve their work; and to hear what they understand the hallmarks of Presbyterian mission to be.
Among the hallmarks identified by most groups: respect for local context; language and culture; working in partnership with local Christians; sustainability; human rather than project-centered mission; and long-term commitment over short-term interventions.
“Our challenge is how to redesign the work that we are doing while preserving the hallmarks of Presbyterian mission history,” Farrell concluded. |
