Mission a dance??? Stay with us, it might work!
Witherspoon mission conference ponders different views of dancing with
God
[9-11-05]
The Witherspoon conference opened with about 75 participants on Friday
afternoon, September 9, at the Presbyterian Church’s Stony Point Center,
just north of New York City. Focusing on the ways mission provides support
for peace and justice in the US and around the globe, a few speakers and
many small groups talked and listened and weighed various understandings of
the church’s mission, and a wide range of ways that mission can serve the
world.
Marian McClure leads opening worship,
calling us into the dance of grace
Marian McClure, Director of the Worldwide Ministries
Division of the PC(USA), gave the sermon in the opening worship, opening
with her thoughts on the "dancing with God" theme. The first step in our
dance, she said, is our experience of God’s grace. And we, like Zaccheus
"the tax collaborator," are spun around into a whole new direction in life –
a new life of love and forgiveness and justice.
She told of seeing this power of grace in a visit to
Haiti, where she visited a coffee plantation project in Haiti which had been
sponsored by a Catholic parish, whose well-trained young catechists had
transformed their peasant community into a center of resistance against the
dictatorial Duvalier regime. She soon realized that one small, uneducated
young man, Jacques, was providing strong leadership as his people faced
danger from the government. Talking with him one day, she asked what gave
him the strength to play this role.
He told his story of being seriously injured as a child
when he fell off a mule. For a very poor family, keeping their small child
in the hospital was terribly expensive, and to keep providing his meals, as
patients’ families had to do, was forcing his father to sell their farm
animals one by one, until they were all gone. His brothers and sisters were
going hungry so their little brother could be kept alive. Jacques slowly
realized that he had been a recipient of grace – extravagant, undeserved
care. This grace changed his life, moving him to care freely for others,
which meant working for justice.
This, said McClure, points to the false dichotomy between
evangelism and justice. Some evangelicals, she noted, see beyond that
dichotomy and recognize that when Jesus called his disciples to "go and
baptize all," he really meant all were included. She reminded us too
that there are liberals who see their commitment to justice as standing in
contrast to the call to spread the good news. But, she said, "mission unites
us across the theological spectrum." But, she added, "it’s a little more
complicated than that."
Still, our false dichotomies are "popping and imploding
all around us" as we encounter so many instances where the Gospel message
gives oppressed people a new sense that they are people. She told of
two Pakistani church leaders who had come from very humble backgrounds and
the bottom of society. They explained to her that "you made us people. We
were worse than nothing. We were irrelevant." But the message of God’s
grace, and the education and other support that the church provided – the
experience of grace – had made them into full human beings.
So, she concluded, "God’s grace is sufficient. It can turn
us out onto the dance floor to join god’s dance of grace and justice."
The text of Dr. McClure’s sermon
>>
Tracing our contexts – past and present
Following opening worship, Marian McClure and Gary Cook,
Associate Director for Global Service and
 |
|
Gary Cook and
Marian McClure |
Witness in the Worldwide Ministries Division,
presented a quick survey of the history of Presbyterian involvement in
mission, with its consistent focus on evangelism, health and education.
McClure pointed out that in Presbyterian mission during the 20th
century, missions were critical of the empires whose damage they were
working so hard to overcome. But now, "we’re the ones with the power," and
the role of mission workers is shifting.
Gary Cook highlighted a wide spread of current programs
around the world that support programs in education, health work, hunger
needs, and much more, with the aim of equipping other people and communities
for mission – so today 46% of the Worldwide Ministries budget goes for
grants and scholarships for partner churches, which 41% supports mission
personnel.
After those presentations, the participants spent an hour
in small groups getting acquainted, but it was much more than "what’s your
name and where do you come from." As they told one story of where they are
engaged in mission, they also thought about some aspect of mission concern
that impacts their communities or their lives – issues such as
globalization, or environmental problems, or poverty. Getting to know one
another, we began to see, may involve getting to know our own situations in
deeper ways.
Philip Wickeri – Ecumenical Mission in an
Age of Empire
Dr. Philip Wickeri, who teaches evangelism and mission at
San Francisco Theological Seminary, provided the conference with a keynote
address which raised serious issues as he put the church’s mission in the
wider context of American empire.
Reminding us that Marian McClure had referred to the
problem of colonialism, he added that "it’s not just a problem of arrogance;
it’s about a system of domination." He cited Presbyterian examples of this:
Sheldon Jackson, whose famed mission work in Alaska was linked with growing
American control of what had been a Russian territory. And Leighton Stuart,
a missionary to China, then became the American ambassador there during the
Chinese struggle for liberation.
Wickeri pointed to COEMAR, the Commission on Ecumenical
Mission and Relations, as an example of Presbyterian mission at its best, as
it brought together the church’s commitment to unity and mission,
proclaiming that "the whole church brings the whole gospel to the whole
worlds." In this understanding, he said, there was no separation of
evangelism and action, between church and mission.
But COEMAR’s existence ceased in 1972, probably due to a
variety of factors: the rise of thePresbyterian Layman with its
attacks on programs and people of COEMAR, the channeling of funds
increasingly to independent missions, the decline of interest in mission
among justice-oriented people, and more. COEMAR’s wholistic approach to
mission was further undermined in the 1980s and ’90's, with the rise of
conservatism in the Reagan era, the end of the Cold War, and the rise of the
American empire.
So, he said, "mission has been reconfigured" – not revived
by a new vision for its new role in a radically different world, in which
globalization and militarism are the main realities.
As steps toward such a new vision, he offered glimpses of
two very different documents: the Accra statement by the World Alliance of
Reformed Churches, issued in 2004 at its General Council meeting in Ghana,
and two recent statements of the U.S. government’s National Defense
Strategy. Comparing some of the language in the recent Presbyterian
statement, "Presbyterians Do Mission in Partnership," with language in the
defense policy statements, he suggested the similarities in terminology
(such as "partnership") seem to suggest some similarities in ways of
thinking about the world and the mission of the church or nation.
He urged the group to study the defense documents, as well
as the Accra statement on globalization and American power, as ways to
become aware of the context of our mission, and the ways in which the church
in mission is called today to resist empire.
The full text of Dr. Wickeri’s
address >>
[We’ll have more reports on the conference as soon as your
WebWeaver has time to process them.]
Assembly, was a very special participant at the Witherspoon conference on
global mission, not only for who she is, but for where she came from. She
and her husband live in New Orleans, where she is Associate Pastor of
Lakeview Presbyterian Church. By the second week of September they
were staying with family in Illinois, since their home in New Orleans had
been destroyed, and her congregation was scattered to places mostly unknown.
