global ministries – Salvaged Faith

Vaccines and General Conference

Posted on January 12, 2022Leave a comment

At the end of last week, I received an email from the Wesleyan Covenant Association about their efforts to vaccinate delegates from Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and the Philippines. The goal is to make it possible for these folks to attend the General Conference currently scheduled for late August 2022. Included in the email is a fundraising appeal for supporting such efforts.

As a director with Global Ministries and a past coordinator for our Imagine No Malaria efforts, I must admit that the question of how we help get folks connected with vaccinations has been an important question on my mind. However, from those experiences, I also know that we cannot look at this question in isolation. Fundamental to any such effort must be an awareness about health equity and disparity.

I think, first, about the timing of my own vaccination here in the United States. With limited availability in the early months of 2021, we prioritized the most vulnerable in our communities. I worked with elderly members of my congregation to navigate the complex online systems for scheduling appointments and arranged rides for access. It was a celebration each time one of them got their jab.

In some of those early months, there were a few times when healthy, younger folks like myself could have made a case for getting a vaccine, but it felt wrong to be taking a shot away from someone who might have been an essential worker or someone with far greater health risks. When my time eventually came, I signed up and took my turn.

This effort, on behalf of some of our United Methodist siblings, puts our central conference delegates in an incredibly awkward position. Do you accept the funds in order to travel, spend a few weeks away from home and your livelihood so that you can get access to a vaccine, simply to attend General Conference, when there are other folks in your local community/family who are likely more vulnerable and at-risk than you?

I have been so proud of our efforts at increasing the strength of health systems all across this globe. It has not been easy work, but it is fruitful and faith-filled work. And the efforts like the Global Ministries Covid-19 Response Fund have done incredible things to provide medical supplies, increase the water, sanitation, and hygiene within vulnerable communities, and focus on education and awareness for Covid-19 prevention and vaccine promotion. One of the key factors here is that everyone in the community is impacted by these efforts. This is not a targeted efforts simply at United Methodists within these communities. As our General Secretary Roland Fernandes said, “no one is safe until everyone is safe.” It is also a reminder that simply vaccinating a delegate when their larger community remains largely unvaccinated does not cause the boost we might imagine. There are layers of mitigation efforts that are important and if we have not focused on other factors, the risk of transmission is still high.

There is also an Advance joining with interfaith partners on equitable distribution of the vaccine around the world through COVAX. The hoarding of vaccines by wealthier countries is contributing to the crisis felt in many parts of the world and efforts at redistribution and funding for places without the same resources is vital. Our own UMC health systems are part of this effort of distribution in many places – although we also must work within the policies of governing bodies.

You can also find support for global vaccination equity coming out of the Global Consultation on Vaccine Equity – brought together by numerous UMC partners and leaders, as well as efforts by the United Methodist College of Bishops to name vaccine access a missional priority.

What we are not doing… and what would not be ethical to do… is to create our own vaccine distribution network and limit who has access. Can you imagine if, for example, in our efforts to stop malaria, we prioritized and distributed bed nets and life-saving medication based upon someone’s role within the global denomination, rather than making sure that every household in a community had access?

What if, early in 2021, we had attempted to hold our General Conference and put funds together to fly delegates (including from the U.S.) to other places? Vaccine tourism was a pretty controversial and widely disparaged move in those early days. What kind of witness would we have shown the wider world if we promoted the health and safety of a small group of delegates over clinic workers and elderly without funds and access?

Do I wish that I could wave a magic wand and solve the problems of equitable distribution of vaccinations? Absolutely.
Am I eager to get to a decision-making gathering for our denomination so we can all move forward? Yup.

But the kind of effort being launched by the WCA and their partners does more harm than good. It creates disparity between delegates and their local communities. It reinforces a colonialist attitude where money and resources from outside the region are being leveraged… not simply so that these delegates might be protected, but so that those providing the resources might themselves benefit. And, the witness it makes to the larger world is that rather than put our funding towards making sure that all are able to get access, we are going to focus on ourselves and those we believe are important.

I want to finish by amplifying some voices from outside of the United States that have similar concerns: The Human Cost of General Conference.

EDIT: I am adding today a statement from the Central Conference bishops rejecting the WCA proposal as a form of colonialism.

YES! We Are Able to Care for Our Children

Posted on October 15, 20181 Comment

Text: Mark 9: 33-37, 42-43, 10:13-16

For twenty-seven years, faith communities across the United States have been observing the “Children’s Sabbath,” lifting a united voice of concern for the children in our midst.
Marian Wright Edleman has been instrumental in this work throughout her life. She recalls in a letter of introduction to this year’s observation that fifty years from Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, we are still in the midst of the struggle to end racism, materialism, poverty, and war.
“Many are driven to despair,” she writes, “by assaults on children and family well-being – including rampant and resurgent racism; the devastations of poverty…; the daily, deadly toll of gun violence…; and the heartless ripping of children from the arms of parents seeking refuge in our country. But this time demands that we persist in hope, not despair, and fight with all our nonviolent might until justice is won.”
“All children deserve lives of hope, not despair,” Edleman proclaims.
All children.

So this morning, we are joining together with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Christians to remember that all children are precious in God’s sight and to answer the call to make a positive impact on their lives.

Our faith, after all, demands that we think about the children.

In the gospel of Mark, which we have been following during this fall series, includes not one, not two, but three different instances in which Jesus prioritizes ministry to and with children… that that’s just in two chapters.
We are called to welcome children, to build them up rather than tear them down, and to even become like them.
The children around us… our children… teach us about what it means to be faithful.
And deciding to follow Jesus means being willing to say that YES!, we are able to set aside our desires and plans and limited vision and open our hearts and our lives to the needs and the gifts of the children around us.

There is another key part of these passages that might be difficult, but it is important to highlight. Our responsibility to care for these children… to set aside our agendas… to prioritize their needs… and to not impair them from abundant life… it isn’t an option.
It is a central part of our faith.
And Jesus even says that if we get in the way of these little ones – well, our own souls are at risk.
It’s that important.

So, I want to take some time this morning to talk about how we, through both the larger United Methodist Church and right here in our local community, how we can say YES! to Jesus by being in ministry with all of God’s children. I want to lift up ways we can “persist in hope, not despair.”

This past week, I was in Atlanta for our fall board meeting of Global Ministries and I want to begin by telling you about signs of hope and good news I saw through our connectional ministries.
Our Global Health Unit has a strong focus on maternal and child health and many health systems are being strengthened because of the funds that we have raised through Imagine No Malaria and other initiatives.
In Mozambique, midwives and community health workers are focusing on not only pre-natal, but ante-natal visits to help monitor health and provide education about diseases that threaten pregnant women and children. The efforts are paying off with a dramatic increase in healthy births.
Among all of the data that is collected through these visits there was one in particular that caught my attention. Last year, nearly 187 of these individuals were treated for malaria at these ante-natal visits. This year, because of our efforts to reduce transmission – only 13 individuals had to be treated. That is a 93% reduction! And a cause for great hope for children who might grow up and thrive.

We also heard a report from National Justice For Our Neighbors on our work along the border in these past months. This organization is a United Methodist ministry that provides legal help for immigrants and refugees. Their work has focused on the border with providing accompaniment for those who are seeking asylum.
In one such instance, a mother and her child from Guatemala presented themselves at the border and were separated and placed in detention until their Credible Fear Interview to verify their need for asylum. After 38 days, her interview finally came, and a JFON attorney named Virginia, helped the mother, Delia, present her case to the officer and was granted asylum. Having been found to have credible fear, Delia then had to post a $1,500 bond – which was raised by JFON.
But then, they had to raise funds to travel to where her child was being held two hours away.
One of the conditions of asylum is that individuals must be able to stay with family and so funds also had to be raised in order to get this mother and child to their relatives in another part of the United States. In the weeks for it took to complete this process, the JFON lawyer actually opened up their home for this family to stay with her.

Both of those programs and ministries are possible because we as United Methodists have said that YES we are able to care for the most vulnerable around us. We have combined our apportionment resources and special giving to be the hands and feet of Jesus all across this world.

But we also see the impact of these struggles right here in Des Moines. The neighborhood all around us is changing and part of the reason is that immigrant and refugee families are making a home in our midst. They have found here a safe place to start over, raise their children, and build a new life for themselves.
It’s the reason why Hoover High School is the most diverse school in our state.
But we also see this represented in the lives of children who attend the schools closest to our church.
We wanted to take some time today to hear about the needs right here in our local community, from one our elementary schools – Monroe.

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You and I… this community of faith… has the opportunity to bring hope and excitement to the children right here in our midst.
We can show up and volunteer.
We can support the work of these families as they care for one another.
We can pray for teachers and provide encouragement in their work.
We are going to be listening, paying attention, and seeking further ways to be in partnership with not only Monroe elementary, but our other neighborhood schools as well.

We’ve responded by collecting socks and underwear.
We’ve brought together supplies for school kits.
We’ve purchased books.
And now God is asking us to respond in a bigger way – to build relationships.
One of those opportunities is present right here in our building as we continue to get to know the Myanmar congregation and their children and together our children are growing in faith and love.
Reach out and get to know them on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.
Sit with them at dinner.
Ask them how their day is going.
Volunteer with our children’s ministry.

And… if you are interested in stepping up in a bigger way, Billie is going to be coordinating some efforts in the future to build partnerships with our schools. She’d love to hear from you.

God has given us amazing gifts, resources, a beautiful facility, and the hands and feet to help.
Are you willing… are you able… to see the children around us and bring hope into their lives?

From Everywhere to Everywhere (2.0)

Posted on April 23, 2017Leave a comment

This Sunday, I was making my way back from our bi-annual Global Ministries meeting and so took the opportunity to do a brief rewrite of the message I preached at Ingathering:

This quadrennium, I have the honor of serving on our General Board of Global Ministries:

Last fall, in our opening worship, we read the names of the missionaries who have died in the last four years, like we do on All Saints day. It was holy and humbling to think about all of those people who had spent their lives serving God wherever they were sent. But I also noticed that they almost all had very white, very Anglo sounding names.

That evening, and since then, I have met missionaries who remind me that the focus of our global ministries has truly shifted. Katherine fits that traditional model and is from California. She has served through Global Ministries in a variety of far flung places including Japan, Iowa, and now Nepal.

But Alina is a native Bolivian and she is serving in Nicaragua on behalf of Global Ministries.

Luis is from Brazil and will be heading up the new regional Mission Center in Buenos Aires.

Another leader from Brazil will work with the new regional Mission Center in Africa focusing on Portuguese speaking countries.

There is an African American who speaks Japanese who will serve in the new Mission Center in Seoul, South Korea.

And we heard about a missionary from Zimbabwe who is heading to Canada to serve an African refugee community there.

Our Executive Director of Global Mission Connections was just elected a bishop in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but last year, Bishop Mande wrote:

“Mission used to be thought of as coming from the center (churches in developed countries) and going to the peripheries (people in developing countries). But our sense today is that there isn’t a center anymore—that doing mission lies in mutuality, looking at each other as equal partners and learning from one another. Our heritage from the Wesleyan movement tells us that God’s grace is everywhere and everyone shares in it.” (http://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-global-nature/no-center-no-periphery-a-regional-approach-to-mission/)

From everywhere… to everywhere…

Fundamental to the shift in our global ministries is the recognition of prevenient grace.

The idea that God is moving in our lives long before we know who or what God is.

The idea that grace and truth, beauty and holiness, forgiveness and love are not gifts we enlightened people bring to the heathens, but that we can discover God’s work in the midst of people we meet… whether or not they know God, yet.

I think the shift we are experiencing in mission is paralleled in Paul’s ministry in Athens.

As we start the scripture reading today, he is preaching and sharing the good news of Jesus on the streets. And the people don’t get it and they don’t get him.

Some translations say they take him, or brought him, others that they asked him, but if you look to the original Greek the word is “epilambanomai” – to lay hold of or to seize.

The Common English Bible translates this passage… “they took him into custody.” The people REALLY don’t get him. Paul is trying to shove something foreign down their throats.

This is the same word used when Simon the Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross as we remembered on Good Friday. And it’s a word used twice to describe how Jesus grabs hold of someone to rebuke or challenge and heal them.

Paul is not taken to Mars Hill by choice.

He is brought to the council and placed in the middle of the people…

And then something in Paul shifts. His language changes.

He realizes that speaking of foreign things isn’t making and impact.

He starts to contextualize the good news of Jesus Christ.

He recalls an altar he saw, “To an unknown God” and uses that altar… in a city filled with idols… to begin explaining the God he has come to know.

“What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you… God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. In God we live, move, and exist.”

In our Wesleyan heritage, the idea of prevenient grace is that it goes before us. God’s grace is all around us. In God, we live, move, and exist. Even if we don’t know it yet. And by grace, some of us reach out and find God.

But there is another side to prevenient grace… that God doesn’t just sit back and wait to be found, but actively seeks us.

God enters our lives and our stories.

God takes on our flesh.

God speaks our words and breathes our air and tells stories about our lives.

The incarnation was as much a part of the good news as the resurrection.

And so Paul, at Mars Hill, adopted an incarnational ministry and spoke the words of the people, pointed to their objects, entered their stories, and showed them where he saw God.

Or as he writes in 1 Corinthians: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews… to the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9:20-22)

Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren, in “Introducing the Missional Church,” claim this is the same type of ministry Jesus commissioned the disciples for – sending them out in pairs into communities, inviting them to live deeply in the midst of strangers… eating what they eat, relying upon their customs and hospitality. It was incarnational ministry.

It is the life so many of our United Methodist missionaries take on – going from everywhere to everywhere.

In my work earlier with Imagine No Malaria and now with Global Ministries I am so proud of the fact that we do not seek to impose our ways upon communities, but partner with people and seek mutuality.

We no longer fly into a community and drop off bed nets then leave… we work with local leaders and partners and build community health workers who can help us explore best practices, share with us their customs, and ultimately be that incarnational presence on the ground long after an initial distribution of nets has occurred.

Those same community health workers were also then in place when the Ebola epidemic struck so many Western African countries and we were positioned to make a difference because of the relationships we had already established.

And now, we are applying that same model to our disaster response through UMCOR – not sending in support, but nurturing local leadership to be the disaster response coordinator in places like Mozambique.

Our Global Ministries Board of Directors only meets twice a year to evaluate and govern the work of the staff who do this ministry daily. And in these past three days when I was in Atlanta, I learned that the biggest challenge and blessing facing our work today is Global Migration.

65.3 million people today are forcibly living outside of their own country.

65.3 million.

And while about a quarter of these are refugees fleeing from conflict in their homelands, we are also seeing increasing numbers of people who are being forced to migrate because of climate change.

One of our United Methodist communities in Fiji has been forced to leave their island home because of rising sea waters.

Changing weather patterns contribute to droughts and immense hunger and poverty that cause others to flee.

But other severe weather events like hurricanes and cyclones are also increasing, both numerically and in strength, sending many from their homes.

So not only are we needing to listen to the people in local contexts, but we are also learning how to listen to the world around us and are positioning ourselves to be in place to respond and be proactive for the disasters that we know are coming that will impact our ministries.

The work of Global Ministries is from everywhere, to everywhere.

The only question I have for you is… why do we leave it to the work of our missionaries?

Why are we not living out the gospel in our communities in the same way?

Because if our call is really from everywhere to everywhere, then we become aware of the reality that our neighborhood is a mission field, too.

Corey Fields writes, “today, in the attractional model, the church expects the opposite. We program and advertise and try to do just the right thing that will compel others to come to us as the stranger on our turf. It is the church that is to go, however, taking on the flesh of its local context. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “If the gospel is to be understood…it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed.” (http://soapboxsuds.blogspot.com/2013/05/taking-on-flesh-incarnational-theology.html )

Our neighborhood is filled with people from nations all across this world. And it is filled with people who have been in the United States for generations, but for whom the good news of God has become a distant and unknown reality.

Our churches need to learn more than we teach.

We need to listen more than we speak.

We need to go out into our neighborhoods more than we sit back and wait.

Like Paul, we need to start paying attention and figuring out how to speak in the languages of the people we encounter.

Because only by being present with our communities will we ever see how God is already present and how the people of this place live, move, and exist in God.

From everywhere… to everywhere… God is present, God is living, God is breathing new life and hope.

Rusty Leftovers

Posted on October 23, 2016Leave a comment

I want to start out this morning with a testimony… This is my experience and I hope and pray that my own story might somehow connect with yours and that the transformation in my own life might point to the way that God might also work in yours.

This testimony however is about a topic that makes a whole lot of us uncomfortable… but it is part of our daily lives. This morning, I’m going to talk about money.

And my testimony is this: It took me three years of serving a congregation… three years of being a pastor… before I tithed to the church.

You might hold pastors up on a pedestal or think that as a pastor I do all of the things that people of faith are supposed to do like feed the hungry, pray every morning, read the bible cover to cover all the time, and give 10% of their money to the church.

But pastors are just like everyone else. We are disciples, too. We have struggles and successes. We have places where we are explorers and beginners. Only sometimes are we truly mature in every part of our faith. There is always room to grow deeper in our relationship with God… even for pastors.

I often gave to the church… but for a long time, I made excuses about how much I should give.

When I was a teenager and had occasional part time jobs, I might have stuck a dollar or two in the offering plate – whatever pocket change I might have had that day. It was the last of my money… not the best.

When I was in college, I did not attend a church regularly on Sundays, but worshipped on campus Wednesday nights – and no one asked for a financial contribution. No one asked me to give, much less give sacrificially. So I didn’t.

As a seminary student and an intern at a church, I was spending more money on school and travel than I was making and piling up debt. I gave my time to the church and occasionally a few bucks as well.

And then I was commissioned and sent to First UMC in Marengo. I was sent to be their pastor and I knew that I could not ask them, in good faith, to give faithfully to the church and to God, if I was not also giving.

Having a steady paycheck for the first time in my life, I should have immediately started tithing. But I didn’t. I held back. I looked at my student loans and debt from college… I looked at how much our cable bill was going to be… I thought about how we wanted to travel a bit… I knew that taxes would take a chunk of my wages… And so I started out small. I gave to the church – but only a small portion.

And then, I became comfortable with that level of financial giving. I knew I was doing God’s ministry in other ways and so I didn’t worry about it.

But one day about three years into ministry, I was having a conversation with a friend, a fellow pastor, about the things that we cling to… the things we hold close and refuse to give to God.

I realized in the midst of that conversation that I had never willingly yielded my money to God.

There had been times when I had given out of guilt.

I have given because it was what I was supposed to do.

I have given out of habit as the offering place went around and each person in the pew pulled out a few bucks and dropped it in.

Sound familiar?

But never had I prayerfully thought about what God wanted me to give.

Never had I searched my heart to ask what I was willing to yield, what I was willing to joyfully give up in my life, for the sake of our Lord and our church.

This conversation was a conversion experience for me, and I really prayed about what God could do through the gifts that were placed in my hands and started giving more to the church on a regular basis…

The next year as we made our financial commitments, my heart led me to set aside a full 10% of my salary for the Kingdom of God.

In Marengo, the church struggled with finances and they didn’t have a lot of money to pay their pastor…. But I found that even… maybe especially… because I was giving, I had enough.

I joyfully gave that money to God… and I have to tell you – I didn’t miss one cent. I still don’t!

And maybe that’s because in the process I learned how to give to the church first. I make sure that the gifts I have committed come out of my paycheck before it ever comes home with me.

I learned how to give God my first and my best, instead of the change in my pocket – instead of the leftovers from my own spending and desires.

In Leviticus, we hear instructions for this early agricultural society to leave the crops on the edges and on the corners for the needy in the midst. The farmers were not supposed to harvest every last seed and kernel, but rather let them remain in the fields so that the poor could go through the fields and glean the leftovers for themselves.

A portion of the harvest, of the economic benefit earned by the farmers, was to be let go of before it was even taken out of the fields. It belongs to God… and God desires that it belongs to those who need it the most.

Today, not all of us are physically out in the fields harvesting the grain… but we can think about setting aside a portion of our income… a portion of our take home pay… for God’s use before it ever makes it into our bank accounts.

Instead of giving to God what is leftover after all of our other expenses… necessities and luxuries… we can leave that portion of our gifts in God’s hands first.

A year or so after I had this discipleship conversion and grew in my generosity, Bishop Trimble asked me to lead Imagine No Malaria.

I had just learned how to give… but I was so excited about what God could do through the dollars and cents entrusted to our care…

Maybe that made me exactly the right person to help United Methodists across the state give over $2million to help fight malaria… often $5 and $10 at a time. Millions of children are alive today because you helped purchase a net, and train a community health worker, and provide malaria medication.

In Matthew, we are invited to stop hoarding the blessings of our lives, and instead set them free for the Kingdom of God:

As The Message translation puts it: “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”

The old adage says, you can’t take it with you… and its true. Our time here on earth is short and piling on pleasures and wants and desires doesn’t get us anything but a house full of stuff that someone else is going to have to sort through.

Where you put your treasure is where you end up, Jesus says.

My family still has a cable subscription and a Netflix subscription… and an amazon prime subscription… and I know I still have some growth to do in my personal discipleship. Because let me tell you – I am putting some of my treasure into those forms of entertainment and almost every night I end up sitting on the couch in front of the television.

Where you put your treasure is where you end up, Jesus says.

Television and new clothes and name-brand cereal… they don’t last. They will all wear out without having made an ounce of difference in this world.

What lasts is the kingdom of God. What lasts is the word of God. What lasts is the joy that I have found through letting go of my desires to ask what God needs from me.

This week, I had the amazing experience of traveling to Atlanta to attend the first meeting of the Global Ministries Board of Directors. I was elected by the jurisdiction to serve as a Director for the next four years.

One of the executive staff members is Dr. Olusimbo Ige who heads up our Global Health ministries. Dr. Ige is trained as a community physician, which means she is not only a medical doctor, but also has background in community development, engineering, finance… she is trained to help make the entire community well.

Dr. Ige shared that she could put her extensive skills to work in a hospital and make $500 – 600,000 a year… but when she sees the lives transformed in a village where babies are surviving birth and children stop dying from malaria… she knows that she is doing the work she is supposed to do.

Today, you will be asked to help contribute funds for UMCOR blankets and health, sewing, and school kits for Ingathering.

This past week, I heard countless stories of how those kits and blankets are being used across this world. I heard about 5,000 girls in South Sudan who received school kits this year… about women in Armenia who are using sewing kits to learn a new skill and support themselves economically… pregnant moms in Liberia who had no prenatal or obstretic care… but because of the United Methodist Church… because of our gifts and resources… because we traveled to their remote village and brought life-saving interventions every single one of the 123 babies born this year lived.

Where you put your treasure is where you end up, Jesus says…

And as United Methodists, we end up all over this world, doing amazing things for the Kingdom of God.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

You see, friends, God does not want your money, if God doesn’t have your heart.

God doesn’t have any use for your stuff, if you won’t let go of your soul.

God doesn’t care about the things that you own… even if they could be used to help other people… unless you are willing to share with God your life.

Our generosity is a deep part of our discipleship… of our relationship with and for God.

Grow in your love of God… grow in your love of neighbor… and let God grow your generosity for this world.