Reflections

The World Mission Networks Meeting in Louisville, September 24-27, 2008

Written by John Walter Wednesday, 01 October 2008 18:29

Report on the World Mission Network Leaders Conference

Louisville, Kentucky, September 24-27, 2008.   

by John Walter

Who attended?     Invitations were extended to conveners of the 34 World Mission Networks and to the Regional Liaisons. Lucy Fetterolf (Long Island Presbytery) and John Walter (Baltimore Presbytery) represented the Cuba Partnership Network.

Stated goals of the meeting:

1. To bring network leaders up to date on the emerging (vertical) structure of Presbyterian World Mission.

2. To offer tools and training pertinent to the meaning and best practices of effective networking.

3. To address the phenomenon of Short Term Mission (STM), discovering its strengths and weaknesses.

4. To engage mission networks in the “Dallas Consultation”.

5. To maximize the interface between networks and the regional liaisons.

Observations and reflections:

Network Leaders are those persons blessed or cursed with the charge of seeing how our local efforts fit into the regional and national scope of like relationships as they merge with their foreign partner’s structures. The blessing or curse of such responsibility depends on the sharing and transparency of all the integral parts, whose healthy maintenance ultimately rests in the hands of many people whose love of a particular ministry will successfully guide it, each by having an equal voice in making the necessary determinations.

This meeting called together Network Leaders from thirty countries as well as twenty one of the Regional Liaisons, who having just completed their own conference, joined in this first ever attempt to draw clarity from such a broad assembly.

Working within the constraints of a three day time frame, the participants represented all three stages of our current PCUSA mission structure: local churches, presbyteries, and the World Mission Division of the General Assembly led by Director, Hunter Farrell who gave the welcoming address and sat as a participant throughout.

The first major theme of discussion was the pros and cons of Short Term Mission, (STM). The segment was led by Dr. Robert Priest of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, certainly an authority on the evolution of STM. 

A brief synopsis of his four hour lecture included many dismaying facts gathered from surveys from both the givers and recipients of the short term mission experience. At their worst, STMs are resource wasteful events that alienate the foreign partner through cultural ignorance and insensitivity; bring no further benefit to either side as time was spent “doing some unnecessary task”; yield no long-term spiritual benefits for either side; produce no increase in project funding; and substantially leave both parties unaltered in cultural awareness.

Here I confess my complete astonishment. We listened as Dr. Priest spent two hours meticulously detailing distressing data supporting nothing but negative values created by the STMs, and wondering if Dr. Priest had been engaged by the World Mission Division as a tactic to completely deflate the current worldwide wave of churches and organizations engaged in the STM mission model.

Fortunately, as he continued, openings for positive values began to emerge for both sides of the STM experience through the implementation of best practices as gained deductively and through group discernment. 

The subject of “best practices”, defined as those strategies that our individual networks determine to be most effective, fair, and enduring was discussed, each network listing its successes and sharing the experiences that led to their establishment.  A great deal of commonality was achieved despite recognizing that programmatically our best practices included culturally sensitive components that could at times be unique, and therefore demand adjustment.

Best practices comprises a list of trip preparations, knowledge interpretation, language abilities, and cultural awareness that supports both sides of the STM experience, leads to an understanding of how God has called us together, and shapes the priorities of our mutual vision.  To say the least, I was relieved that Dr. Priest had segued into this conversation, opening an opportunity for all of us to express what we have contributed to making STM a structure worthy pursuing and developing together as part of the evolving vertical structure of PCUSA worldwide mission.

The Dallas Consultation was an event hosted for sixty select participants in January 2008. Quite truthfully, this was the first many of us had heard of either the event or the document that it produced; and given that I had sworn off computing while attempting to participate in the current conference, I waited until returning home to search the PCUSA site for mention of the phenomenon.

Go to: http://www.pcusa.org/calltomission/about.htm to follow all the threads as to who was invited, why, and what their resolution consisted of.

Simply put: the Dallas Consultation “includes a covenant to live and serve together and a commitment to work cooperatively. The participants also pledged to celebrate diverse Presbyterian approaches to mission, to share responsibility for education and preparation of all Presbyterians for Mission, and to seek and support more mission personnel.” ( named web page above.)

Representatives from the PCUSA, The World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, and the Pittsburg Theological Seminary presented papers at the event.

…of all Presbyterians for Mission,…  I confess this is one phrase I can be in complete agreement with. I have long believed that the investment we make in active participation in mission pays untold dividends in reuniting our broken world one person at a time, transforming us all as we engage. 

Conclusion:

Our PC(USA) mission structure that was once a top down model with all the denomination’s churches financing missionaries chosen by the Worldwide Ministries Division of the General Assembly has turned 180 degrees, the majority of our mission personnel are now lay enthusiasts of various degrees of experience and training.

The need to provide consistent training is paramount; the need for us all to both understand and use “best practices” is imperative to the success of the ministries we have chosen to explore and maintain; the need for the STM delegate to be aware of the whole vertical spectrum of the PCUSA mission spectrum is more pressing than ever as we proceed to develop more and deeper links worldwide.

John Walter

The Cuba Partnership

Global Mission Committee

Baltimore Presbytery, PC(USA)