In this stimulating work, Titus Presler has listened closely to church leaders and activists within and beyond the Anglican fold, and then mined his own rich experience as a scholar, priest and leader in global mission efforts. The result is a book that equips congregations with theological background for building mutual relationships across borders of difference, even as it explores fresh models and practical tools for joining and participating in God's mission.
In this stimulating work, Titus Presler has listened closely to church leaders and activists within and beyond the Anglican fold, and then mined his own rich experience as a scholar, priest and leader in global mission efforts. The result is a book that equips congregations with theological background for building mutual relationships across borders of difference, even as it explores fresh models and practical tools for joining and participating in God's mission.
Going Global with God: Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference
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Going Global with God: Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference
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Overview
In this stimulating work, Titus Presler has listened closely to church leaders and activists within and beyond the Anglican fold, and then mined his own rich experience as a scholar, priest and leader in global mission efforts. The result is a book that equips congregations with theological background for building mutual relationships across borders of difference, even as it explores fresh models and practical tools for joining and participating in God's mission.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819224101 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2010 |
| Pages: | 194 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Going Global with GOD
Reconciling Mission in a World of DifferenceBy TITUS LEONARD PRESLER
Morehouse Publishing
Copyright © 2010 Titus Leonard PreslerAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2410-1
Chapter One
A Movement Underway: Global Ferment in Local Churches
Christian congregations and their members are mobilizing for mission and engaging the world far beyond themselves. This local initiative is a major fact in the life of historic churches in North America in the twenty-first century.
The concept of "the global village" took hold in the twentieth century, but well into the 1980s many USAmerican church members continued to be quite parochial Christians at the same time that they were global citizens. They had a world perspective on everything but their faith life. They attended international conferences and participated in world projects in education, art or finance, but they were unaware of Christianity's flourishing in the Two-Thirds World—its numerical growth, the new indigenous churches and new theologies. USAmerican church members might go on safari in Kenya but never think to ask what church nearby might be especially interesting to visit on Sunday. They might attend a conference in Manila or Mexico City but never consider engaging local Christian communities.
Many congregations were similarly insular. They were concerned about world poverty, violence and oppression, but they were reluctant to get involved as churches beyond sending money for disaster relief. Their impressions of how European and North American missionaries had misunderstood peoples in other parts of the world made them hesitant about taking initiative as Christians elsewhere. "Better leave that to the development agencies," they reasoned, "because we'll just mess it up if we get into it with our religious stuff." Beyond that, initiative was left to denominational mission offices, which had managed their churches' mission work for well over a century and continued to send missionaries, nurture interchurch relationships and fund work in education, healthcare and economic vitality. Yet the churchwide lack of interest resulted in centralized mission offices having to cut budgets, staff and missionaries. Calls by mission activists for local communities to engage with the wider world were greeted with skepticism.
Now much of that has changed. Today it is unusual to find an Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian or Methodist congregation that does not have some direct link with a Christian community far away, most often in the Two-Thirds World—Africa, Asia, Latin America or Oceania. Many congregations have two or three such links. Typically, at least several members have been to the companion community, correspondence is being exchanged, and people are collaborating on a project, often with money being raised on the North American side. Sometimes members of the companion community visit the USAmerican congregation.
In the historic mainline churches, the international engagement of congregations often receives strong support from the regional level of church organization that stands between the congregation and churchwide headquarters—the Episcopal diocese, the Lutheran synod, the Presbyterian presbytery, the Methodist conference. These groupings now have a startling array of global connections. Sometimes congregations' international work is keyed to programs at the regional level, but just as often it is quite particular to the congregation. Similarly, the regional bodies' work often has little to do with the work of churchwide mission offices, which continue to struggle with reduced budgets as denominations spread declining income over multiple urgencies.
The God-talk in the grassroots mission movement is strong and vivid. People speak about "discerning how God is leading" and "seeing what God is doing." As they trace how very personal connections have led to congregational and regional links, they declare that the Holy Spirit has been active in making it happen. Above all, they celebrate the personal relationships they now have with people they call "sisters and brothers in Christ" in other parts of the world. They talk about discovering the fullness of the Body of Christ as they come to know other communities and how these relationships have enriched their own spiritual lives. They marvel at the new perspectives they now have as a result of interacting with people who are very different in multiple ways—language, culture, ethnicity, income and lifestyle. In both public and private they pray faithfully for their new companions in Christ.
The bottom line? World mission is becoming a local affair. It is local to the regional level of the church, but it is even more local to the congregation. There, people are building on connections that come their way to form relationships abroad that involve lots of people on both sides, often over a considerable period of time, even decades.
Stories of communities going global with God and engaging in reconciling mission are exciting. Here is a sampling:
Young Adults Abroad: Symbiotic Catalysts for Mission
Edward Johnson
"Am I my brother's keeper?" asked Edward Johnson as he explained why he went to minister in South Africa as part of the Young Adults in Global Mission Program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "I have constantly been challenged to answer the question, 'Why South Africa? Why not stay here in the U.S., where we have our own problems that require our dedication and strength?'" For inspiration, Edward pointed to Proverbs 3:27–28 in the Contemporary English Version: "Do all you can for everyone who deserves your help. Don't tell your neighbor to come back tomorrow, if you can help today."
While Edward was in college, participating in a mission trip from the Southern Ohio Synod to its counterpart in Tanzania, the East of Lake Victoria Diocese, was what moved him toward mission. "I gained a new definition and perspective on what the meaning of the word 'neighbor' is," he explained. "Our neighbors are each and every one of God's children placed on this planet, not just those who live in our immediate vicinity, look like us or talk like us." His reflection expresses how, when people encounter human difference, the mission impulse within them responds with a desire to bridge, know and relate.
Edward spent a year participating in a Lutheran community outreach in the Hillbrow section of Johannesburg, an area devastated by poverty and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Why South Africa? "The issues of sub-Saharan Africa are absolute and extreme problems," he said, "while the issues of the U.S. are of a relative nature. The problems of Africa are so extreme that basic life needs cannot be consistently met."
Edward's African American heritage facilitated solidarity with those he was serving. "A huge part of my experience was that I looked like the people I was with for the first time," he said. "I also think that it meant a lot to people to see that the person fighting for them and with them was one of them. It served as inspiration to say that they are capable as children of God—God did not only bless his fair-skinned children, but the brown and black ones, too."
The home congregation, St. Philip's Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, mobilized to support Edward and helped make the venture possible. "They were quite excited to see one of their favorite sons engaging in international mission work and did support me," he said. "As part of an extremely small group that labels ourselves 'black Lutherans,' St. Philip's was motivated to show the ELCA that we are here and we are strong."
Edward is part of a growing movement of one-year missionaries in denominational programs designed over the last two decades especially for young adults, typically defined between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. He was one of thirty-nine outgoing young missioners at the two-week Lutheran orientation he attended before going to South Africa.
Melanie Jianakoplos
"How amazing it is to look back and realize how recently I was in your shoes. Mission trips, overnights, the Italian dinner." So wrote Melanie Jianakoplos from the Philippines to the youth group at Grace Episcopal Church in Kirkwood, Missouri, where she grew up. "Those moments made a huge impact on my life and spiritual formation. Grace Church gave me the foundation on which I built myself as I went off to college. My greatest joy, strength and refuge through those four years was Episcopal Campus Ministry at the University of Missouri. When I graduated I decided to take some time, and my young unbound energy, and do some service work in the Philippines. I'm excited to hear that you all have been reading some of the blog posts and looking at the pictures."
Melanie's letter is a striking instance of how local churches and campus ministries today are inspiring mission service. The mission trips she undertook from Grace to Habitat for Humanity projects around the U.S.A. cultivated a habit of looking beyond herself and her own community to the world's needs. Now teens in the youth group of which she was once a part were reading about the cultural transitions and new gospel understandings she was experiencing while working with the Igorot people in the mountains of the northern Philippines. Melanie established a feedback loop of mission experience and inspiration that is likely to result in still more global engagement by Christian young people in Kirkwood. A Millennium Development Goals emphasis at the Episcopal campus ministry helped move her to mission through the Episcopal Church's Young Adult Service Corps, which usually sends about fifteen people a year to various parts of the world.
Church bodies get especially excited about young adult mission programs. The mainline denominations are struggling with declining membership and realize they need to reach the young adults who are missing from their pews. Young missionaries tend to assume iconic status: "Look at these young people who are excited about Jesus and about the church! And they're even going out in mission!"
Representing a religious alternative to secular initiatives like the Peace Corps, young adult mission programs attract not the missing, but those who are spiritually and missionally committed because of what they have experienced in local churches and campus ministries. Many are considering ordained ministry and recognize that exposure to the wider world would be helpful as they undertake seminary studies. They are right, of course, and as newly ordained clergy, they turn around to have powerful ministries with young adults and in congregational mission, and thus the symbiosis of being inspired and inspiring others continues.
Ciona Rouse
An especially dramatic instance of the power of youth in mission is Ciona Rouse of Belmont United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. "Like breath and water" is how she characterizes the role of prayer in the lives of the South African Christians she experienced during a two-week youth mission there from Belmont in 2005. It was so compelling that she stayed on for a couple of months after the rest of the group returned home. "That's truly what prayer was like for the people I met on the continent," she says. "They needed it like they needed air, and water and breathing and all those essential things."
Coming out of that experience was a documentary film, Listen: A New African Narrative, about leaders in several African countries; a book, Like Breath and Water: Praying with Africa; and a website she created with others, www.praywithafrica.com, that emphasizes praying with Africans, rather than for Africa—all from a congregational mission trip. "Our philosophy is really simple," Ciona says. "It's learn, pray, act. And so we are inviting people to learn each other's stories, pray each other's prayers and then out of those prayers act alongside one another instead of acting out of pity or guilt."
Mission Giants in Congregations
St. John's Episcopal Church, Sonora, Texas
"The people of St. John's are a small parish," says rector Chris Roque, "but in mission they're giants." Located in Sonora in a ranching region of Texas, St. John's Episcopal Church has an average Sunday attendance of about sixty, a size at which many congregations worry about survival and feel they do not have resources for mission. Yet not only does St. John's see horizons beyond itself, but the parish designs its outreach in three tiers: local, regional and international. Locally the youth work ecumenically with other congregations to provide food baskets for needy people at holiday times. Regionally youth and parents team up with another parish to do construction for handicapped and elderly people in communities along the Rio Grande River.
Internationally, St. John's has supported parishioners to go on mission to three continents, in Belarus, Honduras and Uganda. Roque himself went to Honduras twice before he was ordained as part of a five-year project to plant a church, and twice recently with medical and veterinary teams to Mexico. Roque also pastors an even smaller congregation, St. James at Fort McKavett, where the attendance is about fifteen each Sunday. Even there one member is involved in prison ministry and two others have gone on veterinarian and water-well missions in Honduras.
The reflection of Wheless Miller, a rancher, special-needs teacher and member of St. John's, brings together her ten-year spiritual journey, a particular international venture and a new effort to stimulate mission commitment in young people:
As an Episcopalian, my idea of mission was skewed such that I envisioned heavy evangelism, and this scared me as I viewed my faith walk as something personal and private. I was tricked into my first mission by our interim priest, Bob Burton, who knew that I loved animals and convinced me that the vet mission to Honduras was in need of my "skill" as a ranch girl from West Texas! I told him that I would convert animals but not people. I was a hard case to crack, but because of his gentle guidance and encouragement the true mission was slowly revealed to me. I now know that mission truly blesses all those involved in the act. It is not so much what we say but our actions that matter. In Belarus we had planned for a Vacation Bible School approach with two weeks of fun and God-filled crafts. As soon as we arrived we were told that we could not name God or Jesus or deliver lessons from the Bible. Amazingly, the message was there without saying one word. The orphans hid in the bushes outside our windows as we had devotions each morning. They listened as we sang. They accepted our love and our hugs, which in essence was God's love and his arms taking them in. That is the message of mission. Now we have started Mission in Motion in Sonora, which involves a mission a month available to youth from all the congregations in our town. We want to plant the seeds of mission on a local level so that as the kids mature as Christians their personal walk in mission will be comfortable and one that they are familiar with.
Where does this mission vision come from? "I think it's because they actually understand what Christ has called them to do," says Roque. The congregations' mission engagement is longstanding, but a vestry retreat two years ago sharpened their intentionality. Out of Bible study they developed a mission statement on the basis of Jesus' resurrection appearance to Peter in John 21: "Jesus has given us the example: Feed his sheep and follow him." This articulation highlights the Jesus-centered perspective of much mission initiative today. People tend to make their case not from "Christian principles" or an ethic of humanitarianism but from the teaching and example of Jesus, a Jesus with whom they feel they have a personal relationship. "Because Jesus told me to," says Jimmy Martin, a rancher at St. James, Fort McKavett, about his eight years of outreach at a maximum-security prison.
First United Methodist Church, Evanston, Illinois
First United Methodist in Evanston is a mid-size congregation that engages mission in what it sees as concentric circles from local to national to international. The church is focusing on poverty alleviation for five years, during which it hopes to engage a growing group of members in various projects that will improve standards of living for those most in need.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Going Global with GOD by TITUS LEONARD PRESLER Copyright © 2010 by Titus Leonard Presler. Excerpted by permission of Morehouse Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction ix
Part I What's Happening Today in Global Mission" 1
1 A Movement Underway: Global Ferment in Local Churches 3
Young Adults Abroad: Symbiotic Catalysts for Mission 5
Mission Giants in Congregations 7
Regional Activism: Support for Congregations' Wider Mission 11
2 From the Ground Up: Mission Democratized 17
Democratization of Mission Initiative Today 19
Mission Management in the Centralized Past 21
Democratization's Parallels in the Information Age 26
Mission Politics in the New Testament 28
Mission and the Church's Catholicity 31
Part II What Does It Mean to Go Global with God" 35
3 Sent by God: The Nature of Mission 37
Jostling for a Mission Focus 37
What Is God Up To" 40
Sent across Boundaries to Witness 42
Mission in Relation to Ministry 44
4 Ministry in the Dimension of Difference: Mission's Terrain 49
Mission Defined by Difference 52
Difference Embedded in Mission History 53
Difference in the Century of Self-Criticism 55
Exploring the Difference Criterion 58
Biblical Resonance for Grounding Mission in Difference 61
Difference and Mission in Contemporary Thought 64
5 Reconciliation: The Direction of God's Mission 68
From Alienation to Restoration 69
Reconciliation in Scripture and Theology 72
Reconciliation and Diverse Expressions of Mission 76
Mission and God's Reconciliation 79
6 Accompaniment and Companionship: The Mode of Mission Today 82
Rethinking the How of Mission 83
Growing toward Accompaniment and Companionship 85
Accompaniment as Lived in Mission Today 89
From Partnership to Companionship 92
Missional Companionship in the Bible 94
Accompaniment in Lutheran Reflection 97
Stories Shared among Friends 100
Part III What Challenges Face Mission Today" 105
7 Networking for Mission: A Challenge in Democratization 107
Strategic Concern 108
Communities of Mission Practice: A Presbyterian Approach 110
Mission Networks: An Episcopal and Anglican Approach 113
Mission Conferences and Ecumenical Networks 117
8 Missionary Calling and Identity: A Challenge in Being Sent 120
Five Crises of Mission Awareness 120
Churches' Priorities for Twenty-First-Century Mission 123
Companionship in Mission Begins with God 127
9 Poverty and Wholistic Mission: A Challenge in Difference 129
A Critique from the Global South 129
Mission's Association with Poverty 131
Poverty in Scripture, Christian History and Theology 133
Reconciliation, Poverty and Mission 137
Mission Horizontal and Upward in Scripture and Christian History 139
Recalibrating the Place of Poverty in Wholistic Mission 143
10 Churches in Turmoil: A Challenge in Reconciliation 146
Conflict within Churches 147
Renewed Awareness of the World Church 148
Impaired Communion and the Threat to Mission 149
Addressing Conflict through Accompaniment in Mission 151
"Be Reconciled" 152
11 Meeting as Pilgrims: A Challenge in Accompaniment 154
Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Short-Term Mission 154
Mutuality and Justice Issues in Short-Term Mission 156
From Short-Term Mission to Pilgrimage 157
Mission Pilgrimage in Practice 160
Part IV What Is a Mission Companion Called to Be" 163
12 Seven Marks of the Mission Companion 165
The mission companion is a Witness 166
The mission companion is a Pilgrim 167
The mission companion is a Servant 168
The mission companion is a Prophet 169
The mission companion is an Ambassador 170
The mission companion is a Host 171
The mission companion is a Sacrament of Reconciliation 172
Epilogue: A Longer View 175
Study Guide 176
Further Exploration 183
Index 185
Biblical References 189