General Convention and Missions

As I begin to shed responsibilities as the Diocesan Business Manager in anticipation of my volunteering at General Convention, I am reading up on anything that has to do with Mission Work or Missionaries or Mission Partners.

I have copied a great article from Episcopal Life Online about this subject. This is my passion and my favorite deployer, The Rev. David Copley, is mentioned and quoted.

Convention to consider increased funding, name change for missionaries

By Matthew Davies, June 30, 2009

[Episcopal Life] For centuries, sending forth missionaries has been central to the Episcopal Church's engagement throughout the world, but a fresh look at appropriate terminology and current levels of financial support is in the cards.

General Convention will be asked to increase funding and to switch to the term "mission partner" instead of "missionary" to help to reinvigorate this work and define more accurately its emphasis on relationship building and interdependence.

More than 70 Episcopal missionaries serve in congregations and dioceses throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America. They usually are placed for three years and play a variety of roles, often in education, health care and local support for orphans and immigrants.

The mission personnel budget -- which provides missionaries with a $500 monthly stipend and covers airfare, visa, pension-contribution and health-insurance costs -- has taken a hit in recent months. This led to a temporary hiatus in deploying new adult missionaries in 2009, a situation the Standing Commission on World Mission hopes General Convention will address.

"The rising cost of mission support and the decreases in the General Convention budget call for a fresh look at the mission-funding process," the standing commission says in its report to convention, which proposes increasing the budget to support missionaries by $1 million during the next triennium.

The Young Adult Service Corps program, which appoints missionaries aged 18-30 to serve one year, is continuing to recruit in 2009, "as this does not significantly increase our expenses," said the Rev. David Copley, mission personnel director for the Episcopal Church and staff liaison to the standing commission.

The current fiscal challenges are partly due to recent increases in health-insurance premiums and pension contributions, said Copley, who spent seven years as a missionary in Liberia and Bolivia. "It's a basic issue of economics. Our budget is finite, we need to live within a balanced budget, and we have found that our budget is fully committed with currently serving missionaries."

The proposed funding increase would help maintain the current level of serving approximately 75 missionaries and ensure that each could receive adequate health insurance, participation in pension plans, outgoing orientation, in-field pastoral care and reentry briefing.

A missionary church
The official legal identity of the Episcopal Church, a historically missionary church, is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, often referred to as DFMS. Thus, "focus on missionary engagement [is] central to the DFMS mandate," the standing commission's report says.

"World mission is at the core of the work of the Episcopal Church," said Martha Alexander, a lay deputy from North Carolina and chair of the commission. "The more we are able to relate to our brothers and sisters around the world, the more we will understand the richness of others in God's world."

The report cites concerns that reduced funding at the national level led to more dioceses and congregations acting as the sending agent for missionaries, often in conjunction with independent mission organizations.

While some congregations have chosen to redirect a portion of their diocesan assessments toward missionary support, the standing commission concluded that missionaries should be "sent from and funded through the Episcopal Church. This also points to a need to reconsider the level of financial support provided for missionaries."

The standing commission's proposed budget for mission personnel during the 2010-2012 triennium includes increases "that will make it possible to continue the current level of mission sending," the report says. Those suggested increases amount to $250,000 in 2010 and $100,000 each following year. "The substantial increase the first year and the additional increases in the second two years of the triennium are mandatory if we are to provide necessary health insurance, pension and other benefits."

Additional funding is being recommended to support mission education in dioceses and to raise awareness of missionaries in the church.

There is "a significant conversation in the works related to mission and the role of mission in the church and of where the Episcopal Church Center fits into that," said the Rev. Margaret Rose, director of the Episcopal Church's mission leadership center.

Building relationships
In another proposed resolution, the standing commission recommends changing all references from "missionary" to "mission partner" in recognition of "the reality that when we engage in work overseas, we are learning just as much from those we encounter as we are able to teach."

Emphasizing "the reciprocal nature of mission work in the Anglican Communion today," the report notes that the historical understanding of the term "missionaries" has caused tensions "with our brothers and sisters around the globe."

Mission partner, Copley said, is "a more accurate description of the role of mission personnel in the 21st century, with an emphasis on relationship building and the acknowledgement that we all mutually grow in our understanding of one another and of God when we nurture relationships with other parts of the body of Christ. The hope is that the change will help us all think about mission as being mutual and interdependent."

The suggested name change, Alexander said, reflects the primary focus of the church's work as being one of relationships. "As mission partners one is engaged in prayer, study, issues and projects together," she said. "This is the crux of our ministry to one another."

By being in partnership with others, Alexander added, "we are able to witness God's love as we realize that our differences are minute compared to the numerous ways in which we are similar."

Also throughout the last triennium, the standing commission continued its mandate to monitor the Episcopal Church's covenant relationships with the Anglican provinces of Brazil, Central America, Mexico and the Philippines, as well as the Episcopal Church of Liberia.

In one resolution, the standing commission calls on General Convention to endorse a "Commitment to be Companions in Christ" between the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil and the Episcopal Church, which would commit the two churches to mutual support and encouragement for ministry and mission development.

-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and international correspondent of Episcopal News Service.