A personal report on the mission conference in San Diago

Frontier 2000

by Bob Taylor

The Frontier 2000 conference about blew me out of the water. I was startled, excited, and deeply moved by it. I feel very inadequate to the task of communicating about it, but I have some videos and a cassette tape of part of it. The experience turned me upside down, and if all or most of our congregation could have experienced it I think it would turn our church upside down. I hope I can use the audio and video materials to have an impact on our church.

I had little idea what was going on in our denomination in the missions area. Harold Kurtz, founder and executive director of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, claims that what has happened and is happening in the World Wide Ministries Division will bring our denomination back to its historical and biblical roots. And what I learned at the conference about what is going on in other Presbyterian churches and on the mission field, I am convinced, could have a profound effect on the life of First Presbyterian Church. Perhaps we can look at some of these things, and if the Committee and John pick up and buy into some of the things that the conference offered, perhaps we can make a significant difference in the life of our church.

As an example, it was indicated that the income problems of churches commonly disappear if the mission commitment is allowed to permeate the life of the church. Those who are committed to the Christian mission are the large givers, and these people join churches where they sense a church-wide commitment to world wide evangelism and ministry. It seems to me that this fall's stewardship program is moving in the direction I am talking about.

The conference consisted of four plenary sessions attended by the 570 registrants, three periods for which we chose a seminar to attend, and luncheon discussions. The plenary sessions were Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning. The Friday evening and Saturday evening sessions began with banquets. Each of the four sessions included short speeches, music, a worship service led by the Rev. Isaiah Jones, and a major address. Friday evening Harold Kurtz addressed us, and I have a video of that. Saturday morning a missionary to the people of the Near East in Berlin, spoke, and I have a cassette tape of her dynamite message. Something went wrong with the video recording, much to my disappointment, but I have the tape. The Rev. Oswaldo Prado of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil addressed us Saturday evening. I gather that it was a good message describing an evangelistic explosion in Brazil, but I could not stay with him. He had someone translate from the Portuguese to the English, but his accent was such that I could hardly get more than an occasional sentence.

Then, Sunday morning, the Director of the PC(USA) Worldwide Ministries Division, the Rev. Marian McClure addressed us. It was good to hear of her support, as head of the mission arm of our denomination, of Frontier Missions. I chose the addresses by Harold Kurtz and another missionary and the video on the history and present involvement of PC(USA) in Frontier Mission as the most challenging and, possibly, useful to us at First Presbyterian. If you can view them
sometime, you may have ideas as to how to use them. The international missions video comes with a discussion guide.

Syngman Rhee, the PC(USA) Moderator, addressed us briefly at the beginning of the conference, reminding us that he is a Christian because of the frontier mission work of Presbyterians. John Detterick, Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, also addressed us briefly and reported on his recent worship experience with the Suri of Ethiopia where John and Gwen Haspels work. Both the Suri and the Dalit (pronounced Dah-leet, I learned), were mentioned more than once during the conference.

Each seminar was about 1 1/2 hours long, one late morning Saturday, and two Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning I attended "Frontier Mission: Creative Models and Approaches." to learn "how churches are discovering creative ways to be involved in mission among unreached peoples." Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship officers, Kathy Giske, who planned the plenary sessions, and Dan McNerney were the leaders.

Giske and McNerney talked a lot about what is going on in the groups being served. They pointed out that wherever a missionary goes, God has already been at work and that we should feel honored to work with Him. For the groups in which we have missionaries, they suggested we need to understand whether the people are open or resistant and why, the history of the church in the area before they got there, whether the country in which they are located is politically opening up to Christianity or closing to it, and the best ways to enter the society. We need to build on whatever church activity may have occurred before our missionaries got there, search out and relate to any isolated Christians that may have resulted, and enter the society to serve the felt needs of the people there, which may not be as missionaries. I thought of Don and Kim.

Giske and McNerney also talked about getting the church leadership involved in the dynamic process of frontier mission, using the Global Prayer Digest and other prayer resources, doing research into the work and the people it serves, exploratory mission trips, and several other components of the process that it would take a lot more ink to go into here.

Both Giske and McNerney told stories of churches getting involved in frontier mission. Giske recounted the overwhelming change in the First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, where the senior pastor was persuaded to visit in Egypt and there established a partnership between his church and Egyptian Presbyterian churches trying to minister to unreached groups. You may know that this is the church that Al and Harriet Johnson are in now. McNerney talked about how a Presbyterian Church in Hammond, Indiana sent a missionary to the Aguaruna people of Peru and was having trouble acquiring the Aguaruna New Testament, which had been translated by Wycliffe/Summer Institute of Linguistics personnel. I informed him that I knew one of the translators, since she was a linguistics professor at Kansas State University when I taught there. So I am currently involved in trying to get McNerney in touch with people who can help the missionary and his church gain access to the Aguaruna New Testament.

Other seminars available for the morning are listed in material to be provided later.

When we broke for lunch we picked up box lunches and assembled for conversation groups. I chose the one on the ministry of the Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies, Michael Boykin being the Director and discussion leader. We talked about various things, including the resources available to mission committees and churches from the Center, how they stand ready to advise and encourage local churches in their Commitments, and how the denomination came to be and remains involved with the AD2000 and Beyond Movement. The excellent lunch consisted of two delicious turkey sandwiches, a small pasta salad, a good, solid, tasty delicious apple, and a large-size chocolate brownie with nuts in it. I'm afraid I didn't get down all that was said, and I'll blame the good lunch. Boykin took a number of questions, and the conversation ranged first one direction and then another. You may be interested in the other conversation groups listed.

In the early afternoon I attended "How To Care for a Missionary: How churches can really support their missionaries beyond just sending financial support and writing letters. Jerry

Cooper, Associate Pastor of Missions and Discipleship in the Central Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, Maryland was the leader. This church of 700 members has a missions budget of 700 members and 33 % of its budget goes to missions, totaling $380,000. His talk mainly described what they try to do for their missionaries and why. I was so moved by this seminar that my eyes smarted and my throat felt constricted much of the time. He talked about how to get connected with missionaries, mainly through the Worldwide Ministries Division, the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, and the Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church. He stressed that the issue is not a program and techniques but caring for missionaries as people like you and me. He stressed that they are part of the Church Family, should not be put on pedestals, and are equal in importance to the rest of the church staff. He told of how Central was faced with possible cuts when he began to serve there and how he informed them that if the missionaries were cut, he would take a cut in his salary of the same percentage. The cuts were avoided.

I can't go into detail on everything he talked about. He talked about listening to them, encouraging them, commissioning them, and honoring them. They commission all of their missionaries as they return to the field. Central represents missionaries with the IRA and other agencies and advises them about retirement problems. They hold them accountable by asking them to state their goals and evaluate how they have been meeting them. They see, in so far as possible, that they have transportation on furlough, satisfactory places to live while in the country, and so on.

Central gives all their missionaries a five percent raise each year, and if a radical currency fluctuation occurs, they try to help the missionary fill the gap. They stress to the congregation that missionaries have to live frugally and ask members to consider whether or not they, too, should live a simpler lifestyle.

They concentrate on praying for their missionaries and for the people they are serving in a variety of ways, including special prayer meetings for them and the people groups.

They encourage members of the congregation to send letters, e-mail messages, audio/visual materials, care packages, news articles and newsletters, magazine subscriptions, and prayer requests, among other things.

They help missionaries to reenter the culture when they return, honoring them and ministering to the whole family, including the children. They encourage congregational children to become friends with missionary kids and, when they go elsewhere, to communicate with them.

The church maintains a conference fund, a hospitality fund, and a general discretionary fund to help take care of the above matters.

Central emphasizes understanding the missionary experience as a basis for prayer, communication, and other forms of support. Cooper outlined a ten-phase life-cycle of being a missionary. They are call and confirmation, training and education, raising support, the honeymoon phase, disenchantment, resolution, adjustment, returning home, itineration, and the return to the field--each having its own characteristics, difficulties, and rewards.

Missionaries have to be prayed for knowledgeably, consistently, intimately, and scripturally. They need prayer for their relationship with God, their physical and emotional health, their relationships with other missionaries, their country of service, family matters, the effectiveness of their ministry, and physical and spiritual welfare. Whew! There are some things here for us to apply.

For the third seminar I had planned to attend "How to Mobilize the Laity for Mission, led by Art Beals, who heads our denomination's mission work in Eastern Europe and Asian countries of the former Soviet Union. But I changed to Networking: Connecting for Effective Mission, since it was led by two men with whom I have had e-mail contact--Larry Beckler and David Hackett of the Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies. Larry Beckler reads Beyond Our Walls and periodically sends me suggestions and notes of encouragement. I especially wanted to meet him.

Beckler and Hackett talked about Ralph Winter, as did Harold Kurtz in his address and others at the conference. Winter was to receive special recognition at the conference, but was not able to be there. He was a Presbyterian missionary in Guatemala for ten years, after which he became a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. He noticed that only about ten percent of the returned missionaries in his classes were working with unreached peoples, and he decided to try to do something about it. With his training in linguistics and anthropology, he looked at the world in terms of the culturally distinct societies that eventually were called "people groups." Winter founded and heads the U.S. Center for World Mission and William Carey International University in Pasadena, CA.

Winter, Kurtz, and others worked to get the PC(USA) to commit to working in partnership with other organizations to reach the world's cultural groups who were without self-supporting, self-propagating Christian churches. I need to get better informed on this, but Winter, Kurtz, and others worked to get overtures approved at the 1981 and 1988 General Assemblies. These resulted in our denomination becoming the only mainline denomination to be associated with the AD2000 and Beyond Movement, a partnership of some 450 organizations committed to work together in Christian unity to take the Good News to all unreached people groups. Our denomination is working in 198 such groups, and our own Session in 1996 signed a Commitment to Share the Good News with the Suri people of Ethiopia and the Dalit (untouchables) of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. That is why we have been encouraging the congregation to become familiar with these two groups and the work among them.

Hackett and Becker also talked about establishing e-mail networks involving missionaries, the importance of communication between the congregation and the missionaries, and meetings and consultations concerning the development of our roles in the Good News Commitment. They discussed a number of kinds of ministry we need to know about and support and, if opportunity affords, even participate in appropriately, namely personal witness, visiting teams, literature distribution, broadcasting, development aid, medical service, and translation. Some of these would involve short term mission commitments. They pointed out that we need to know where our members travel in the world, since some of them might like to visit a mission field in a country in which they are traveling. Reports to the congregation by such travelers are valuable. A church should work to develop a permeating "mission vision" with the "senior pastor" being a key player. They also developed the idea that the churches which experience a high level of financial support for all areas of their life are those which have this mission vision.

So, I missed Art Beals seminar, but, (can you beat this), the following Sunday we attended our oldest daughter's church in Ventura, CA, and who brought the message that day! That's right! Art Beals! He reiterated many of the things I had herd at the conference. We've attended that church twice, and judging by those two experiences, it is a church whose mission vision permeates their life. It has two packed out services, all kinds of study groups and SS classes, and noisy people swarming all over the place.

I am full of all kinds of hopes for our church in the light of what I saw and heard in San Diego, but I guess I'll share those in another place. I thought I had an above average knowledge and understanding of Christian missions, but I learned that, relatively speaking I knew nothing! I was especially ignorant about what is happening in our own denomination, and I have some learning to do.

I hope you got this far! I know my comments are somewhat disorganized and incomplete, and that I can't possibly get you to feel what I feel, since you do not have the context of having been at the conference. But I pray that we can go somewhere with all this and that the Lord will make me adequate to communicate what you might want to know about how all this might relate to the life of our congregation.

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Last update 2007-07-15 19:47:42