An impossible possibility:
Raising $8 million for global AIDS?
By Donald E. Messer

"I don't think it's too much to ask that we give up a couple of television commercials so that children can live." That plea by South Indiana United Methodist pastor Darren E. Cushman-Wood prompted the 2004 General Conference for a second time to vote favorably to apportion funds to create a new United Methodist Global AIDS Fund.

Cushman-Wood's appeal encouraged delegates to support a valiant effort by Indianapolis pastor Kent Millard to re-allocate $2 million from the Igniting Ministry's $25 million apportioned budget and invest it in the missional ministry of combating global AIDS.

In those dramatic words, Cushman-Wood, a champion of United Methodism's efforts to use the media for advertising purposes, clarified the moral priority facing the denomination: would it focus solely on its own institutional interests or would it respond to God's call to address the world's worst health crisis in 700 years?

Around the world, children are dying from HIV/AIDS. In South Africa, I visited a hospice within an orphanage and heard the excruciating cries of a mother who had just lost a child to AIDS. In India I held many HIV-infected babies in a rural maternity clinic, and sought to offer comfort to wards of children dying of AIDS. In every case, these children's lives could have been saved if modern medical treatment had been available. Even a minimal amount of money can make a difference-e.g., $5,000 provided by Colorado United Methodists for medicine at one clinic stopped the transmission of HIV from mother to child for over 500 children.

At the very moment the General Conference was meeting, two children per minute in Africa were becoming orphans. It is projected one million children in Africa below the age of 15 will lose a parent to AIDS. Currently, global AIDS has created at least 14.1 million orphans, with some experts estimating that number will increase to 40 million by the year 2010. United Nations observers report some African villages have been discovered where only children are surviving, because of the devastation of this disease.

For a few "bright and shining moments," it appeared the General Conference had heard and heeded both the biblical command to "care for the widow and the orphan" and Jesus' words: "Let the little children come unto me.." Earlier in the General Conference, delegates had registered their opinion clearly in an 818 to 68 vote to establish a $3 million apportioned fund, with the express purpose of seeking to raise an additional $5 million through an Advance Special. The legislation had been recommended overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, not by one, but by two Conference committees-financial administration and global ministries.

But the priority of television commercials apparently triumphed, however, over the priority of saving the lives of children. The General Council on Finance and Administration turned victory into defeat and hope into despair, when they recommended the elimination of any apportionment support and the establishment of an $8 million Advanced Special goal. Their will prevailed, thanks to highly irregular parliamentary procedures, and despite a clear affirmative vote by the General Conference to affirm Millard's proposal.

A cruel hoax or can we raise $8 million?
Raising $8 million through an Advanced Special, without any mechanism or support for fund raising, seems impossible. Hopefully, the GCFA has some "seed money" to help raise these dollars, lest a cruel hoax has been perpetuated upon the 818 members of General Conference, particularly the nearly 200 delegates from outside the United States.

The 2004 General Conference passed pages and pages of well-written resolutions about the global AIDS crisis to put in our Book of Resolutions. Probably no denomination anywhere has finer-sounding rhetoric, but our reality is something else. We failed to put our money where our mouth is. Morally, we failed to match our words with deeds!

The effort to create a United Methodist Global AIDS Fund has been insultingly labeled by some as a "pet project" not worthy of support. Actually, its initial support emerged from the fervent cries and hopes of delegates from Nigeria, Congo, Uganda, Philippines, Russia, Hungary, and Bulgaria in a sub-committee with only two USA delegates. Each of them spoke about how HIV/AIDS is seriously impacting their country and their desperate need for help. They spoke in agony about seeing family members die and warned about what was happening in their churches.

The General Conference welcomed one million new members from the Protestant Methodist Church of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), but completely failed to help them cope with their AIDS pandemic. It is the leading cause of death for both women and men, with more than ten percent of the adult population infected with HIV. Some 420,000 children under the age of 14 have already been orphaned by AIDS.

For a few moments it appeared the church was actually going to "walk its talk" in the 21st century-but then the "principalities and powers" of United Methodism prevailed. Aided by problematic parliamentary procedures, the dream of helping create an AIDS-free world seems to have vanished.

I will never forget the tears of an African woman, when she learned that apportioned funds were being stripped, and only a vague promise was being offered. I held her in my arms and we prayed that the Holy Spirit would yet find a way to move United Methodism from indifference to involvement, from words about money to works of mercy.

Can we create an impossible possibility?
In the past few months, especially since the publication of my book, Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis (Fortress, 2004), people keep asking me, "What can I do?" Of course, there is no one answer, since God is calling people to be involved at many levels. Vocationally and as volunteers, there are multiple ways we can make a difference. But one major way is for each of us to follow Bishop Bruce Blake's admonition to "give until it heals."

Some of us have begun working on creating an impossible possibility: raising $8 million for a United Methodist Global AIDS Fund. Working with Paul Dirdak, head of UMCOR, a specific fund number has been established: Advance No. 9823454-7. Individuals and churches can designate funds by using this number and sending their gifts either directly to New York or through their Conference treasurer.

In order for this goal to be achieved, the prayers and active involvement of all levels of leadership of the church will be needed. This is not an "evangelical" or "liberal" issue, but a compelling way to unite the church in mission and ministry with the "least of these my brethren."

Let us hope that the General Council on Finance and Administration finds some "seed money" to help in the educational and fund-raising efforts. General Secretary Sandra Kelley Lackore has promised the GCFA "will work" with those of us committed to achieving the $8 million goal. She believes denominationally there is "incredible sentiment" in favor of raising the money.

Maybe United Methodist Communications will use some "Igniting Ministry" monies to help make commercials and advertisements that will assist in educating persons about global AIDS and prompt philanthropic giving. The Advance is "second mile" giving, but we have to have some help in getting us down that first mile!

A special fund raising appeal from the Council of Bishops would be a major step forward in raising funds. After 9/11, some $15 million was raised by this special appeal, and now HIV/AIDS has been deemed "a global emergency" by the United Nations. Individual bishops, conference by conference, have to make global AIDS a priority, and local pastors must begin to break the church's silence by preaching and teaching on the subject.

Can we hear God speaking?
As we move forward, let us hear the voice of a United Methodist African woman theologian. Speaking from the context of her home country of Botswana, where HIV infects 40 percent of all adults, Dr. Musa W. Dube, offers this paraphrase of Matthew 25:

I was sick with AIDS and you did not visit me. You did not wash my wounds, nor did you give me medicine.. I was stigmatized, isolated, and rejected because of HIV/AIDS and you did not welcome me.. I was a dispossessed widow and an orphan and you did not meet my needs.. The Lord will say to us, "Truly I tell you, as long as you did not do it to one of the least of these members of my family, you did not do it to me.

May United Methodists be judged, not by its final vote at General Conference, but by what we do in the coming four years as we join in God's healing and loving initiatives to make this an AIDS-free world.

Donald E. Messer is author of Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis (Fortress, 2004). He directs the Center for the Church and Global AIDS at The Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado, where he serves as Warren Professor of Practical Theology and President Emeritus. He can be contacted at dmesser@iliff.edu



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