The United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) has historically been given the awesome task of marching forward to win the world for Christ. Instead, the board is now engaged in a retreat from its historic emphasis.
Observers of GBGM have believed for years that the board was undergoing a disturbing change in character. But official financial data was so difficult to obtain that, until now, no comprehensive study of the missions agency was possible. However, at the 1980 General Conference, legislation was passed requiring all general church agencies to release an annual Financial Disclosure Report containing information more detailed than ever before released to most church members.
This Good News special report is based upon a six-month analysis of GBGM’s Financial Disclosure Report for the year 1981 (the latest statement available). It examines the financial workings of one of the largest flagships of Protestantism. It also attempts to show exactly how and why the board is failing to fulfill its mandate.
Three areas of GBGM breakdown are emphasized-excessive overhead, political grants, and defective philosophy.
Gaining an understanding of these problems may help United Methodists realize that the General Board of Global Ministries has become derailed from its mission. Further, such an understanding might suggest how the mission board may once again be put back on track.
• GBGM states its administrative overhead costs are quite low. The 1981 Report of the Treasurers indicates it’s only 12.3%. But Good News found this figure to be somewhat misleading. If you include all the costs of the board’s staff, headquarters, and non-mission activities, GBGM’s overhead expense ran more like 30.5%. That’s nearly one-third of all its expenditures.
• The board’s headquarters staff now actually outnumbers its cadre of career overseas missionaries. Furthermore, GBGM spends more money on its staff than it does on all of its missionaries, overseas and in the United States.
Obviously, the amount of money GBGM spends on administrative overhead and its headquarters staff matters a great deal. GBGM is one of the largest religious organizations in the United States. A rise in the percentage of income set aside for overhead translates into millions of dollars.
The board is worth a lot of money. In 1981, its assets were valued at over $159 million. The money was invested in trust funds, property, and stock in many of America’s largest corporations. Income from investments added up to over $8.5 million in 1981.
That year, total GBGM income was $70,395,456—up about $4 million from the year before. Total expenditures for 1981 were $63,761,027 (These figures are found in the 1981 Report of the Treasurers. The statistics found throughout the rest of this section were based on income and expenditure figures found in the 1981 Financial Disclosure Report except where noted (the report is based on unaudited figures.) Because some Women’s Division funds are counted elsewhere, the Financial Disclosure Report composite sheets list GBGM income as $64,619,048, and expenditures as $59,326,497. Including the excluded Women’s Division funds does not greatly alter the resulting statistics.
That income came from a variety of sources. The most familiar contribution to GBGM finances came from the multipurpose World Service fund, to which the 38,000 UM congregations are asked to contribute through their apportionments. And yet GBGM’s share of the World Service fund in 1981 was only $12,173,959-only 17.3% of total board income.
The $15.5 million the Women’s Division brought in during 1981 through the United Methodist Women structure represented a bigger share of GBGM income, about 22%. Larger still was the amount resulting from local churches’ second-mile missions giving, known as the Advance Special. In 1981 Advance Specials brought in $19,182,115, or about 27.3% of total board income.
How are the board’s directors and its staff members supposed to spend these funds? The answers are outlined in the Book of Discipline, the law of the church.
Nobody would find it easy to follow the numerous and complex "responsibilities" of GBGM located in Discipline paragraph 1502. The missions agency is supposed to "engage with persons of other faiths," to "express the concerns of women organized for mission," to "work toward the transformation of demonic forces which distort life," and to "assist the alienated and dispossessed" in "achieving their full human development."
Clearly GBGM isn’t designed to be a single-purpose organization, interested only in converting unbelieving peoples to Christianity. The board’s mandate is broader than that.
But the first duty listed in the Discipline remains clear: "To discern those places throughout the world where the Word has not been heard or heeded and to witness to its meaning on all six continents through a program of global ministries."
Also, GBGM is to "challenge all United Methodists with the New Testament imperative to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth, expressing the mission of the church, to recruit, send, and receive missionaries.…"
Based upon this mandate from the United Methodist Church, one critical question becomes apparent. How well is the board doing in balancing its vital and traditional role of sending missionaries and evangelizing the world with its more recently acquired duties of dialogue and social transformation?
The answer suggested by the Good News analysis of GBGM’s 1981 Financial Disclosure Report is not encouraging.
If anything appeared sure during six months of study, it was that the board’s program seems badly, even dangerously out of balance. It has become obvious that the board has diverted its resources on a massive scale away from traditional missions projects located "on all six continents" and toward political programs centered at 475 Riverside Drive in New York—GBGM’s headquarters.
As a direct result of this shift in emphasis, the board’s overhead costs have increased.
When UM laypersons make a gift directed to GBGM, they’re told only a small part of their offering will go toward the board’s overhead. The 1981 GBGM Report of the Treasurers declared that only 12.3% of the money spent by the board—$7,842,104—went to "program servicing and administration." But does that figure really show the whole picture?
Decidedly not. The 12.3% seems correct only if you accept the reasoning of the board. GBGM—following the usual UM practice—recognizes three types of expenditures in the 1981 Financial Disclosure Report: Administration, fundraising, and program. Every category of expenses (e.g. telephone and telegraph) listed in the report’s composite expenditure section is broken down into one or more of these three types.
The problem shows up when the breakdowns on some of the expense categories are examined. Staff travel expenses, for instance, totaled up to a whopping $1,441,514. But the breakdown of this category states that only $159,214 of that was charged against administration, and just $79,652 was ascribed to fundraising. The balance of the staff travel expenditures—more than a million dollars—was placed under the program heading.
Another example is the rent category. In the Financial Disclosure Report, more of the rent is charged to program than to administration—$518,275 to $347,630. One would think every penny of the rent would be considered as administrative overhead. Likewise, the expense category titled "Special Promotion—Evanston" seems curiously handled. The $496,729 spent on this category was all attributed to program, even though the whole purpose for the Special Promotion was to promote the Advance Special fundraising apparatus. So why wasn’t the money marked down under the fundraising heading?
Obviously, dividing the expenditure categories into three types doesn’t communicate very much, since GBGM seems to consider almost everything it does as program. In any case, these particular classifications don’t really tell the needed information. The critical question is: How well is GBGM managing our United Methodist missions money?
To help find the answer, it might be appropriate to compare GBGM to the missions agency of a sister denomination.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board is a good agency to compare with GBGM. The Southern Baptist Convention is the only Protestant denomination in the United States larger than the United Methodist Church. Consequently in 1981 their Foreign Mission Board was the only denominational missions agency with a larger budget than GBGM—over $90 million.
More significantly, the foreign Mission Board is like our own board in its support of large social work projects, medical work, and relief programs. (One difference is the Southern Baptist board deals only in foreign missions, while GBGM is also assigned to national missions.)
In 1981 the Southern Baptist board also computed an administrative overhead of 12%, identical to our own board. But according to the Southern Baptist board’s internal auditor, Dan Whorton, the parallel stops there.
Whorton told Good News his board figures the following items into administrative overhead to arrive at the 12% figure: all salaries of all its headquarters staff, no matter what their assignments; all office expenses associated with their headquarters, including telephone and equipment; all travel expense for the headquarters staff; all fundraising and promotion expense; and, finally, all costs of educational conferences) seminars, and actual board meetings.
In other words, the Southern Baptist board clearly separates funds going to support the headquarters expense (salaries, rent equipment, travel, seminars) from those funds actually going to field work (missionary support and grants to mission projects).
When the spending of the United Methodist missions agency is figured using this method, an entirely different picture emerges.
Using the Baptist method for figuring overhead, the 1981 headquarters cost for GBGM was $18,116,821—that adds up to fully 30.5% of everything the board spent in 1981. Nearly a third.
Just under $40 million of UM missions money made it to the field in the form of missionary support and grants, or only 67.4% of the total. Compare that with the 88% the Baptists got straight to the field.
The $40 million sent to the field arrived in two categories—cash grants and "persons in missions." About $30 million was given in the form of grants to UM missions projects, to churches abroad and in the United States, and also to some highly dubious political causes. (More about cash grants later.)
One of the most disturbing statistics Good News came across while compiling this report was the relatively small amount GBGM spends on the second category, which was for overseas and U.S. "persons in mission"—our missionaries. The amount was just $10,047,761, which was only 16.9% of the board’s 1981 expenditures.
Less than two dimes out of every dollar spent by GBGM in 1981 went to the support of missionaries!
Compare that figure with the percentage GBGM spent just maintaining its headquarters staff (including their salaries, fringe benefits, moving expenses, and travel, but not including rent, telephone, etc.)—18.6%, which is more than the board spent on similar expenses of its missionaries.
The imbalance appears even worse when you start headcounting GBGM employees. The 1983 GBGM Prayer Calendar indicates the board now has 847 active missionaries (which does not reflect the 27 international persons in missions and 63 nationals in their own countries). Of the 847 only 453 are career overseas missionaries. The rest are interns, domestic missionaries, or deaconnesses—many of whom get no salary support from the board. It didn’t used to be this way.
In the banner year of 1965 GBGM fielded more than 1,500 career overseas missionaries. Ever since then, however, the board has whittled away at the size of its missionary force outside the United States until it’s now less than a third of its former size.
To explain this near disbanding of its overseas missionary force, the board talks about a change in philosophy and about money troubles. But a shortage of cash should have also drastically shrunk the size of the headquarters staff. That hasn’t happened.
Instead, there are now 458 persons on the staff—a number greater than our entire contingent of career overseas missionaries. Even when you include all of the interns, U.S.-based missionaries, and deaconesses, there’s still more than one staff person for every two missionaries on the field.
By comparison, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board employed around 300 headquarters staffers in 1983, while fielding 3,196 career overseas missionaries. The Southern Baptist Home Mission Board—the Baptist equivalent to our GBGM National Division—has 287 headquarters staffers and 3,430 persons in the U.S. field. (The Home Mission Board had a budget of about $34 million in 1981 and reported an overhead figure of 17.9%.)
Clearly there is a severe imbalance with our UM missions board. Why does GBGM even need the services of 458 staff members in New York (including the few in regional offices)?
Many staffers are involved in the necessary and routine tasks of administering a large program agency. Others are engaged in programs justified by some reading of the Discipline’s complex mandate. For example, the Discipline instructs GBGM to educate local churches about world missions, and the board spends a great deal doing this. Additionally, some National Division staffers are performing a helpful service as field representatives.
Still other staff members are working with political projects of dubious value and legitimacy (see the section on Political Grants).
Of course, the real losers in this shift of resources are the unreached peoples of the world who may never hear about the salvation found in Jesus Christ unless the United Methodist Church sends them a missionary. In a real sense they are victims of the indifference of a missions agency that found it necessary in 1981 to spend 30.5% of its funds on headquarters matters—on itself.
Local UM congregations can be assured every dollar of one fund goes straight to the mission field—the Advance Special. This category includes the UM Committee on Relief (UMCOR), the effective relief arm of the board.
In 1981 the Financial Disclosure Report shows that more than $19 million came into the board through Advance Specials, and all of it is left intact. That’s because GBGM isn’t permitted to tap these funds for administration or other headquarters expenses. In the case of the Advance Special, the local church, not the board, decides where the money goes.
Unfortunately, some of the $40 million missions money that makes it to the field goes for questionable causes. Although most of it is directed to maintaining church schools, our missionaries, hospitals, and autonomous Methodist churches, and to feeding and clothing poor people, several hundred thousand dollars of board funds goes to support radical political causes.
Over the last few years, the charge that GBGM financially supports leftist political organizations has surfaced repeatedly. And each time the charge has been raised, mission board officials have voiced a standard reply. They have repeatedly denied support for any particular ideology.
Critics always had a near impossible task trying to prove that a pattern of political activity existed, because before now complete financial records were usually unavailable. But the board’s 1981 Financial Disclosure Report has provided many answers. The report lists every grant made by the board, including who got the money, the amount, and a brief (but often vague), description of what it was given for. Good News found the board’s financial support for leftist groups ranged from modest-size single grants all the way to extremely heavy financial backing encompassing several individual donations.
One of the largest recipients of GBGM money in 1981 was an organization known as the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). The various divisions and sub-units of WSCF received a series of grants totaling $120,900 from the board. Even for GBGM that’s a lot of money in a single year. What kind of organization deserved such a sweeping financial endorsement?
WSCF describes itself as a Christian student organization with affiliated movements located in over 90 nations, all working for ecumenism and a just world. The group has received money from other U.S. churches, but not without serious opposition.
In November 1981 three American Lutheran denominations voted to grant $30,000 to WSCF. But at least two bishops attempted to reduce the amount, citing the radical political course the WSCF had taken at a gathering the previous August. Bishop James Crumley, Lutheran Church in America, voiced his grave concern over several resolutions passed by WSCF. He stated, "As I look at these resolutions, I’m wondering whether this is even a Christian organization."
The resolutions passed by WSCF delegates at their August meeting fully deserved the bishop’s suspicion. Included were ones supporting the revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada. They decided the Palestine Liberation Organization is the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestine people."
They reaffirmed their support for the Soviet-funded South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), a guerrilla group in Namibia. They suggested that Puerto Rico be allowed to "freely determine" its status, as if an overwhelming number of the Puerto Rican people had not recently voted to remain a part of the United States. They criticized the governments of South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines, and Chile. No corresponding resolutions were passed criticizing leftist governments.
This kind of one-sided political activism caused the Russian Student Christian Movement (outside the USSR) to withdraw from the WSCF in 1974. The Russians stated that the WSCF had become increasingly Marxist and less Christian in its orientation.
Even more money—a total of $195,653 for the year 1981—went to a project known as Agricultural Missions. The project originated as an independent support group for Christian missionaries who wished to educate their people in modern farming methods. In 1965 Agricultural Missions became part of the National Council of Churches (NCC).
But a few years later, Agricultural Missions made a disturbing change in its orientation. An article written by Agricultural Mission’s Executive Secretary, J. Benton Rhoades, describes the transformation: "In 1970 ... a special committee was named to study the ‘future job of Agricultural Missions.’ The options were ‘to find a more relevant role or go out of business.’… The organizational decision was that Agricultural Missions, while continuing to assist and advise North American denominations and their rural missionaries, would now commit itself primarily to cooperation with people’s organizations at the grassroots."
In other words, Agricultural Missions was no longer mainly interested in improving the lot of struggling peasant farmers in the Third World—that goal had been judged not "relevant." Instead, Agricultural Missions has committed itself "primarily" to political activities involving peasant groups. This new orientation in itself makes Agricultural Missions a much more questionable recipient of U M mission funds.
However, when the kind of politics advocated by Agricultural Missions is noted, the picture becomes a great deal more upsetting. In a 1978 document, "The Christian Rural Mission in the 1980s: A Call to Liberation and Development of Peoples," Agricultural Missions suggests the type of government system it favors: "Certain socialist countries have made significant advances in relieving hunger and poverty. As a result, a growing number of poor countries are rejecting the capitalist way and are looking to some form of socialism as a strategy for change.…"
A footnote to this passage lists the book Learning from China.
In 1979 Agricultural Missions gave significant aid to another group, the Institute on Food and Development Policy, in producing the book, Food First Resource Guide. The book states: "We have found that the only societies in the world that seem to be effectively overcoming hunger are countries that are incorporating aspects of what Americans dismiss as ‘socialism.’"
Such statements give the impression that socialism is the truly Christian economic system. The board’s funding of groups like Agricultural Missions helps spread this questionable claim.
By now most United Methodists are familiar with the debate surrounding the World Council of Churches’ Program to Combat Racism (WCC/PCR). The program has funded several southern Africa revolutionary groups for over a decade in a controversial attempt to help rid that continent of racist institutions.
Several groups receiving PCR funds have been actively engaged in the violent overthrow of their government, most recently the government of South Africa. And although the money was supposed to go to humanitarian concerns, critics have charged that program grants were insufficiently audited by the WCC. GBGM gave the Program to Combat Racism $32,750 in 1981, but board officials said none of the money went to any of the revolutionary groups or any organization advocating violence. Instead, the board’s money was directed to slightly less controversial grants such as "Consultations on Southern Africa."
However, in reality the board was funding activities of one revolutionary movement in 1981—the African National Congress, an organization working for the violent overthrow of the South African government. It now functions primarily as a political front for various guerrilla groups, including the ANC’s own fighting unit. The organization is heavily funded by the Soviet Union.
In 1981 the board’s Women’s Division presented the ANC’s Women Section with a grant of $25,000 for "Refugee Women’s Projects." This nebulous-sounding description gives little illumination on what the money will actually do.
Probably more important than the money was the propaganda support given to South African revolutionaries during 1981. In October of that year GBGM helped make possible the "Conference in Solidarity with the Liberation Struggles of the Peoples of Southern Africa," held in New York City.
The conference was an effort to gain more U.S. support for the revolutionary movements in South Africa—the African National Congress and the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). The board’s World Division gave a $5,000 grant to the conference and the Women’s Division donated goods and services worth another $2,496. More importantly, the board’s United Methodist Office for the United Nations (run jointly with the General Board of Church and Society) allowed the conference to use its office as the return address on all their literature and posters.
Later, after the conference had taken place, The United Methodist Reporter revealed that the coordinator of the conference, Carl Bloice, was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Further, the Reporter discovered that pro-Soviet groups seemed to dominate the whole event.
In light of this support for the revolutionary left in southern Africa, the reader of the board’s 1981 Financial Disclosure Report can only wonder about the $20,000 grant by the Women’s Division to a project identified as "International Defense Aid for South Africa Prisoner Support and U.S. Network Building."
And although every responsible Christian must condemn the cruel system of apartheid in South Africa that robs the black majority of their civil and political rights, why is the Board of Global Ministries seemingly committed to violent, revolutionary change brought about by groups heavily influenced by Marxism Leninism?
Other alternatives do exist in southern Africa. For example, the South African Council of Churches is committed to dismantling apartheid by non-violent means. And the council is a Christian organization, whereas the ANC and SWAPO decidedly are not. Why doesn’t GBGM throw its support wholeheartedly behind this Christian, peaceful option?
These examples of politically motivated grants from the 1981 GBGM Financial Disclosure Report are far too typical, in spite of GBGM’s assertion that it does not support any particular ideology. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find on the pages of the report even one single grant to a group advocating politically conservative solutions to problems that would balance the board’s leftist grants. Instead, here are some grants that reflect the board’s political tendencies.
• Theology in the Americas—$15,965. This group is on the front line of organizations trying to politicize the Christian faith. In its 1980 Detroit II Conference, Theology in the Americas called for the nation to "explore a creative socialist alternative" to the U.S. capitalist system.
• Young Christians for Global Justice—$5,500. This group has become a junior version of the World Student Christian Federation. In January 1982 GBGM sent two young directors to participate in the group’s conference in Canada. The conference’s program was an excellent reflection of the left’s agenda.
• Women’s International Information and Communication Service (ISIS)—$25,000. ISIS is one of the more radical international feminist organizations on the scene today. The group devoted the March 1982 issue of its Women’s International Bulletin to what ISIS described as the "First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting," held in July 1981. The newsletter stated that the meeting "was important politically" because it "placed feminism as a major struggle against capitalism and the unequal relations existing among nations."
• PRISA—$20,540. PRISA is a Puerto Rican group opposed to U.S. affiliation with their island. Together with the NCC’s EPICA program, PRISA authored the book, Puerto Rico: A People Challenging Colonialism. As pointed out earlier, the assertion that Puerto Rico is somehow enslaved by the U.S. is false, since the people of that island have repeatedly voted to remain a U.S. Commonwealth.
• Ecumenical Program for Inter-American Communication Action (EPICA)—$2,500. Most of this amount, $2,000, was granted to EPICA "for production of ‘A Population Primer on Grenada.’" When the work was actually issued, however, its title had been altered to Grenada: The Peaceful Revolution. The book spends most of its pages extolling one aspect or another of the Marxist-Leninist government on the island. The book’s section on "The Election Question" is especially telling. "General elections," the book explains, "would…threaten the revolutionary process by inviting outside interference through financial contributions or covert manipulations."
• Clergy and Laity Concerned—$7,400. Originally organized to oppose the Vietnam War, CALC soon branched out into other issues. At the group’s 1982 conference in Los Angeles the keynote address was given by Rev. James Lawson, who is a UM pastor and a director of GBGM. He stated, "What seems very clear is that the number-one enemy of peace and justice in the world today is the United States." Lawson went on to make the incredible assertion that "the United States… has the power to create a Fourth Reich that could succeed where Hitler’s Third Reich could not."
• Inter-religious Task Force on El Salvador—$3,000. This group was begun by the NCC to combat U.S. support for the government of El Salvador and to support the leftist political coalition, which includes the guerrillas, in that country. In a widely distributed 1981 background paper, the task force proclaimed, "The majority of the people of El Salvador have chosen to unite under the leadership of the FDR [the leftist political front which includes the guerrillas], recognizing it as their legitimate representative.
This assertion was shown to be baseless a few months later when the Salvadoran people voted overwhelmingly for a political coalition which was most unbending in its opposition to the guerrillas.
Clearly, the support of the General Board of Global Ministries for leftist political groups is not accidental or haphazard. Rather, GBGM has consciously chosen to back dozens of organizations committed to goals alien to most United Methodists and outside the scope of GBGM’s mandate.
Unfortunately, even the $481,704 given to the groups listed in the preceding pages doesn’t fully show the extent of the politicization of GBGM. Many, many others could be discussed if space permitted. But to understand the full picture, three other problems have to be examined: 1) the tremendous sums of money wasted on projects connected only marginally or not at all with the board’s responsibilities; 2) the significant funds going to groups advocating what amounts to a one-sided social agenda; and 3) the deep political involvement of the board’s headquarters staff.
A lot of money is lost by GBGM’s backing of impractical causes designed to change social structures. These causes may not be wrong. But can the UM Church afford to support them in light of its limited financial resources?
For example, the political left has bitterly complained about the domination of news services located in Western nations. Third World activists have maintained that their views are hardly ever covered by the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, and other international news wires. So in 1981 GBGM contributed $24,000 to help train African women who are working on a new Third World news service, Interpress. But is the mission board of the UM Church really able to justify $24,000 of support to a competitor of UPI?
Then there’s the Law of the Sea Project, which is a joint venture of GBGM and the General Board of Church and Society. In 1981 GBGM contributed a whopping $47,500 to this program. The Law of the Sea is an international treaty on the use of the oceans and their resources.
The 1980 General Conference affirmed the then-ongoing efforts to negotiate the Law of the Sea, and GBGM took that as its cue to set up an office to inform Americans about the treaty and the issues involved. The obvious question is whether an international treaty concerning ocean rights deserves $47,500 of UM missions money.
The second problem is the board’s funding of positions on only one side of the social agenda. The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) is a classic example. Taking full advantage of an ambiguous statement in the Book of Discipline, the board gave this group $1,200 in 1981. An outstanding proponent of abortion rights, Lawrence Lader, described the RCAR in the New York Times as a "model" group getting people "converted to militancy" on abortion.
The third problem, the political activities of the GBGM headquarters staff, is a little more difficult to demonstrate using the 1981 Financial Disclosure Report. That’s because the report lists only totals for staff salaries, rather than outlining the duties of each employee. But a good picture of the staff’s political activities emerges when some other documents are studied.
For example, take Common Ground, which is the newsletter of the UM Voluntary Service (run by GBGM’s National Division). Most enlightening is an article authored by newsletter editor Rusty Davenport from the Summer 1981 issue, entitled "Cuba: A Land of Contrasts."
It states, "UMVS has long wondered: what do our economic and political policy makers fear so much from Cuba?… Indeed, Cuba represents a vision of the future shared by many poor and working people in the U.S. today." And again, "Knowing what the revolution has brought, and what it has cost, is an immensely important challenge for people seriously committed to bringing change to the United States."
Such views surely must be considered overtly political. Unfortunately, Common Ground is funded from Human Relations Day offerings taken at local UM churches across the country.
We all helped pay for Davenport’s article, believing, naively, we were giving to missions.
What’s needed now to round out our knowledge of the General Board of Global Ministries are the whys.
Why has the board become so involved in leftist politics?
Why has it drastically reduced its missionary force?
To begin to find the answers, it’s necessary to take a hard look at GBGM’s mandate in the Book of Discipline. Each General Conference has the opportunity to revise or rewrite that mandate, and the document has as a result been severely weakened over the past 1 5 years.
"The Aims of Mission," found in paragraph 1277 of the 1968 Discipline, gave the board of its day a crystal-clear vision of its mission:
1. To witness in all the world, by word and deed, to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ and the acts of love by which he reconciles men to himself.
2. To evoke in men the personal response of repentance and faith through which by God’s grace they may find newness of life in righteous, loving relationships with God and their fellow men.
Notice how this 1968 language is rich in its Wesleyan evangelicalism, calling all persons to repentance and faith. Once persons have come to faith and joined a church, the 1968 Aims of Mission says that then they are to go "into the world as servants in the struggle for justice and meaning."
By contrast, the newest version of GBGM’s mandate, found in the 1980 Discipline, lacks any reference to conversion or personal repentance. Instead, the 1980 mandate merely asks GBGM to decide where the Word hasn’t been heard and "witness to its meaning.…"
Instead of changing persons, the board is told by the 1980 mandate to "engage in building societies and systems where full human potential is liberated.…"
The goals of renewing human beings spiritually and renewing societies could have co-existed in the mandate. However, it appears that the personal dimensions of the Gospel have been de-emphasized intentionally.
Perhaps picking up the subtle shift in direction in its mandate, GBGM has been steadily reducing its once-large overseas missionary force. A greater percentage of its resources have been directed to social and political programs.
Isolated and betrayed
United Methodists have voiced protest after protest during the last decade concerning the decline in both our missionary force and in our evangelistic zeal, all to no apparent avail.
Many in our shrinking missionary force feel isolated and betrayed by the board’s new emphasis. One young missionary wrote to a friend: "Missionary morale is pretty low.… We’re secretly praying that ‘475’ [Riverside Drive, GBGM headquarters] falls into the Hudson soon. All the financial cutting that is being done is either in missionary personnel or missionary benefits."
GBGM officials explained the drop in missionaries with several arguments. The first is that the board can only send missionaries who are requested by the Methodist churches overseas.
Dr. Randolph Nugent, general secretary of GBGM, stated in an October speech, "Gone are the times when we may send those we desire to send and send them anywhere without regard to the priorities" of the overseas churches.
Officials also cite the need for allowing foreign nationals to do many of the tasks formerly accomplished by U.S. missionaries. And board officials explain that financial resources are better spent strengthening the churches abroad.
But the simple fact is, those overseas churches want U.S. missionaries in their countries, to help them with a great variety of work, from evangelism to education.
Former Bishop Bennie Warner, of the Liberian United Methodist Church, complained about the need for missionaries: "Liberian United Methodists want to make an evangelistic thrust but we can’t find either the money or the manpower. Our Macedonian call—‘Come over and help us’—is not being heard."
Not every culture of the world, moreover, even has a United Methodist presence. Some of these are closed to missionary activity. In many cases, however, our church could send evangelists and church planters. But this kind of pioneer missions work is now rarely carried out by GBGM. When is the last time the board opened up a new area?
Board staffers plead lack of funds for such ventures. Last fall, Charles Germany) assistant general secretary of the board’s World Division) said the board had requests from colleague churches for 39 more missionaries if the money becomes available.
But money will not become available as long as GBGM spends-more cash on its headquarters staff than it does on missionaries.
What the board really seems committed to is liberation theology—the strange mixture of politics and liberal religion which teaches that salvation means "liberating" persons from unjust social structures.
Charles Germany said it plainly to the UM Reporter. He said the World Division has as its "controlling principle in the 1980s" the "empowerment of the poor and the oppressed" (Aug. 13, 1982).
That’s why the board has committed so much money and staff to political solutions. GBGM still believes persons need salvation, but the oppressor is no longer primarily sin, it is political repression.
A new day demands a new kind of missionary, Nugent said in his October speech. "In this regard, there must be a call to a new form of missionary outreach," he stated. "A mission to those who are at the levers of economic and social affairs."
Nugent went on to "suggest a new and different missionary territory. Go to Scarsdale! Go to Orange County!" We have to change the pattern of international economic development, he said.
Nugent shared more of his missions philosophy at a conference for missionaries in February 1983. He affirmed the paragraph of the Discipline that calls the church into dialogue with other religions of the world, including secular religions like communism.
"The ecumenical movement understands what God is doing around the globe," he said. "You go to meet what God is doing."
So we’ve come full circle as a church. No longer do we send Missionaries to preach conversion to the lost. Rather, we should send troubleshooters armed with economic redemption. And we must go and try to discover God’s work in the secular philosophies of the world.
Truly missions have been derailed in the United Methodist Church.
How may we then place our missions efforts back on track? Some simple suggestions may help.
First, the Book of Discipline must be strengthened, making it more clear that the board must spread the Gospel as its first priority, and that it must preach personal conversion as well as social transformation.
Second, there must be new faces on the GBGM staff, persons committed to evangelism on a world scale. The present staff appears unyielding in its support of political activism.
Third, the percentage of GBGM funds spent on headquarters expenses should be lowered, to 20% or less. However important headquarters programs seem, they only drain resources away from the vital tasks of preaching the Gospel and strengthening U.S. and overseas ministries.
Fourth, a strict limit should be set on funds going to secular, political groups. Some contributions may be justifiable. But no grants should go to the kind of politically ideological organizations listed in this report, especially any group advocating violence. Rather, every organization receiving funds should be fully and actively committed to the democratic principles found in paragraph 74.A of the UM Social Principles, Book of Discipline.
The world hungers for the Gospel. Let’s get our United Methodist missions back on track.
James S. Robb was the associate editor of Good News when this article was published in 1983.