“Mission-Mission-Mission.” I’ve said it hundreds of times as I go around the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), but until churches really get into it themselves, it’s just words.
Once I visited a presbytery in Mississippi. Presbyterians there had just completed a mission trip to Mexico. Several of them rose and gave detailed reports of helping with construction, Bible school, and other projects. A young teenager was the last one to speak. He rose and quickly and simply said, “I found out while on this trip that Americans have too much stuff,” and he sat down.
It was one of the best mission talks I ever heard.
If all Presbyterians could realize how fortunate and blessed we are compared to the rest of the world, it would change lives and priorities.
When I first traveled overseas as a Presbyterian, I remember the shock when I went to a packing crate village on the beach of Fortaleza, Brazil, where the squatters lived. There was no running water and no sanitation. It stank. We were not allowed to build a school so we put up a platform where a missionary couple taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and Bible. The teacher looked over the crowded platform and asked her husband to go find Manuel, her best pupil. Her husband went off and came back, called her aside, and told her, “Manuel is dead. His body is lying on a piece of cardboard, and I think he just died of an abscessed tooth.”
She asked what I wanted to ask, “Why didn’t they come to us for help? We could have saved that child.” He related that he had asked that question. The mother answered, “We didn’t want to ask you for help because you had already done so much.”
I wept. And I made up my mind to get out into the world and see what we had done in mission. I’ve done that now. It took a long time and a lot of planning and hoping and praying. I’ve been to 583 mission stations in 126 countries where we either have or have had mission.
Not everyone can go personally so churches have various means of emphasizing mission to answer Jesus’ great commission, “Go into all the world and take the gospel to all nations.”
Many congregations simply give a portion of their budget to mission. This is very important because the national office can coordinate insurance, pensions, travel and placement.
However, some choose to give through the umbrella groups of Presbyterian Outreach, Frontier Fellowship, and Medical Benevolence. They assist with approved projects in evangelism, medical care, and education. The projects vary. Eastminster Church in Wichita, Kansas, built the Hallelujah Church in Harbin, China, through the Outreach Foundation. A Sunday school class in another church gave a smaller gift of seminary books to China, and some give to reach the untouchables in India through Frontier Fellowship. Others help with some of the over 400 mission hospitals in the world through Medical Benevolence.
It is our mission hospitals, such as the eye hospital in Pakistan, that have given ongoing chances to help in that country, although we help with other hospitals and schools there, as well.
I’ll never forget beautiful, little Pakistani girls in starched white dresses, processing into chapel carrying crosses and singing in Urdu, “Count your many blessings; count them one by one.” They were grateful for a new school building built by the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday offering. This and the Women’s Thank Offering and a portion of the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering all are ways that some churches help with mission.
Our foundations cannot always help everyone. There is so much need in the world. Another venture I will never forget is Bolivian women selling napkins and tablecloths to help build a new church because theirs was sliding off a hill.
The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance office receives part of the One Great Hour offering and uses it all over the world, both in this country and overseas. Last year was especially hard, with the terrible storms around the world from Indonesia to Florida.
Churches also send volunteers to help clean up disasters, and churches have youth who volunteer for shortterm mission. They also have recentlyretired folks who volunteer. Medical doctors give up their vacations to serve short term in hospitals around the world.
Presbyterians select a given area to be their partners. Those areas begin to relate to each other through visits and aid. For instance, Malawi loves Pittsburgh, Pa., because it has helped them so much in the troubled “Heart of Africa” where “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” was voiced.
There are so many ways people give. Some concentrate on highly troubled areas, such as the Task Force for Northern Ireland; or work through former moderator Benjamin Weir to raise money for a Middle East seminary; or those who work with groups who especially concentrate on Presbyterians in Cuba.
There is also a Czechoslovakia Task Force, and there is a China Connection. There are those who try to help forgotten and troubled areas, like Colombia or the Sudan or Guatemala. Missionary Alice Winters and Colombian Presbyterian leader Milton Mejia stand firm in promising continued help to the besieged Christians there.
The dangers in Sudan are tremendous. There is once again the potential of genocide in the Darfur region. I remember David Dobler, another former moderator, telling of the tribal symbols on top of huts; he came to one that had a cross and asked, “What tribe?” The owner answered, “The Tribe of Jesus Christ.”
Presbyterians continue to help the troubled Colombian situation. They have sent aid, helped with projects, served as human shields, and protested the constant violence.
We’re everywhere. I can’t name them all in one article. The Presbyterian Eskimo people work with churches in Siberia. There is work in the Red Light districts of Manila and Bangkok. There are churches, schools, and hospitals there, as well as in places like Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
There is support, whenever possible, of the North Korean Christians who struggle from day to day.
We cannot see what is happening today without remembering those who served and sacrificed over the years.
I especially think of Jack Vincent’s daughter in Aurora, Illinois. When I told the story of Jack being beheaded in China, she reminded me that most Presbyterians have forgotten our martyrs … those who were beheaded, starved, shot, or burned.
But we cannot forget, or be unfaithful to our generation’s responsibilities. They planted seeds all over the world, and Presbyterians today are using a variety of means to carry on, taking the gospel into all the world.
MARJ CARPENTER of Big Spring, Texas, is Presbyterians’ roving ambassador of missions. She has served as a PC (USA) moderator and elder. And she writes for the OUTLOOK. Anyone wanting to send Marj information about Presbyterian mission and local church action stories can do so: Marj Carpenter, 1425 E. 6th St., #105, Big Spring, TX 79720.
