Having decided to terminate all mission co-workers, the Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has committed the denomination to a perplexing future in mission. While a few of these international mission staff members may continue on as global ecumenical liaisons, many more will simply end their international service and so bring to a close a long and fruitful chapter of Presbyterian mission history. As a former mission co-worker and PC(USA) professor of mission, I see profound implications in this change of direction.
Theological foundations
Soon after the Interim Unified Agency announced its decision to terminate all mission coworkers, the National Hispanic Latino Presbyterian Caucus asked about the theological basis on which the denomination was proceeding: “We respectfully request clarification of the biblical and theological arguments used as a basis for these decisions.” None have surfaced yet.
Missio Dei
In the National Hispanic Latino Presbyterian Caucus’ Open Letter, two references are made to the concept of missio Dei. Since the 1980s, this term has summarized well a shared understanding of Christian mission widely embraced within conciliar Protestantism and beyond. From the deep biblical roots of missio Dei comes support for the idea of cooperating with God in mission rather than pursuing our own self-interested projects; an insistence that churches are dynamic, not stationary communities, created for active witness in the world; and a suggestion that our acts of sending, when faithfully conceived, may stand on apostolic ground.
The incarnation
Many current mission practices of the PC(USA) have likewise been anchored in the doctrine of the incarnation. For many decades, in fact, the denomination has promoted the ideal of incarnational mission. This commitment has been realized in a variety of ways, including support for Scripture translation into many of the world’s languages, a willingness to affirm the goodness of God’s whole creation, and wide acceptance of the principle of contextualization, whether in art, architecture, church cultures, or local theologies.
Mission co-workers have long embodied the aim of incarnational mission. Through them, the PC(USA) has directly participated in the life and work of many global mission partners. Their long periods of service made it possible to acquire advanced language skills, deep cultural learning, and respect for indigenous perspectives on mission and ministry. Further, the nomenclature of “mission co-worker” expressed a desire to struggle together in the face of many challenges, to learn from each other, and to live into a shared Christian identity.
Stated Clerk Jihyun Oh has offered some budgetary reasoning for ending the mission co-worker program. The fundamental shift taking place in our collective theology of mission is unaddressed. If our aim is no longer an incarnational mission, one has to wonder what other biblical or theological themes might be guiding this round of decision-making.
Anti-colonialism
We live in a postcolonial era and American Presbyterians, by and large, stand in opposition to unilateral Western assertions of political and ecclesial power. In a statement explaining the need to dissolve the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Interim Unified Agency Director of World Mission Mienda Uriarte construed this action to further “de-colonize” the denomination’s “theology, missiology, and practical engagement.”
Support for this perspective is scattered across the visioning document prepared for the Presbyterian Mission Agency by the CounterStories consulting group. In this report, organizational transformation is proposed as a way to redress the “historical harms of missionaries” and to eliminate “vestiges of colonialism” still affecting partner church relationships.
Repeated commitments to partnership notwithstanding, the decision to recall all of the denomination’s co-workers blindsided more than a few of the organizations and church bodies in which our international staff have been embedded. With virtually no warning, dozens of PC(USA) educators and church workers, colleagues on whom many host institutions were counting to help carry out ongoing ministry responsibilities and long-range plans, simply disappeared.
The unilateral nature of this reduction in force prompted the National Hispanic Latino Presbyterian Caucus to call the denomination’s actions “colonial in nature” in its open letter. Speaking for a collection of sister churches, theological seminaries, and ecumenical institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the caucus reported their shared perception of “imposed actions, taken without consultation.”
It is telling that none of the PC(USA)’s partner bodies were directly involved in the visioning exercise that resulted in the CounterStories 2021 report on restructuring. This is acknowledged in the document itself. The perspective of our longtime ministry partners abroad was represented instead by a small panel of (mostly expatriate but capable) missiologists with little or no responsibility for denominational or national programs of mission.
Wider contexts
Shifting PC(USA) demographics
While maintaining that financial exigencies were not the only factor driving structural change, spokespersons for the Interim Unified Agency have acknowledged that current fiscal realities shaped the decision to eliminate mission coworkers. Overall membership losses since 1995 (from 2.5 million to 1 million members) are only part of the story. It is important to recognize, too, that particular kinds of congregations choose to leave the denomination for alternative ecclesial associations, such as the Evangelical Presbyterian Church or the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
In a 2014 presentation to the Religious Research Association, then-PMA employee Joelle Kopacz, along with independent scholars Jack Marcum and Ida Smith, observed that disagreements over human sexuality often coincided with positions on global evangelism and mission. Put differently, many “mission-minded” congregations that began leaving the PC(USA) around 2006 were also socially conservative.
As a result, many fewer voices within the PC(USA) were left to advocate for the kinds of work Presbyterians have long supported through the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Many departing congregations did not stop giving to mission, but redirected their support to other programs. This is why we find ourselves in a wider context in which some other Presbyterian global mission programs are thriving while that of the PC(USA) shrinks to insignificance.
Global vs. domestic mission
Historically, global mission initiatives have always had to compete with domestic mission concerns within Protestantism. In every generation, skeptics of international mission involvement have been quick to argue against the allocation of resources to support mission and evangelism “out there,” when so many social problems wait to be addressed nearer to home. Subsuming the Presbyterian Mission Agency under the Interim Unified Agency umbrella all but guarantees that support previously earmarked for world mission will be shifted to North American projects.
Steps in this direction have already been taken, as noted in the CounterStories report with regard to efforts either made or contemplated to recharacterize as many restricted/designated mission funds as quickly as possible, so that they could be used for virtually any PC(USA) program objective, without regard to donor intentions. The elimination of the Presbyterian Mission Agency may serve as a useful premise for some of this legal work, since it could be argued that the PC(USA) no longer directly engages in many of the activities previously funded in specific ways by donors.
In the scenario laid out in the CounterStories report, endowment income now spent on missionary compensation and narrowly-conceived ministry functions (such as evangelism) would be directed instead to the “repair” of missionary harms inflicted on North American Indigenous communities, African Americans, Latino/a communities, and various Asian American Pacific communities (see “Reflecting, Reimagining, and Making Space for Rebuilding”).
Our context in American history
Turning inward to focus on domestic issues bears an unfortunate and, I believe, completely inadvertent resemblance to that part of American political discourse now arguing against all foreign entanglements. It is regrettable, too, that the abrupt recall of all mission co-workers has taken place alongside radical efforts to downsize the federal workforce with little or no advance warning, to withdraw from international peacebuilding activities, and to shutter the Agency for International Development. What is happening in American society around the church forms yet another context through which to interpret the significance of recent PC(USA) decision-making regarding mission strategy. Not only does our mission theology stand in urgent need of critical analysis, but so do our management methods.
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