Global mission is a decades-long tradition for many churches in the Diocese of Massachusetts, and grants from funds raised through the diocesan Together Now campaign have helped to strengthen and promote this work in recent years. This year, for the first time in recent memory, there will be an opportunity for churches and individuals engaged in global mission to gather together to share what they have learned, and to imagine what global mission can look like in the future.
The Global Mission Summit, being held on Saturday, April 9, at St. Peter’s Church in Weston, is open to anyone interested in global mission, whether they have a longstanding mission relationship, or are just considering starting one.
“I hope that this day is going to be God’s day,” said Laura Walta, Project Director for Global Mission. “This is not my summit. I felt called to bring these people together and expose them to each other, but my job has been to create a space for that kind of community.”
The day’s programming will be led largely by members of the diocese who have done global mission work, and will share what they have learned, what they might have done differently and what they hope for the future. “It’s from each other that you’re going to learn the most,” Walta said. “Every participant is a potential partner or resource.”
In the morning sessions, presenters from parishes who do global mission work will share, in a case study format, what they’ve learned about one of six topics: changing mission, engaging young people, involving congregations, maintaining relationships, friends and money, and learning through challenges. Then, participants will go into breakout sessions for discussion.
While lunch is served, the Rev. Dr. Titus Presler will give a keynote address. Presler is the author of Going Global with God: Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference and Horizons of Mission. He was president of the Seminary of the Southwest and academic dean at General Seminary and taught mission studies at both institutions.
The afternoon will be dedicated to the future, with churches sharing how they pushed themselves to a new stage of global mission, and visioning exercises to help churches imagine what their global mission work can do next. Bishop Alan M. Gates will offer a commissioning in the afternoon.
According to Walta, 36 churches in the Diocese of Massachusetts have received Together Now grants for global mission in the last four years, and 19 others have been partners with one of the grantee churches. Walta sees exciting things happening in global mission as she travels around the diocese, preaching and accompanying churches as they embark on global mission projects.
“People are learning a lot about themselves and how to make their mission effective, the sustainability of their projects, leaving themselves open to questions, which you didn’t hear so much in the beginning,” she said. “A lot of times people don’t realize how much they’ve learned until they look back and reflect, and think about how you used to think about this and how you’re doing it now. That's exciting because it means we're growing, and moving forward, getting in better touch with God.”
Sharing lessons learned from a long-term mission
Kim Forbes of the Church of Our Saviour in Somerset, will be presenting on her church’s mission relationship in Kenya. The parish has had a mission relationship with people in Amagoro, Kenya, for more than four years. The relationship was originally facilitated by the Elewana Education Project, and grew out of a pen-pal program that Forbes created between students at Somerset Middle School and Amagoro Primary School.
“Because Kate [Cress, Rector of the Church of Our Saviour] has such strong passion for mission work, we together decided to go and meet the pen pals in Amagoro. It was kind of unique because we had a lot of teachers who were going, so it was a hybrid of parishioners from Church of Our Saviour and faculty from Somerset schools.”
The Church of Our Saviour is unique among global mission relationships in this diocese because the group brings children with them on its trips. Forbes brought her own two children on the first trip, and said that the adult travelers discovered the children were in many ways the most important members of the group.
“Ours was the first mission trip [to Elewana Mission House] that brought kids who were actually the same ages as the kids in the primary school,” she said. “The children reacted like children react: they bonded instantaneously, with no need for ceremony or celebrations.”
This “child-centric” mission has become the hallmark of the mission relationship in Kenya, Forbes said, but it was not always the plan.
“We thought the adults would form the agenda and make the plans, and the kids would do what we told them to do, but on the trips I went on, it was pretty much the opposite, where the kids led and the adults followed and learned from them,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you live, you put two children together and they bond the same, that’s where the magic is. The adults just need to step aside and follow where they are taking us.”
This group comprised of Our Saviour parishioners and teachers from the Somerset schools has traveled to Kenya three times. They are planning a fourth visit, but have been slowed by leadership transitions at both sponsor organizations. Though challenging, losing these local sponsors has had an unexpected benefit, Forbes said.
“It ended up helping us form stronger bonds now that we weren’t going through the organization. My son and his pen pal, who have known each other since third grade, now communicate through Facebook. I connect with [his pen pal’s] mom on Facebook, and we’re always e-mailing and messaging each other, saying, how’s it going, happy birthday, congratulations. So the relationships between the people are a lot stronger, a lot more real, now that we aren’t filtered through the sponsor.”
Forbes will be presenting on the subject of “learning from your mistakes” at the Global Mission Summit. She said that she would give two pieces of advice to a church embarking on a new global mission relationship: “First of all, pray. Pray a lot,” she said. Second, “Be willing to adapt to things you cannot control. See where the mission leads you, and then adapt to what’s happening on the ground.”
Responding with compassion to a global crisis
Loading goods into a truck to deliver to NuDay Syria.
A new global mission project that Walta has helped to guide is at St. John’s Church in Beverly Farms, where parishioners are responding to the Syrian refugee crisis with emergency aid and making plans for long-term support. St. John’s has multiple local mission projects, but has not been involved in global mission in many years, according to Gail Campbell, a vestry member of St. John’s and a founding member of the church’s Syrian Refugees Mission Group. At St. John’s, the first conversations about a global mission relationship began soon after the Paris bombings, when many parishioners expressed both anxiety and a deep desire to help those displaced by war.
Looking for ways to help, Campbell and Pam Morss, now an outgoing senior warden of St. John’s, attended the “Refugees 101” workshop in December led by Bishop Gayle E. Harris, Walta and the Rev. Holly Hartman. This workshop was intended to help churches start thinking about ways to help refugees, whether overseas or when they arrive in local communities.
“We came back to the church all charged up, and said we would like to do something about this from a humanitarian perspective,” Campbell said. Through their conversations with their community, Walta and local sponsor NuDay Syria, they determined three action items: Donating to Episcopal Relief & Development, calling senators and the governor’s office to urge them to welcome refugees and collecting clothing, food and medical supplies to send to a refugee camp in Syria.
A group formed at the church, and began to coordinate the collection of women’s and children’s clothing, medical supplies, blankets, linens, toys and infant formula. “It took off like a wild fire in our church,” Campbell said. Several Episcopal churches and a Congregational church on the North Shore have also rallied to collect supplies, and St. John’s gathered $58,500 worth of goods to deliver to NuDay Syria for shipment, filling more than one cargo container.
The Syrian Refugees Mission Group at St. John’s also wanted to do something beyond immediate humanitarian needs, and eventually determined that it would like to start something to promote education. The church began a book bag drive, collecting backpacks and school supplies to send to children in Syria. This, too, has been a rapid success, with many area schools and businesses getting involved. Campbell is not formally presenting at the summit, but she plans to bring examples of the assembled book bags. The group’s long-term goal is to work with NuDay Syria to eventually open a school for refugee boys and girls.
“This was one of those cases where the Holy Spirit spoke to them, and they took a step, and then another one,” Walta said. “People don’t start out by saying, ‘I want to build a school’; they start with just a feeling that they need to do something.”
Walta said that she is also heartened to see people responding to violence and uncertainty in the world with action and love, rather than fear. “There was a fear factor holding things up last year, there was a lot of violence in the world,” she said. “People were hesitant to travel. It’s hard to be engaged in relationship and have an open heart when you’re afraid. But now we’re seeing people overcoming that fear, and that’s exciting to see.”
The Global Mission Summit will have programs and discussions that suit churches and individuals with global mission relationships that are longstanding, just getting started or anywhere in between. Most of all, Walta said, it’s an opportunity for churches to learn from one another.
“This is a celebration of all that we've learned on God’s mission journey, and an opportunity to listen, share, imagine and take our own unique next steps on that journey,” she said. “It’s a time to recognize that we haven't reached the kingdom, but we're on the right path. And as long as we make room for the Holy Spirit, we will get there.”
--Ellen Stuart Kittle
The Global Mission Summit is an all-day event, running from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at St. Peter’s Church in Weston. All are welcome to attend. To learn more about the Global Mission Summit and register, click here.