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Responsively Yours: Global Implications of Mission

Global Implications of Mission

We are truly involved in a transition to a global perspective. In this issue of Response you will see how our involvement is spread around the world and catch a glimpse of some of the places where you are present through your Mission Giving. In each of these places, United Methodist Women is presenting the face of Jesus to the world as we are in mission with women, children and youth.

In November, I was privileged to attend a dinner of the Foundation Board and Alumni Board of Ewha University. Ewha’s new president, Bae Yong Lee told us that the school, located in Seoul, Korea, is now the largest women’s university in the world. She also shared an inspiring vision for building the school’s stature, and enhancing the educational experience offered to the students.

Ewha University equips leaders to influence the world. This work grew from humble beginnings. Mary Scranton, a missionary sent by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, began the school in 1886 with one student. Today, Ewha graduates are leaders in many fields, including Women’s Division leaders, and clergy and ministers of music in our United Methodist churches. We are not only the givers and senders of missionaries — we are the beneficiaries of their work.

We are also experiencing our global nature in other ways. With booming economies in Asia, the rising price of oil and the fluctuations in the U.S. stock market, the buying power of the U.S. dollar is lower today than it was a year ago. You see this in your work, and at home and church, naturally, but we see a double impact when allocations in dollars are being used to purchase goods and services abroad.

Regional missionary Emma Cantor in the Philippines is preparing for a leadership development institute for women students that Women’s Division will host in December 2007 as a part of the Higher Education Initiative, an international ministries focus. The event, which will call together leaders in education from all parts of Asia is on track and within the original budget. However, the grant amount will be paid in U.S. dollars, which means that the real costs for the event have risen $6,000-$8,000 since the original contracts were negotiated and the invitations were sent. We are working to find supplementary funds to allow these commitments to be met.

In some parts of the world, our work is also affected by runaway inflation. We see this in various national economies in Africa, and even though we are employing all the investment tools and expense reduction strategies available, we still have mission personnel who receive payments with less buying power than needed.

United Methodist Women’s commitment to mission is strong, along with our commitment to fiscal responsibility. We will make short-term adjustments that balance income and expense and will employ creative strategies to do more with less. However, that cannot be a long-term strategy. Together, as units, district and conference organizations of United Methodist Women, we will need to increase our giving in order to increase the breadth and depth of our mission.

Join us in prayer for the mission personnel grappling with these additional challenges. Can you or someone you know help us to respond to this particular effect of globalization by “grossing up” your pledge or by making a special gift that will help programs like the ones described in these pages continue? Let’s all recommit ourselves to “become gospel” in a hungry world. And in the words of John Wesley, let’s reach out to all the people we can, in every way we can, for as long as ever we can.

HJO sign

Harriett Jane Olson
Women’s Division
Deputy General Secretary

Date posted : Jan. 22, 2008