United Methodist Church--Missions

Joseph B DeWitte

Post-Christendom, the church is left with a choice: to remain as though it dominates culture and continue to lose effectiveness, or to find the spirit that once birthed a church in the midst of not mere apathy, but persecution. The author explored the potential for a church firmly embedded in the mindset of Christendom to find that missional spirit once again through a covenant community seeking connection with God through spiritual disciplines to rediscover that the church is the continuation of God's mission of salvation to the world.

Stephanie M Hand

These project objectives are to design, implement, and coach a new Multi Cultural Multi Ethnic Cohort to lead five United Methodist churches through a yearlong process of discernment, new learning, strategic visioning, and community engagement. The cohort will address religious culture shifts from majority Anglo to a more ethnically diverse one in the Metro District, Western North Carolina Conference, The United Methodist Church. Additionally, the cohort is charged with developing Ministry Action Plans and identifying Adaptive Challenges inside and outside the churches, to engage with and be transformative, credible witnesses to and with Metro's diverse homogenous faith communities.

Heather H Lear

The author proposed that a holistic Wesleyan approach to evangelism, integrating apologetics, transformation, and missional engagement with one's community would enable churches to fulfill their mission of "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." Through surveys and interviews, this project assessed congregational practices in six local churches. The consistent missing practices to this holistic approach that emerged were: the inability to articulate one's faith, the lack of intentional space for people to practice faith-sharing, the disconnect between doing good things and engaging in God's mission, and congregations not connecting with their surrounding community.

Nkemba Ndjungu

The question pursued in this paper is: what steps do we need to take in order to transform the United Methodist Church in Cameroon from her mission status to an established church? To answer this question, the author used three research methods: interviews and questionnaires; collection of demographic data; and meetings with sponsoring churches in the USA and members of the Annual Meeting of the United Methodist Church in Cameroon. The outcome of these researches has produced a roadmap to the autonomy of the church through the training and empowerment of local leaders, and an implementation of income generating projects.

William A Haddock

The General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church has accepted and promulgated a theology of missions from a classical liberal and liberationist/radical point of view. Calls from the evangelicals of the UMC to return to the missio Dei expressed in scripture, traditions of the church, and Wesleyan tradition, have been met with resistance and often forced leaders to form ministries independent of the GBGM. The loss of missionaries devoted to evangelistic practices is due to this basic theological divide. This project is a series of surveys asking basic theological questions of the staff of the GDGM, its missionaries, and some local church pastors. It concludes that the leadership of the missions arm of the UMC is still theologically liberal or liberationist/radical while the local UM churches are more traditional. I conclude that the loss of missionaries dedicated to church planting and offering Christ to unreached people groups is due to this division. I call for a new denominational mission theology based upon the "emerging ecumenical paradigm" centered on the local church. Based specifically on Acts 1:8 I offer a supplement outlining what such a theology would mean for a local church.

David A Cook

The author set out to prove that The Jeremiah Project Mission/Action Day could be effective in linking church and community. The author used Jeremiah 29:7 as an interpretive lens through which to view biblical and Wesleyan sources. He also studied local demographics and three existing one-day events. The author concluded that there is a link between these sources and a contemporary understanding of the relationship between church and community. He also concluded that one-day outreach events can provide a necessary first step in the formation of relationships between church volunteers and community residents.

Kurt T Appel

This project considers what role the theological paradigm of missio Dei played in the planting and early stages of six New Church developments in the Mississippi Annual Conference (MAC) of the United Methodist Church. A research survey was conducted with six organizing pastors of congregations started by the MAC within the last fifteen years. The survey focused upon congregational perceptions and in particular what was important and driving the congregations at their inception. A qualitative analysis was also performed on the Guidelines for New Church Development and Revitalization utilized by the MAC at the time these congregations were started.

Eric R Hallett

Using a case study approach employing a researcher-developed, semi-structured interview and participant observer field notes, this qualitative study explored how two groups of pastors from the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church described the experience of hosting Celebrate Jesus mission teams. Significant findings include the following: 1. Hosting a Celebrate Jesus mission caused pastors to change their perception about their roles in their local churches; 2. Pastors who intentionally set up new systems in their churches to continue mission work experienced the most satisfaction; and, 3. Servant evangelism served as a culturally congruent model of outreach allowing pastors to deploy their lay people in evangelistic outreach.

Bernice E McDavis

This project proposes that worship, education, and mission are the best possible avenues for local congregations to reach people where they are, relate them to God, nurture them as Christian disciples, and equip them to be the church scattered. Through these basic structures congregations cultivate a growth attitude, extend hospitality to all people, and help honored guests to find their places in the Kingdom of God.

Donald J Clark

This project proposes a nontraditional, multicultural approach to new church development for the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church using cell group or basic Christian community models. Using this model the project organizes groups of eight to twelve persons for home-based ministry, clustering these home groups in a network to form a United Methodist faith community in Orlando, Florida. That prototype network of small groups produces the foundation for a new congregation.