13 Oct 2010, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Elizabeth Lechleitner/ANN
An oversight realignment of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s mission programs approved yesterday aims to coordinate the church’s global outreach work and better utilize mission resources.
Under the current system, it can take months to process Inter-Divisional Employees — missionaries who move from one church region to another — a practice church leaders described as “fragmented.” Often, IDE processing takes place independent of other types of missionary processing and broad mission plans.
With more centralized oversight, church mission leaders said they can streamline the process of recruiting and dispatching missionaries, paying special attention to “priority” regions such as the world’s big cities and the 10-40 Window, a region stretching from Northern Africa to East Asia.
Church officials said the approved General Conference Mission Board will centralize three areas of outreach: mission personnel processing, mission strategy and funding, and mission communication. Previously, numerous mission entities handled those emphases, each soliciting donations and overseeing mission work, often unknowingly in competition with one another.
The board’s formation was approved October 12 by the world church’s Executive Committee, meeting this week at church headquarters for Annual Council.
The restructuring does not eliminate Adventist Mission, which currently oversees Global Mission pioneers and study centers. Instead, the office now falls under the umbrella of the world church’s Secretariat department, which already handles missionary processing. Adventist Mission will primarily coordinate promotional, fundraising and communication needs, church officials said in a proposal.
With the move, Gary Krause’s election as an associate secretary October 11 is formalized. Krause will continue to serve in his capacity as Adventist Mission director from the Secretariat department.
The Mission Board is meant to increase awareness of mission planning, not “take power away from the various entities that [currently oversee mission programs],” church officials said. They added that the board will work closely with the church’s world regions, lending both a grassroots and a world church perspective on needs.
While missionaries may move easily between the church’s 13 world regions, “our funding and plans often do not,” said world church Undersecretary Homer Trecartin, who presented the proposal October 12.
Adventist world church President Ted N.C. Wilson, who will chair the Mission Board, said the restructure marked a “renaissance in church mission” and would remind leaders and members of the church’s highest priority: to spread the gospel.
Some of the Mission Board’s goals:
*Increase the number of missionaries working to establish the Adventist Church in the most unentered parts of the world
*Significantly shorten the processing time for missionaries, including IDEs
*Coordinate the promotion of mission and evaluate members’ awareness of the church’s mission program
*Coordinate fundraising communication and effort to avoid competition and improve the effectiveness of such communication
The Mission Board is expected to meet three times per year.
