Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
This board embodies three important streams of United Methodist social concerns. One stream is represented by what was once known as the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals. That board, along with organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Anti-Saloon League, campaigned successfully for an amendment to the United States Constitution outlawing the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors.”
The church believed then, as it does now, that our bodies are holy temples. As Paul said in his second letter to the church in Corinth, “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1)
The old Board of Temperance also advocated for Sabbath Day observance, expressed concern for the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, worked against immigration, prize fighting, gambling, tobacco, narcotics and salacious literature, among other things.
Our denomination’s Social Creed, first written in 1908, grew out of concern over the miserable lives many people experienced in tenements and company towns while working in factories and mills. Insistence on a better life for working people is a second stream of social concerns represented in this board. The Social Creed called for an end to child labor, the principle of arbitration in industrial disputes, a livable wage, an end to sweatshops, and protection from dangerous working conditions.
We believed then, as we do now, in the example of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.
The third stream of social concerns we embody today is world peace. Following World War I, in which more than 15,000,000 people died — the greatest death toll in human history up to that point — many Christians were horrified by the disaster and the failure to avoid it. The church established a world peace board in 1924 and over these many years we have proclaimed that war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. Today, we work for an end to the unjust war in Iraq.
Over time, our consciousness has been raised on many other important matters including health care, civil and human rights, and economic and environmental justice. In fact, over the past half century, the world has been transformed by great moral and spiritual movements for equal rights for women, for environmental and economic justice, for an end to the nuclear arms race, apartheid and the Vietnam War, for civil and human rights for all people.
Often, the church has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table, but today we are one of the pillars of these movements — as we should be.
Our ministry is biblically based:
Jesus proclaimed he was anointed to bring good news to the poor and in that spirit we advocate for the Millennium Development Goals, eight measures embraced by 189 nations to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and create a global partnership for development.
Jesus said he was called to bring release to the captives. In that spirit, we seek a legal system based on restorative justice and not retributive justice.
Jesus announced he came to heal the sick and bring recovery of sight to the blind. In that spirit, United Methodists not only operate hospitals and health care clinics, we also advocate for health care for all people.
Jesus said he was anointed to free the oppressed. In that spirit, we stand up for the last, the least and the lost.
Some time ago, a United Methodist youth choir from St. Louis visited the United Methodist Building. The Rev. Clayton Childers, our director of annual conference relations, met with the group and asked how they would define justice. One young person said, “Justice is working to make the world look like the way Jesus would want it to look if he were here.”
I remember a meeting early in the previous quadrennium in which the general church budget-building process began. I pledged to my colleague general secretaries that I would share with them the financial realities the General Board of Church & Society faces. Traditionally, the budget process has been competitive with each agency trying its best to increase its share of the world service pie.
This time around, we all agreed not only would we be transparent with one another, but that we must carefully consider what we need to focus on together in the coming years. Through an intensive process involving the Council of Bishops and the Connectional Table, four areas of focus emerged. They are leadership development, new church starts, ministry with the poor and a global health initiative.
GBCS is committed to all four. We offer expertise in the areas of global health, ministry with the poor and leadership development. And, we stand ready to assist the agencies and annual conferences involved in new church starts to ensure United Methodist faith communities are scripturally grounded and committed to the Social Principles.
GBCS’s commitment to the global health focus is evident: We are working with the Global Health Initiative on the eradication of malaria. We will be involved in the launch of an ambitious plan to address the need for increased availability of reproductive health services for men and women around the globe. The U.S. government will be urged to increase its level of funding for family planning. The Global AIDS Committee will continue to receive support from GBCS to help stem the spread of the HIV virus. A partnership with the U.N. Foundation will mobilize support for the “Campaign to End Fistula,” a condition faced by millions of women in poor nations who give birth before their bodies are fully developed.
These efforts will help eradicate the spread of AIDS, allow families to space the birth of their children, will save women’s and children’s lives and will help reduce the spread of disease.
We are committed to the wellbeing of women and children as we work to eradicate oppression and marginalization. Our Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project has identified domestic violence, HIV & AIDS, reproductive health and child marriage as high priority issues.
Next April, GBCS will co-sponsor with the Virginia Conference, a day-long seminar on family violence. The seminar will have an emphasis on how the clergy can be instrumental in tackling this pandemic in which one of three women faces abuse. We know, too, that violence equally impacts children.
These numbers should prevent us from being deluded into believing domestic violence doesn’t exist in our local churches. Raising this issue during this board meeting is particularly timely because October is Domestic Violence Awareness month.
Alcohol, tobacco and drug addictions run rampant. These addictions have taken the lives of countless people. Yet, many of our congregations barely acknowledge this reality.
We are in the midst of the development of a global strategy on alcohol with our alcohol prevention coalitions. The Rev. Liberato Bautista, assistant general secretary for our United Nations Ministry, has been instrumental in assisting with the work in Geneva as we prepare for public hearings related to the World Health Organization resolution on alcohol. We believe this will lead to a global treaty on alcohol similar to the global tobacco treaty that places strict limits on the tobacco industry, especially as it relates to advertising and marketing targeted to children and youth.
This year, the STOP Act (The Sober Truth in Preventing Underage Drinking Act) passed the U.S. Congress. It put into place the beginning steps for curbing and combating underage drinking. We are now at work on the second stage of crafting language for legislation along with allies in Congress to be introduced in the 111th Congress to enact additional recommendations in this report next year.
We have laid the foundations for biblical and theological dialogue for providing health care around the globe. In particular, biblical and theological grounding assists us in understanding health and healing from brokenness apart from political rhetoric. It also strengthens our understanding of God’s intention for the world. Such grounding will help church members enter through the lens of their faith experience a dialogue around various policy prescriptions to provide health care.
I believe at its best this board serves to help the church understand the interconnectedness of God’s Creation.
There’s a parable I like:
A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package: What food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a mousetrap!
Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house. There is a mousetrap in the house.”
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said: “Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house.” “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my prayers.”
The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, “Like wow, Mr. Mouse, a mousetrap, am I in grave danger, duh?”
So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught.
In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.
His wife’s sickness continued. Friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer’s wife did not get well: in fact, she died. So many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.
So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk.
Another focus area of our agency is leadership development:
One of the premier leadership development models is the United Methodist Seminars on National and International Affairs program. For more than 50 years, youths, college students and adults have been participating in our United Methodist Seminars on National and International Affairs program here in Washington and at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City. This is near and dear to my heart because the first ministry I participated in at GBCS was the seminar program.
Earlier this year, about 400 United Methodist college and seminary students and campus ministers came here to Washington for the Student Forum. Our seminar staff designed immersion experiences for them all across the city.
One of the journeys was to the National Museum of the American Indian to discuss the matter of team mascot names. Another was to the Anacostia River to discuss pollution. A third included a meeting with a tenants’ organization working for equal housing for all people.
The seminars we prepare for our people include Bible study and worship, meetings with decision makers, and opportunities for direct service. We hope every seminar will lead to action. We encourage critical thinking skills to explore ways to resolve major social concerns.
Two weeks ago, three of our staff and one of our board members, Dr. Leonard Kabwita, were in Kenya in East Africa facilitating a Social Principles seminar. Following a worship service in a local church, 15 women met with GBCS staff in a small UMC located in one of the poorest slums in Nairobi. They talked about what it meant to be a woman in the Kenyan society.
The issue of violence came up. One of the women said: “If I was being beaten by my husband, I could call the police. They may or may not show up, and if they did, it might take as long as five hours. And once they arrived, the policeman would demand to have sex with me, and then do nothing about my own personal abuse by my husband. It’s a no-win situation for women.”
This story is not unusual in countries where women’s rights are almost non-existent and corruption runs rampant. We, as a board must stand in solidarity with these women and say “no more!” This is not acceptable.
In 2008 we led Social Principles training workshops in Mozambique for United Methodist Women and young adults, in Cote d’Ivoire for young adults and clergy, for the European Conference of Lay Workers in Germany.
The training event in Kenya included meetings with the U.S. embassy and with nongovernmental organizations to discuss the role of the church in post-conflict situations.
We are committed to being actively present in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. In December we will be in Uganda, and then in February in the Southern Congo Conference, and in March in Sierra Leone.
We train 12 interns each summer for eight weeks in full time placements as Ethnic Young Adult Interns. In 2008 we had interns from the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia and the Philippines.
We train seminary students. In 2008 we trained one from Duke Divinity School, six from Wesley Theological Seminary, and students from American University and University of the Pacific. These students work side by side with GBCS staff tracking issues, writing devotional materials to interpret the issues, leading our Wednesday noon worship service, doing research on what is going on in local churches and conferences, and creating resources.
We facilitated the drafting and approval of a new “Companion Litany to the Social Creed” that the General Conference has recommended be read alongside the Social Creed in our churches. This was a three-year collaborative effort with input from every Episcopal Area in Africa, Philippines and Europe.
Our staff travel very regularly across the annual conferences to teach and preach. For example, I preached and taught in Philadelphia earlier this month, in Nebraska last week, and will be in Charlottesville, Virginia, next month. We work closely with annual conference Church & Society leaders, and coordinators of peace with justice, drug and alcohol concerns, and environmental justice.
Next month we will welcome to the United Methodist Building a group of young evangelical clergy we have invited to join us for worship and conversation. Throughout recent years, we have invited district superintendents, conference lay leaders, directors of connectional ministries, and directors of communication to come here to Washington to spend time becoming more familiar with the ministry of the board.
GBCS will be working in partnership with other agencies to eradicate poverty. The Rev. Ed Paup, general secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries, said last week, “We have the responsibility to work toward the kind of world where poverty can be eliminated.” We wholeheartedly agree and will work alongside GBGM to attain that goal.
We are in the midst of a global financial crisis the depths and complexities of which are increasingly uncertain. What we do know with certainty, however, is that those living on the economic margins of our world will be hurt first and the hardest. The churchwide emphasis on ministry with the poor could not come at a more critical time.
Ban Ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations, recently said that we face a “development emergency,” referring to three crises: a food crisis, an energy crisis and a financial crisis.
Believing that work should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it, we succeeded in the last quadrennium to raise the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Our job now is to build on that success and live fully into our vision of a living wage in every industry — a call our church has made for 100 years.
Just this year, after another decade-long struggle, we succeeded in passing the National Housing Trust Fund, a landmark piece of legislation that will provide resources to expand affordable housing in communities across the United States. Our task now is to protect these funds as budget deficits swell to record levels. If the past is precedent, the last indeed shall be first: first on the chopping block for devastating cuts.
We have worked and will continue to work to help the U.S. Congress understand that the federal budget is a moral document: It is a reflection of what and who we value as a society. Unfortunately, the present budget values war over peace, the rich over the poor, polluters over God’s good earth. These policies are incompatible with the teachings of Christ and we must proclaim a different vision.
Last month, the United Methodist bishops in Africa met at Africa University and issued a communiqué. I share these excerpts with you:
“The denomination’s focus on the eradication of poverty is expressed thus: ‘As an expression of our discipleship, United Methodists seek to alleviate conditions that undermine quality of life and limit the opportunity to flourish as we believe God intends for all. As with John Wesley, we seek to change conditions that are unjust, alienating and disempowering. We engage in ministry with the poor, and in this, we especially want to reach out to and protect children.’
“Over the past two years, we, the Bishops of the United Methodist Church in Africa, have taken the eradication of poverty as our highest priority, meeting annually to reflect on our progress, share ideas, encourage each other and develop action plans for implementation in our various Episcopal areas.
“Poverty robs people of hope and the gospel of Jesus Christ is a call to hope, salvation and abundant life. In Africa, we see poverty manifesting itself in environmental degradation, disease, hunger and malnutrition, inequitable access to education and even, the exposure of some of the most vulnerable among us — the girl child, for example — to sexual and economic exploitation.
“In our discussions at this meeting, we went more deeply into the issue of poverty, exploring such topics as climate change, youth migration and corruption and how they contribute to a rise in the number of communities living in dire poverty.
“Knowing as we do, the material richness of Africa and the ingenuity and energy of its people, we feel a righteous indignation at the current plight of our continent. It is our belief that Africa has all that it needs to build a future with peace, greater prosperity and hope.
“We call our brothers and sisters in United Methodist congregations worldwide and on the general agencies of the church to a renewed partnership of equals towards resourcing the denomination’s ministry to the poor in Africa in ways that ensure that it is relevant, sustainable and truly transformative.”
Our own Bishop Jose Quipungo is the leader of the Angola East Area. Africa, the Philippines and other parts of the Third World face enormous challenges each and every day. This board has worked hard for debt relief for the world’s poorest nations so they may concentrate on education and health. A fraction of the money spent on war and preparations for war can provide lunch for school children in the poorest nations as well as primary education for them and basic health care for them and their parents. What we lack is the will to care for our neighbors.
Just immigration reform is a major concern of GBCS. We have sponsored conferences on immigration in Arkansas, Illinois and Ohio in recent months. We helped create the Kentucky Faith Communities Immigration Coalition, which collected signatures for a petition calling for immigrants to be welcomed and supporting legislation upholding their dignity.
We were instrumental in the passage of the Second Chance Act and our own Bill Mefford was among the few faith-community representatives invited to the signing ceremony at the White House. Bill has also co-authored the Christian Companion book to the Not on Our Watch campaign against the genocide taking place in Darfur.
This board must continue to work hard to connect with annual conferences and local churches. Each week we send our electronic newsletter, Faith in Action, to some 23,000 people. When we began Faith in Action, it went to 17,000 people. We have also developed action networks, all of which continue to grow. These ten networks range in size from 3,500 people to more than 12,000.
We work hard to help our people join justice and mercy together in their own lives, congregations and communities. United Methodists are excellent at feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and clothing the naked. Freeing the oppressed, confronting the systems that perpetuate hunger, racism, violence, and poverty is always the hard part. In many ways, that’s where GBCS comes in.
Our primary task is to seek the implementation of the Social Principles through a wide-ranging ministry of witness, education and action. Tonight, I’ve cited but a few examples of the ministry of this board.
I am grateful to each and every one of you for your willingness to serve the church as a director or staff of this agency. One of our directors, Richard Hearne, wrote me earlier this month and said, “You will find I am not afraid to voice an opinion — to stir the pot so we can bring the love and grace of Jesus Christ to ALL.”
An end to war, racism and poverty is possible. If I did not believe that I would not be a follower of Jesus Christ.
In 1870 the Methodists in Indiana held their Annual Conference on the campus of a local college. The president of the college addressed the assembled Methodists and said, “I think we’re living in an exciting age. I think we’re going to see things happen in our lifetime that right now are just unbelievable!”
The presiding bishop was so intrigued that he stopped the president by asking, “What do you see? What kinds of things do you mean?”
And the president of the college said, “Well, all kinds of things, Bishop. I believe we’re coming into a time of great inventions. Why, I believe, for example, that one day we’ll be able to fly through the air like birds!”
“You what?” said the bishop. “You believe that one day we’ll be able to fly?”
“Yes sir, I do,” said the college president.
And then the bishop expounded, “Why, that’s heresy. Just heresy. The Bible says that flight is reserved for the angels and for the angels alone. We’ll have no such talk here.”
When that conference was over, that same bishop, whose name was Wright, went home to his wife and his two small sons, whose names happened to be Wilbur and Orville!
In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright sent a telegram from Kitty Hawk where they were carrying on their flight experiments. The telegraph was sent to their sister in Dayton, Ohio, and read, “First sustained flight today, 59 seconds. Home for Christmas.” Their sister took the message to the Dayton newspaper and the next morning a brief news item appeared under the headline: “Popular local bicycle merchants will be home for the holidays.”
It has been 100 years. The old bishop is dead, but not his kind. I do not know what happened to that Dayton newspaper. It probably died also, but there are still newspapers that miss the point.
Dr. King once said: “This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the actions of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a dedicated minority.”
In a broken and hurting world, may we be a dedicated circle of the creatively maladjusted!
Posted in Uncategorized by gbcs on July 9th, 2009 
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The story is simple. A leper comes begging. He is unnamed. Unclean. Untouchable. He is known, before and above all else, for being dirty. And diseased. He is begging. Desperate. Jesus, Jesus! “If you choose…” Do you dare? If you are willing. Might you be moved? And Jesus hears the need. And responds.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver addresses delegates and guests at the General Board of Church & Society luncheon held in conjunction with the 2008 United Methodist General Conference. Cleaver is also a United Methodist clergyman. (UMNS photos by Maile Bradfield)
