Huge Increase of Mission Volunteers Celebrated and Evaluated

By Mary Beth Coudal

New York, NY, April 19, 2006—In the year 2005, more than 135,000 United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIMs) served in 70 countries and in 48 U.S. states, making it the busiest year ever for short-term mission volunteers.

Kathleen Enzminger, of Jamestown, ND, a director of the General Board of Global Ministries reported the explosive growth of mission volunteers at a semi-annual board meeting held in Stamford, Connecticut, in early April.

She said that the figure for individuals serving on teams was more than double that of 2004, when 68,204 volunteers served in 51 countries and 37 US states. Mrs. Enzminger chairs the committee of directors who oversee the mission volunteer office at Global Ministries.

The topic of mission volunteers figured prominently at the semi-annual meeting. In several forums, bishops, theologians, guests, staff, and volunteers celebrated and discussed the meaning for the church of the tremendous growth of volunteer, usually very short-term, mission trips.

The conversations focused on the excitement and transformative power of volunteer experience and also raised concern about the need for more traditional, professional mission service.

Issues were also raised about the need for deep theological reflection on the impact of such service on those who receive the volunteers as well as on those who travel.

Bishop Oystein Olsen, a director from Oslo, Norway, said, “I see people’s lives changed as a result of short-term mission trips.” Director Karl Baumgardner of Amarillo, Texas, cited the positive impact on his congregation after the church’s youths repaired housing in Lake Charles, Louisiana, during spring holidays.

The Rev. Dr. G. Solomon Gueh, a director from Liberia, acknowledged the strong impact volunteer service has on mission teams coming to his country. “For the first time, it’s an eye-opener. But in Liberia we have had to rebuild from a 14 year civil war. When the volunteers leave, we don’t have any more funds to complete the work.”

Dr. Dana Robert reported that 25 percent of her students at Boston University School of Theology have had a short-term mission experience. She also noted that most of them are middle-class Americans. She asked: “What does this mean when a kid can pay $3,000 for a trip but as a Church we cannot pay to support a local mission doctor in a clinic?”

Dr. M. Thomas Thangaraj, also on the panel on mission theology with Dr. Robert, pointed to an increased benefit from longer-term service. “When people lived, worked, and sang for a sustained amount of time in the community, not simply going, helping, and coming back, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us,” he said.

Volunteer service also figured prominently in a report of a seminary task force looking at how mission theology and history is taught in United Methodist theological schools.

“Local churches are enabled through frequent travel and internet communication to set up short-term mission trips for their own congregants,” said Dr. Maxie Dunnam, chair of the task force in giving the report. “Tremendous energy and activism for mission are bubbling up from the grassroots. Short-term mission trips have replaced camping and conferencing as the spiritual formation experiences of the middle class."

“The proliferation of congregation-based, short-term mission trips is a recent pattern common throughout American Protestantism … [T]here is an inherent danger of repeating mistakes of the past, and of losing commitment to the connectionalism and long-term relationships that are necessary to address larger issues of poverty, justice, and discipleship.”

Director Mary Gates of Minneapolis warned in a plenary discussion against service “just to feel good about ourselves.” Such an attitude, she said, can institutionalize a kind of “learned helplessness” among beneficiaries.

Director Nancy Eubanks of Brownsville, Tennessee, said that she felt that the value of volunteer service lies in the relationships established, often across cultural and national lines.