World Church: Regions Urged To Support Missionaries With Donations
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Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have voted to invite the church's organizations--local church areas and institutions--to serve as "donor organizations," channeling money and personnel to missionary projects in the "10/40 window" of the world where Christianity is hardly known and where Christian work is difficult. |
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Michael Ryan, assistant to the church president for strategic planning.
Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have voted to invite the church's organizations--local church areas and institutions--to serve as "donor organizations," channeling money and personnel to missionary projects in the "10/40 window" of the world where Christianity is hardly known and where Christian work is difficult.
The region defined as the "10/40 Window" extends from West Africa to East Asia, from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the equator and encompasses the majority of the world's Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Communists.
The guidelines were passed April 17 at the church's two-day annual Spring Meeting. The Spring Meeting is one of two annual gatherings of the 13-million-member church's world leadership; the other, Annual Council, takes place in the autumn.
Under the guidelines, the church's world areas, and their organizations, are requested to send funding to appoint church workers to countries in the "10/40" nations and fund each one for a six-year period. While workers are called from other areas to enter missionary fields today, the new program links such placements to a funding source, enabling areas with greater concentrations of resources to help those with less funds and personnel.
The vote harkens back to earlier days of Adventism when local areas, of their own accord, voted to send up to 50 percent of tithe (donation) income and, in one case, half of their local workers, to the mission field. Early Adventist leader A.G. Daniells wrote glowing reports in the early 1900s about this willing sacrifice, which Ellen White, a founder of the church, commended in her writings.
"This is a watershed event," says Michael Ryan, special assistant to the world church president for strategic planning. "We have struggled to have a budget to send to these areas where we have had no presence, and the organizational structure we have set up has developed a culture where everybody follows the structure."
Although the program has just been announced, interest is already building. Ryan says the North American Division hopes to schedule a presentation about the system for its year-end meeting of local executives. The whole proposal garnered strong support at the Spring Meeting and was welcomed by the church's leadership.
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