MCC Board approves budget of $58 million
NORTH NEWTON, KAN.
The Mennonite Central Committee Board has approved a budget of $58 million Cdn. for the current fiscal year, which started Dec. 1, 1997. This budget calls for US contributions of $19.1 million Cdn. (a 3.3% increase over the amount received in 1997) and Canadian contributions of $6.0 million.
New initiatives included in this budget are $147,000 for medicine for Iraqi children suffering from leukemia, $270,000 for peacemaking work in Central America and $147,000 for the first year of an anticipated five-year poverty alleviation project in China.
In the past fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 1997, resources available to MCC totalled $52.6 million, down 1% from 1996. US contributions reached a record high of $19,032,000 Cdn.; this increase was due primarily to strong giving for the Central States building program (which was not included in the regular budget) and estates given to MCC. Contributions from Canada totalled $6.9 million, also a new high, and included $462,000 for North Korea.
"We are extremely grateful for these contributions," reported Paul Quiring, MCC treasurer. "(They) are one way our constituency expresses its confidence in MCC."
Love, not war
The Board, which met Feb. 20-21 at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., also passed a statement calling on the United States to "resist the violence of a bombing campaign in Iraq". The statement has been sent to all Mennonite and Brethren in Christ congregations in Canada and the United States, and to other Christian organizations. It was included in an action package encouraging individuals to write letters to be sent to people in Iraq.
Ed Epp, MCC program director for the Middle East, noted that "500,000 innocent children were killed as a result of UN sanctions" and called letter writing one of the most influential tools for peace. "A personal letter . . . sends the message to people there that we care about them as human beings. It can send a message to a Muslim that I, as a Christian, care about you. There is no better witness against the violent alternatives."
Young adult involvement
Concerns about a declining number of long-term volunteers, particularly young adults, also surfaced at the meeting. "If MCC wants to continue carrying out its mandate in future years, it must do more active solicitation of young people," said Steven Sider, 30, of Erie, Ont., the youngest MCC board member. He said that while 40-44% of MCC workers are in the 25-39 age group, the board has only two members within that age bracket. The average age of all MCC workers is 40; the average age of MCC workers overseas is 37.
Dwight McFadden, MCC director of personnel, presented statistics showing a decline in the numbers of people of all ages serving within MCC. In 1997, MCC had 867 workers, compared to 893 in 1996 and an average of 966 from 1989 to 1993. McFadden cited a trend of young people entering the large number of short-term programs offered both by MCC and mission boards rather than going for the three-year commitments requiring greater levels of credentialling and expertise. "We're facing greater challenges in fitting young people into the slots that our partners on the field are offering," McFadden said. Overseas volunteer opportunities for young people have declined in the last 20
years.
"Soul-expanding" mission
When, at the end of the meeting, historian Robert Kreider was asked by board members to reflect on the meeting, he used the words "diversity, complexity and soul-expanding" to describe the organization's global mission and programs. Board members, who had heard myriads of reports from MCC directors and field workers, could be seen nodding their heads in agreement. Highlights of those reports included:
Ann Martin, MCC director for East Asia, said that the vast amount of MCC emergency relief to North Korea has had a low profile because MCC has given it through other agencies. Since April 1996, MCC has given cash and material resource assistance valued at $2.8 million US. Cash contributions designated in 1997 for work in North Korea were about $675,000 US by mid-January; about $460,000 US of this has been spent or committed.
Martin said that MCC had hoped to shift the balance from emergency relief to rehabilitative/developmental by 1997, but emergency assistance is still needed. For 1998, the World Food Programme has issued its largest-ever appeal for North Korea, saying that a third of the country's 23 million people will need to be fed with aid from the international community.
Earlier this year, MCC Canada was invited by the Canadian International Development Agency to carry out a large-scale poverty alleviation project in western China. The project will assist individuals and households whose foodstocks and incomes are below the poverty line but who have the potential to pull themselves out of poverty if given the resources.
The "Sowing New Life" program is an educational and fundraising effort to support peace-building in Central America.
Persecution fans church growth
Persecution fans the fire of church growth, said several church leaders who
attended the meeting.
"Our Muslim leader in Indonesia has been telling his people to stop burning our churches and to start reading history," said Andreas Christanday of Indonesia. "He tells the people that the more they torture Christians, and the more [Christians] suffer, the more they will grow." Though 396 church buildings have been destroyed since 1966, including more than 100 in the last two years, almost all have been rebuilt.
Rebuilding is tough in a country where income is low and government red tape is thick, but churches are fierce in their desire to survive, said Julius Rampen, pastor of a small Mennonite congregation in Indonesia. "Our church is sitting in the path of a new highway that the government wants to build, and so we were told we had to tear it down. But since they wouldn't give us permission to build it on another parcel of land, we tore down one side of it, and are in the process of building [stories] up!" It is difficult to get permission from the government to build new churches. In this particular case, Muslims heard that the Mennonites were wanting to build on another piece of land and immediately went to that site to build a mosque. Since a mosque and a Christian church cannot be built next to each other, Rampen's church had to back off.
Ethiopian church leader Bedru Hussein echoed Christanday's view. The seeds of the Meserete Kristos Church, an Ethiopian group affiliated with Mennonite World Conference, were first planted by MCC in 1946. When the communists came to power and they closed down 14 churches and imprisoned four church leaders, "we opened hundreds more," Huessin said. "We had to go underground. We organized into small cell groups of not more than 7-10 [people], since if we had more, then the government would suspect something." When cells grew to more than 10 people, they split into new cells, and eventually 1,500 cells were thriving. In 1991, an overthrow of the communists brought religious freedom. The church has grown to 114,000 people, including 57,000 baptized members, in 192 churches and 310 church plants.
Based on reports by Sherri Enns of MCC Communications and Laurie L. Oswald for Meetinghouse
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