HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Mennonite Mission Network) – Northern hemisphere churches were once the main initiators of mission efforts. But now the spreading of the gospel springs from every continent.
It makes for an exciting moment in the evolution of the global church, says Mennonite Mission Network Executive Director Stanley W. Green, the new chair of the Mission Commission of the Mennonite World Conference. Green has served congregations and institutions in the Caribbean and on the two continents that account for more than half of the world’s total Anabaptist population.
The commission, which combines Global Anabaptist Service Network and the Global Mission Fellowship, seeks to network the mission initiatives of member churches and agencies, and encourages cooperation.
Green, who is a native of South Africa, said his appointment is personally fulfilling because he has witnessed African churches evolve from being among the objects of early mission efforts to being among the initiators of world outreach. More than a century ago, Anabaptists were primarily white and European. Now, two-thirds of the estimated 1.7 million Anabaptists are people of color from the global South. Africa now has more baptized members than any other continent.
“We were recipients of mission, and sometimes we saw that as being shaped by the awkward paternalisms from the church, coupled with the ugly dependencies that were sometimes visible in the church in the South,” Green said. “I celebrate that we can now join each other as equals where we can share a vision together and stories of how God is at work in our initiatives.”
An early example of the type of partnership Green refers to goes back to 1998 when Illinois Mennonite Conference churches joined with the Argentina Mennonite Church (Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Argentina, or IEMA) to carry out the Patagonia Mission Project in Argentina. A few years later, IEMA sent a mission coach to Illinois to help congregations do church planting in rural Illinois, giving birth to the Southern Illinois Mission Project. Since that time, two additional groups of IEMA congregations have formed partnerships with Mennonite churches in Pennsylvania and the northern plains.
Green, whose term as chair is six years, said that his appointment strengthens Mission Network in its goal to remain closely connected with other global mission agencies across the Anabaptist family, while helping to shape future mission efforts.
“We have come to a season in the life of the global church in which every church is becoming the subject in mission,” Green said. “I feel it is imperative that we create a kind of structure in which we can be partners together.”
Green’s appointment was announced at the 2015 Mennonite World Conference assembly in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 21-26. He succeeds Richard Showalter, the commission’s first chair, and a former president of Eastern Mennonite Missions.
