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Chief Staff Executives Take Stand to Focus United Methodists For Next Four Years; Greenwaldt Among UM Leaders Casting Vision for the Church

The Rev. Karen Greenwaldt addresses the four new areas of focus for The United Methodist Church on April 24 at the denomination's 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

(April 26, 2008, General Conference, Ft. Worth, TX/GBOD) — The Rev. Karen Greendwaldt, top executive of the Nashville-based General Board of Discipleship, was one of four agency leaders called to cast the vision of ministry and mission for The United Methodist Church over the next four years.

Speaking to 992 delegates attending the denomination's top legislative body, meeting in Fort Worth through May 2, Greenwaldt participated in a multimedia presentation that featured the heads of the United Methodist boards of global ministries, communications, and higher education and ministry standing together in unity, as they laid out plans for "Building on What Works," the theme of the presentation.

"These plans are about reprioritizing and realigning existing resources. And they are about pursuing measurable outcomes so we can gauge our progress and improve our performance over time," she said.

The presentation was interspersed with compelling statistics and video montages highlighting the deep needs and plans the church has to bring four areas of focus to life.

The four areas include ministry with the poor, global health, creating new places for new people while renewing existing congregations and developing principled Christian leaders.

Greenwaldt, whose agency will lead the Path 1 team charged with creating new places for new people, challenged the gathering to "believe that your church can start a new church or renew an existing one, and do so."

She also invited the clergy and lay delegates from around the world to help recruit disciples who will live out their faith in amazing ways, including engaging in work to eliminate poverty and its diseases.

"We can reach millions of new people for Jesus Christ if we simply decide to go where the people are."

United Methodist agency leaders celebrate following their April 24 address on the four new areas of focus for the denomination during the 2008 United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. Standing (from left) are the Rev. Jerome King Del Pino, Board of Higher Education and Ministry; the Rev. Karen Greenwaldt, Board of Discipleship; Bishop Felton May, Board of Global Ministries; and the Rev. Larry Hollon, United Methodist Communications. (A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.)

Top executive for United Methodist Communications, the Rev. Larry Hollon, drew applause when he lifted up "Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus, who suggested that a people who can decide to go to the moon and do it need only to decide to create a poverty-free world, and it will be so.

"By putting our minds to it, we can build appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world," Hollon said.

During the presentation, as Dr. Jerome Del Pino, top executive for the Board of Higher Education and Ministry told how the denomination was surrounded by people who live with little or nothing, compelling video was shown of villagers taking a woman in a chair on a bike to a clinic across treacherous terrain.

The text on the screen read, "Time is of the essence."

"Billions of people the world -- most of them women and children -- exist without basic needs met. They live a life of preventable suffering, perpetually at risk. They want. And they suffer. And many die," said Del Pino.

Throughout the presentation, each general secretary (chief staff executive) echoed the refrain, "Jesus beckons us to follow -- even to places where we may not want to go."

Bishop Felton May, interim general secretary for the Board of Global Ministries asked the question, "Do we invite the downtrodden, impoverished, and destitute into our houses of worship? Or do we take comfort when those sitting beside us in the pews look just like us?

"Somehow, in our 40 years, poverty became acceptable to us . . . But here, at our 40-year anniversary, for the love of God, the United Methodist Church declares, 'no more!' And I ask you, 'What has taken us so long?'"

The General Board of Discipleship's mission is to support annual conference and local church leaders for their task of equipping world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, GBOD (www.gbod.org) is located at 1908 Grand Ave. in Nashville, Tenn. For more information, call the Media Relations Office toll free at 877-899-2780, ext. 7017.