Irish Methodists are becoming increasingly aware of a new relationship with the church throughout the world. For 200 years they have shared with members of other churches in this country a great interest in the mission field.
Irish Methodist missionaries have served on all continents. It is a generation since this pattern began to change. The love of old and valued things has led Irish Methodists to hold to the old name of the Methodist Missionary Society, but the way it works now is very different to what it was.
Irish ministers and lay workers still go overseas, but they now go as mission partners to serve with members of local churches. They are no longer in positions of command. We have realised we in Ireland have much to learn from the experience of young and vibrant churches in what used to be the mission field. That has been strongly reflected in events in Ireland this month.
February was long established as the month in which missionaries on furlough toured the country talking about their work. Now it is the people of the other countries who are coming to Ireland to speak of what is happening in their churches.
The Rev Funi Kune of Nigeria has been visiting the Dublin district. The Enniskillen and Sligo district has welcomed the Rev Aquila Yabaki from Fiji. In the north-east district the visitors have been the Rev Demetris and Mrs Daphne Palos. The Rev Paul Boafu of Ghana, doing postgraduate work at Edgehill College, Belfast, has been speaking at churches in the Belfast district, and the Rev Dr Sahr Yambasu of Sierra Leone, at present ministering in Wicklow, has done the same in the Enniskillen and Sligo district.
A wider vision of the world church has been afforded by the Rev Winston Graham, an Irish minister at the World Church Office, and by the Rev Dr Stephen Plant, Europe secretary at the Mission House in London. They have visited the Dublin and Down districts respectively.
Some of those who have worked in other countries have shared in visitation. Mr David and Mrs Val May have been speaking in the Portadown district of their work in Tonga. The midlands and southern district has been visited by the Rev Dennis Bambrick, to speak about Uganda, and Mr Roy and Mrs Cherie Ritchie, who have shared their experiences in Africa.
For the past few years teams of Irish Methodists of all ages have been spending short periods in one or other part of the world giving their skills in encouraging projects in the countries to which they have gone. This August a team is to visit several areas of Uganda.
The self-consciousness of the churches in former mission fields found interesting expression in South Dakota in the United States recently, when more than 80 ethnic groups from 18 countries shared in the World Christian Gathering of Indigenous Peoples.
The gathering, the second of its kind, expressed its worship in ways related to the cultures of the peoples participating. It used the Contemporary English Version of the Bible as being the one most suited to its members, many of whom use English as a second language.
The Department of Youth and Children's Work has announced its summer programme, offering young people opportunities of sharing in Christian work and fellowship in France, Finland, Sri Lanka and the US.
In France it will be the second time young Irish Methodists will visit Bischwiller, near Strasbourg. In Finland the party will be hosted by the Methodist Church in Helsinki. The Sri Lanka team will work in Colombo, and in the US a team will share in the camping programme of the Detroit United Methodist Conference.
Tomorrow morning the president of the church, the Rev David J. Kerr, will preach at the church in Newry. In the evening he will open and dedicate the new halls at Clontarf Methodist Church in Dublin. This has been developed in what was the nave of the large church built in the early years of this fading century. On Sunday and Monday, March 28th and 29th, he will be the preacher at the anniversary services of the Dublin Central Mission in Lower Abbey Street.