c. 2003 Religion News Service
Presbyterians to Cut Budget by $3.1 Million
(RNS) In an effort to balance its budget, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will cut its 2004 budget by $3.1 million by eliminating 19 staff positions and using $1.67 million from its savings account.
The $126.9 million budget must be approved by the General Assembly Council, which acts as the church’s board of directors, on Saturday (April 5), and then by church delegates at the General Assembly meeting in May.
“It’s done. We’ve accomplished it. It’s balanced,” John Detterick, executive director of the council, told Presbyterian News Service.
Last year the church laid off 66 people at its Louisville, Ky., headquarters. The new round of cuts include 10 current staff members and nine positions that are vacant. The last day for affected employees will be April 11.
One-third of the cuts will come from reduced services, while 42 percent come from efficiency reforms. The cuts affect four church divisions but do not include any overseas missionary appointments.
The Presbyterian News Service will save $127,500 by no longer distributing its stories in hard copy and rely instead on e-mail releases by next January.
“All parts of the church are feeling the pressures,” Detterick told the news service. “The challenge is to meet the world’s needs and be faithful to our traditional calls as Presbyterians.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Church Groups Deliver Soap to Iraqi Children
(RNS) A coalition of church relief groups has delivered 11.3 metric tons of soap and laundry detergent to Baghdad to improve the health and hygiene of Iraqi children.
The shipment of 5.5 metric tons of soap and 5.8 metric tons of detergent arrived in Baghdad from Amman, Jordan, on Monday (March 31). The soap will be distributed to 68 hospitals in central and southern Iraq.
“To help break the cycle of malnutrition and diarrhea, it’s important to ensure good hygiene practices,” said Steve Weaver, an emergency response consultant in Amman for Church World Service.
Church World Service is the humanitarian arm of the National Council of Churches’ 36 member communions. Other groups involved in the shipment include Jubilee Partners, Lutheran World Relief, Mennonite Central Committee, Oxfam America, Sojourners and Stop Hunger Now.
Before the war started last month, the same coalition delivered $91,000 in medical supplies to two hospitals in Baghdad. The group now hopes to raise $1.5 million for relief efforts administered by the Middle East Council of Churches.
The shipment is allowed under United Nations sanctions through a permit granted to the Mennonite Central Committee. Since the end of the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Church World Service has given $3.8 million in assistance to Iraq.
Along the Iraq-Jordan border, the Christian aid group World Vision has prepared for an influx of refugees with 10,000 blankets, 5,000 water containers and plastic sheets that can be used for temporary shelter. Catholic Relief Services is also preparing camps along the border for up to 50,000 refugees.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Ill Boy Makes Wish for African Pastors to Be Given Bibles
(RNS) An ill Texas boy recently chose to supply Bibles to African pastors when he was granted a wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Steven Downey, 16, was honored in mid-March at the Reformed Church of Plano, Texas, by officials of the church, International Bible Society, Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas, and African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries.
Steven was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in July 2002. He learned through his church that ALARM, which trains pastors and ministry leaders, needed Bibles. When the North Texas chapter of Make-A-Wish Foundation offered to grant him a wish, Downey asked to provide study Bibles to ALARM.
With the assistance of the Bible society based in Colorado Springs, Colo., ALARM pastors in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo received 210 French study Bibles. Delivery occurred in February and March, announced the society, which took part in the ceremony honoring Steven.
“Steven Downey is a young man working diligently to reach the next generation for God,” said Tom Youngblood, the society’s vice president of outreach, in a statement.
Celestin Musekura, president of ALARM, said the contribution to the organization is particularly meaningful.
“Steven’s giving is indeed sacrificial, and none of us will ever forget this special `wish,”’ Musekura said in a statement.
Steven said he chose his particular wish because he believed it “was going to have the most impact for God’s kingdom for eternity.”
The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which began in 1980, grants wishes of children with life-threatening diseases. It was inspired by a 7-year-old boy who wished to be a police officer for a day despite his diagnosis of leukemia.
_ Adelle M. Banks
U.S. Missionary Killed in Central America
(RNS) A U.S. missionary was shot and killed in Guatemala last week during a roadside robbery.
Kentucky native Todd Fields, 41, had been a Christian missionary in Honduras for 13 years. According to the Associated Press, Fields was driving a group of high school students to a retreat in neighboring Guatemala when the group was held up March 28.
Elizabeth Hammons, Fields’ mother-in-law, told a Kentucky paper that his van was carrying two other adult missionaries and the children of missionaries when it was robbed.
“Men in a van pulled up alongside their van and tried to get them to stop and tried to run them off the road,” Hammons said. Rather than pull over, Fields “tried to get away and to run them off the road.”
The robbers fatally shot Fields, but left the other two adults and students unharmed after taking them to a secluded area and robbing them. According to a Guatemalan newspaper, the incident happened on the Pan-American Highway.
Fields and his wife, Lynnell, had lived in Honduras with their daughters Savannah, 14, and Sophia, 10. The couple were missionaries with Global Outreach International, a nonprofit foundation based in Tupelo, Miss. An interdenominational Christian missions agency, Global Outreach has more than 100 missionaries stationed in developing countries to aid needy communities and evangelize.
Wes White, director of personnel for Global Outreach, said Fields was beloved by the Honduan people as well as his fellow missionaries, and his death was a “tremendous loss.”
Fields had been active in many ministries in Honduras, from creating feeding stations for poor children and helping set up fisheries so locals could raise fish to eat to helping build churches and mentoring young missionaries.
Funeral services will be held in Fields’ hometown of Mount Vernon, Ky., and in Honduras, White said.
British Aid Group Releases Peace Plea From Iraqi Christians
LONDON (RNS) A heartfelt plea for an end to the war has come from the leaders of Iraq’s Christian communities.
In a message addressed simply “to whom it may concern,” they say: “Let those who have the power and the decision to put a stop to this aggression on the Iraqi people listen to the crying children, the wailing mothers, the suffering fathers, the depressed daughters and desperate women.
“They should feel with the Iraqis for the shortage of medicines and the basic needs of life and stop sending the bombs and destructive missiles.
“Rather they should sit around a conference table and be inspired with the heavenly principles and moral humane values and use their moral values to find ways and means to stop this war immediately and achieve ever-lasting peace, which should be their target.
“We believe that there are still possibilities to reach a solution to the international problems by dialogue and understanding so that the world can live in harmony and peace.”
The unsigned statement, dated March 26, was released by CAFOD, the relief and development arm of the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Christian Peacemaker Team member Betty Scholten
(RNS) “Although our governments are in conflict, our peoples wish one another no harm. We are committed to a message of peace to the Iraqi people.”
_ Betty Scholten, a member of the anti-war Christian Peacemaker Team, who has been in Baghdad since Feb. 1, in a statement announcing her April 3 return to the United States.
DEA END RNS
