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Sunday, May 1, 2022

People Across Borders - Mission Today

 PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS

If you are at all interested in the following topics, you should thoroughly enjoy the presentation that you will find below.  Topics:

  1. Missionary Methods - you thought you understood that at some point - well, it has changed. It’s not about conversion - think broader. 

  2. Sister Parish or parish twinning - if you have some history in that - this will change everything you ever thought about it.

  3. Conflict Resolution - between individuals, countries, cultures - how to help heal them. 

  4. Peace on earth - I could not resist that one. But that really is the fundamental Christian message, isn’t it?


Maryknoll Mission Direction

This weekend, Jude participated in a Maryknoll Full Circle discussion via Zoom that was amazing. Maryknoll does a good job in holding on to all of the “ex” members. The President of Maryknoll introduced the session, and spoke about their work on recasting their fundamental view of mission. The keynote speaker brought an amazing perspective to that discussion.


She is Rabbi Victoria (Vicki) Armour-Hileman. (Page down a bit for the text.) She was born in New York City. She has been a Catholic lay missioner since 1988 and has served in Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United States. She is the admissions manager of Maryknoll Lay Missioners. She is an ordained rabbi, and has extensive experience in education.

See longer CV at the bottom of this piece.


To cut to the quick, here is the link to her talk. If this disappears for some reason,let me know - I made a copy.  https://youtu.be/YZ-AELx7650 

This is a recording of a PPT. Her internet was unstable, and they decided to go with the pre recorded presentation. If you want to see what she looks like, see the link below.

The talk covers the history of “mission” in the church, and the actual accomplishment of the first 3 waves. She describes the fourth wave as 

  • Building the “One Earth Community”. 

  • Building bridges in a broken world

  • Missionaries as bridges across cultures and nations. 

  • Mission is about recognizing our kinship and connection as part of the whole earth community, 

  • Spreading the gospel means to act out of a sense of community and connection with all creation, human and non human.


At the end of the conference, she also did the final prayer - a reflection on an old Hebrew song. The video lets you see what she looks like, so you might want to watch it first. It includes:

a) the explanation of the Hebrew of the song, b) the song itself,  and c) a final blessing after the song fades. Here is the link:    https://youtu.be/Sn4d6UBF3is 


New Maryknoll Leadership

This is a relatively short video by the newly elected Maryknoll Leadership about their new direction:  https://vimeo.com/705952479 Password:  fullcircle07. 


Maryknoll Lay Missioners

If you want to know more about this outfit, here’s their page: https://mklm.org/ 

The speaker has written quite a few articles published there: https://mklm.org/author/vicki/ 


My Comments

I love her read of Christian history and tradition and the path forward. This is beyond converting the heathen - this is to change the world. This is how we extend the good news message, person to person, group to group, to heal a broken planet. If the gospel means anything today - this is part of it. 


The future of mission is Sister Parish, Twinning, cross cultural, cross religions, international. It is building relationships across national and religious boundaries to create a single human community. The world needs this healing at every level. The focus is on relationships - between families, parishes, countries, and individuals via visits and technology (ZOOM)! Missionaries are channels to build relationships. Direct conversations mediated by ”missionaries”.  I have many good friends who do exactly that in their work in Africa and elsewhere. A new global community - the real gospel. No barriers, no walls, people without borders! We need a name??


    PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS

--------------------------------------------

Vicki Armour-Hileman was a lay missioner in Hong Kong and Thailand before being elected to the first leadership team of the newly founded Maryknoll Mission Association of the Faithful in 1994. In 2018, after several years of teaching at various universities, she returned to Maryknoll lay Missioners, where she currently works in the Mission Services and Communications Departments. Over the past year, Vicki has been researching and reflecting on a question about the future of mission: Given a world that is simultaneously more connected and more splintered than ever before, what can and should mission look like, and how can we all be involved? She will share her reflections on this topic during the April Full Circle Gathering.


Education: MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, PhD in British and American Literature from the University of Iowa, and rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College.



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