About a decade ago, a Congolese woman fresh to our country from a refugee camp in Tanzania walked into Central UMC. It turns out that when a refugee gets a “golden ticket” to leave their refugee camp and come to the US, the refugee doesn’t get to choose where they end up. Mama Riziki ended up in Kansas City. Although she didn’t know much of the language or the culture, she knew she needed to find a United Methodist Church. She is the daughter of a United Methodist pastor who was martyred in the Congo when he refused to leave after local insurgents threatened him and his family. He sent his family away to safety, and insurgents made good on their promise to murder him. In his church. While he was leading worship. Truly, he was a martyr.
Mama Riziki’s first visit to worship at Central a decade ago has blossomed into a standalone 150+ member congregation, Kuomba UMC, made up primarily of African immigrants under her leadership.
Our apportionment dollars have supported this church every step of the way. When this new congregation outgrew Central rapidly, the Missouri Annual Conference gave them use of a building from a closed congregation. Since then, they have paid Mama Riziki’s salary. They have trained her through licensing school and course of study. When the disrepair of their building made it borderline uninhabitable, the Missouri Conference found them another place to worship in the interim while providing $300,000 worth of repairs to their building.
Conference and District staff, whose salaries are paid by our apportionment dollars, have gotten to know this congregation. They realize that these first-generation Americans have minimum-wage jobs and extremely large families. Knowing that this congregation has a very low likelihood of becoming financially self-sufficient anytime soon has not deterred the Missouri Conference from offering them continued support. The generosity of every church in Missouri that pays their apportionments has changed the lives of this group of people. If you’re ever in Kansas City, I’d be happy to introduce you to some of these folks whose lives you have touched.
All of the above goes to explain why I take such personal umbrage when I hear that the head of the GMC has directed UM churches that want to align with the GMC in the future to withhold their apportionments from the UMC.(You can read Jay Therrel's blog post here.) Jay Therrell may think of apportionments as some sort of tax that supports an evil empire from which he wants to separate. The reality is much more important than he would lead his followers to believe. Apportionments in Missouri created Kuomba UMC. Apportionments across the nation provide the support for over 95% of the United Methodist budget in Africa. Apportionments give over $2 million to Africa University each year. (You can read the report on Africa University here.) Every dollar that a church withholds at the behest of the new leader of the GMC is money taken from United Methodist Christians in Africa.
Apportionments do much further good than Africa, but my gaze is on Africa today. I remember when I was a General Conference delegate in 2008. That year, the conservatives loaned cell phones, not yet universally owned, to all of the African delegates for their use while in the US. (You can read the story of the cell phones written at the time here.) The phones were useless for trying to call home to Africa. However, they were a great communication tool to guide the African delegates in their voting on issues related to sexual orientation. The US contingent of the UMC was growing more progressive on these issues, mirroring a nation which would soon legalize same-sex marriage. The conservatives relied on the African votes to pass their platform.
Way back then, someone more cynical than I told me, “You just watch, the conservatives will cut the Africans loose as soon as they get what they want from them. They don’t want to pay to support the African church.” Being much more innocent back then, I told that person, politely, that I simply didn’t believe them.
All these years later, I owe that person the opportunity to say to me, “I told you so.”
Trying to change the GMC’s position is not my job, although I’m taking time now to point out the effects of their actions on African United Methodists. And since I can’t change that other denomination, I’ll do what I can do. The best thing that I can do at the moment is to get back to celebrating Kuomba’s ongoing success.
In a couple of weeks, Central and Kuomba UMCs will worship together, rejoicing in all that God has done through our partnership. Mama Riziki and I will co-celebrate communion with our congregations that day, and we’ll share the bread and cup in Christian unity. One of the wonderfully surprising things about our alliance is that Central is proudly Reconciling, and Kuomba is proudly African. The last time we spoke about such things, I asked if Kuomba had a problem with Central being Reconciling. “No,” came the answer, “as long as we don’t have to do weddings between two men ourselves, we are happy for you to do what you want.” These words are a beautiful microcosm of the hopes for the renewed UMC.
After worship, we’ll all share ice cream a together on the lawn. I know already that as I look around and see all of our faces on that day, the sweetness of the ice cream will be eclipsed by the sweetness of that moment, with brothers and sisters in Christ dwelling together in unity despite their many differences.
Those precious moments are my apportionment dollars at work. Why would I withhold such goodness from God’s people? Thanks be to God for all the Missouri churches, from small to large, whose faithful generosity creates these moments, and for every UM church that gives towards this same vision of faith, hope, and love around the world.
