Editors' Note: Mennonite World Conference is deep into a project that requires faith and audacity--and the undoing of myths. The effort is an outworking of MWC's commitment to greater "communion" among the churches of the global fellowship.
     It is a startlingly practical undertaking--to make an inventory of the gifts that individual churches have--which they are willing to offer to sister churches throughout the world.
     Named the Global Gifts Sharing Project, the experiment is being led by Pakisa Tshimika, originally from Congo and now living in the United States. He is assisted by Tim Lind, originally from the U.S. and now living in South Africa. The two recently wrapped up a series of workshops with churches in Africa, during which they introduced the project and its goals, and then helped the churches begin to assemble lists of gifts they have to give.
     Can such a lofty and well-meaning endeavor work?

     "This is the first time in our history that the Mennonite World Conference has brought us together with another church. We have always shared a boundary, but we have never had contact. There has been a spirit of gift-sharing through the format of this workshop." These were the closing remarks of Rev. Michael Badasu, moderator of the Ghana Mennonite Church, at the end of the joint two-day Ghana/Burkina Faso Global Gifts Sharing Project (GGSP) workshop held in Accra, Ghana, in April 2000.
     It was the first time these two MWC member churches, the Ghana Mennonite Church and the Evangelical Mennonite Church of Burkina Faso, had the opportunity to meet together. The Accra workshop was one of twelve held throughout Africa with Mennonite World Conference member churches during 2000. The most recent Gift Sharing visits have been to the churches in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya in October and November 2000, completing the initial stage of the project in Africa.
     At the MWC Executive Committee meeting in Guatemala City in July 2000 Larry Miller, MWC executive secretary, described the GGSP workshops led by Tshimika and Lind in various parts of Africa during this past year as getting as close to the grassroots church membership as anything MWC has done up to this point.
     The process of arranging similar workshops in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America has already begun. In October Pakisa led a GGSP workshop in The Netherlands for representatives from Europe. And Mesach Krisetya, the MWC President, and Phil Bergey, from the Franconia Mennonite Conference in the USA who is the Executive Director of the Mennonite Resources Network, met with several Mennonite conference leaders at the MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) convention in Vancouver, Canada, in November to talk about the GGSP initiative.

What Is the Global Gifts Sharing Project?
     The Global Gifts Sharing Project is a world-wide endeavor initiated by MWC to encourage the sharing and exchange of gifts among churches in different parts of the world. Through such sharing it is hoped that the unity of the church will be strengthened, and that churches can develop a stronger awareness of their own gifts as well as the gifts of others elsewhere.
     The first phase of this project involves the compilation of a global inventory, or "offering," of gifts available within each member conference. In the second phase the inventory will be made available to churches and church-related institutions and programs with the hope that churches will take the initiative in setting up sharing and exchange relationships with each other. MWC will look for ways to encourage and facilitate such sharing.

The Experience in Africa
     While the Accra workshop in Africa presented special challenges in bringing together a Francophone and an Anglophone church, it was nevertheless possible to follow the same basic workshop format which was used in other parts of Africa, with a few modifications. After introductions and the sharing of a brief history of each church, the group was given background information about the Mennonite World Conference and the Global Gifts Sharing Project. This was followed by sessions on the theological understandings of gifts and gift-sharing, and a discussion on how gifts are understood in the various cultural traditions represented by those present. Finally, participants were divided into small groups to identify resources and gifts present in each of the churches involved.
     "Mennonite World Conference is not well known among the churches, particularly beyond the national leadership level," according to Tshimika. "Often it is understood as a kind of club for leaders who occasionally travel to far away places for meetings." Through discussion of MWC goals and objectives, the workshops encourage a broader ownership and accountability of the organization among church members.
     Tshimika notes that "Many of the member churches in Africa are quite isolated and have little or no means of communication with Mennonites and Brethren in Christ in other countries. In Africa the concept of 'belonging' is a core cultural value. As a result BICs and Mennonites in places like Angola, Tanzania and Congo are naturally receptive to the idea that they are part of a global family."
     One Ghanaian participant likened the Accra gathering to a family reunion: "I have come to experience that we are all one in the Mennonite family. In spite of the language barriers, these two sister churches are one. We are all understanding. There is no tension between us. It is as though we have known each other for a long time."
     According to Lind, one of the exciting aspects of the Africa Gifts Sharing workshops has been to see how the biblical understanding of gifts and the sharing of gifts parallel those taught by a wide variety of cultural traditions.
     "While the workshops have often been made up of people from half a dozen or more distinct cultural and language groups," observed Lind, "the participants have been in unanimous agreement that in their cultures all gifts intended by God to be shared with others. We believe that these are also the foundational biblical principles regarding gifts."
     In many of the workshops the acknowledgment of this fundamental continuity between culture and biblical faith has led to serious reflection on why the ethic of sharing gifts is not stronger in the African churches. "Many African churches," said Lind, "struggle to support their structures, including their pastors. While it is true that many African Brethren in Christ and Mennonites do not have a lot of material resources, we know that a much higher level of self-support is possible."
     A participant in the Tanzanian workshop, held in Tarime in January, noted that all over Africa there are thousands of African Independent Churches. "All of them," this participant observed, "are self-supporting, and they provide much social support to their members. I wonder if Mennonites could learn something from the Independent churches?"
     "While the specific objective of the workshops was the preparation of an inventory of gifts, participants and facilitators; agreed that the process itself was more valuable than anything else. "Churches in Africa have for many years been used to thinking of themselves as only having needs," Tshimika explained. "The gift sharing workshops in a small way contributed to a different perspective." As one Zimbabwe participant enthusiastically remarked, "We are a rich church!"
     Lind agrees that the African churches have many gifts to share with each other and with churches in other parts of the world. "For centuries Africa has been a supplier of resources to the rest of the world, whether forcibly through the slave trade and colonial exploitation, or voluntarily through the migration of African professionals to other countries."

How Should Gifts and Gift-Sharing Be Viewed?
     Tim Lind is concerned that people tend to view gifts and gift-sharing in too simplistic a way. "One of my concerns when we talk about gifts in the context of the global church," he wrote recently, "is that we often head straight for the material/spiritual dichotomy, with some variation of the north has material gifts and the south has spiritual gifts. I find this both inaccurate and debilitating from the standpoint of both northern and southern churches. I feel it is important to free ourselves from this stereotype. On the one hand, I think it is difficult to make the case theologically that material and spiritual are comprehensive of giftedness, or that they represent biblical categories, or especially that they are distributed geographically.
     "On the other hand, to constantly link spiritual gifts to the southern churches reinforces the impression that they have no so-called material gifts, and can thus only find these in the north.
     "It is my hope," states Lind, "that the Global Gifts Sharing Project will foster a much freer understanding of gifts there is no dichotomy only a rich profusion of God-given resources which all of us are constantly challenged to identify, acknowledge, nurture, offer to and accept from others. Every gift relationship, whether with our neighbor or between churches in different hemispheres, is potentially whole and beautiful."

Larry Kehler, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is News Editor for MWC.