In the Name of “Mission Work” book about CAM/Mast

[Biodegradableglitter]

Amen and amen, RZehr.

If you want missions bigger than what your church can do… then set up cooperative work with other churches in your conference.

If your church is independent, then your missions should be too.

The idea of just donating enough to CAM to reduce your taxes at the end of the year needs to pass on. If every plain church got involved in missions, relief work, and public service work, we wouldn’t need big agencies with all these problems.

While there may be real advantages to keep relief/missions efforts smaller and more intimately plugged into a local church, that is not the problem here on the issue of abuse prevention/response. If it were, that would assume 2 things: that churches are necessarily more effective at this (Not true, as you point out yourself in your critiques of JM’s church), and secondly, that non-church organizations will necessarily do worse at this (also not true. Many businesses, schools, nonprofits take this issue seriously and build good systems.)

[ABC 123]

Josh and RZ, I am not sure how your ideas would've changed the outcome if Faith/Shining Light would've been in charge of sending or not sending JM or Charity/Grandpa Herr. They knew and allowed them to be sent.

In plain Anabaptist settings, I doubt anybody is more than 3 phone calls away from leadership to leadership of somebody who knows somebody.

Learning from our mistakes, another JM situation should not happen. Key phrase: learn from our mistakes. First that branch of Anabaptists has to recognize they had a faulty view on serial pedophilia. If they do not recognize that, it would be wise to never accept a volunteer from their churches again.

Yes, except for the part, “that branch of Anabaptists.” I hear from survivors in nearly every branch of Anabaptists of which I’m acquainted, and if we refuse volunteers from all the branches that handle abuse cases poorly, there would be few available volunteers.

True. Time for us to all collectively learn about abuses and how to properly handle this.

[ABC 123]

Am I mistaken, but wasn't grandpa Herr sent to Charity's own mission program in Haiti at one point?

As for thinking JM’S own church should be held even more accountable than even CAM: I absolutely think they should be. I have been really surprised there hasn't been more chatter about this over the last couple years since the story became public information.

[Biodegradableglitter]

Am I mistaken, but wasn't grandpa Herr sent to Charity's own mission program in Haiti at one point?

As for thinking JM’S own church should be held even more accountable than even CAM: I absolutely think they should be. I have been really surprised there hasn't been more chatter about this over the last couple years since the story became public information.

There should be accountability for his church. However, millions of donor dollars have been going to CAM for many years, so of course these donors in nearly every Anabaptist branch have a higher stake and sense of responsibility in the CAM situation.

[Biodegradableglitter]

Wow my formatting when nuts for a bit, and with every attempt to fix it, I made it worse!

[KrisKramer]

Am I mistaken, but wasn't grandpa Herr sent to Charity's own mission program in Haiti at one point?

As for thinking JM’S own church should be held even more accountable than even CAM: I absolutely think they should be. I have been really surprised there hasn't been more chatter about this over the last couple years since the story became public information.

Yes, Grandpa went through CAM and through Charity.... both of whom had been fully advised of his pedophilia.

Kris

[steve-in-kville]

Am I mistaken, but wasn't grandpa Herr sent to Charity's own mission program in Haiti at one point?

As for thinking JM’S own church should be held even more accountable than even CAM: I absolutely think they should be. I have been really surprised there hasn't been more chatter about this over the last couple years since the story became public information.

Yes, Grandpa went through CAM and through Charity.... both of whom had been fully advised of his pedophilia.

Kris

I gotta retire for the day very soon, so last post for the until morning. I'm aware of more than one situation where a man was sent into the mission field and the "powers that be" knew he liked to seduce the ladies. I'm often wonder if they sent him out just to get him out of the area? God only knows, I imagine.

[Josh]

In the Holdeman world, churches sponsor missionaries and share responsibility for them. The sending congregation is expected to ensure its members are spiritually sound.

If a JM situation happened, our own churches would be in the hook for it. Not CAM. And we’d be paying for it too. Being a powerful family or a minister’s son wouldn’t make much difference in the context of 27,000 members.

Scandals and problems do happen in the mission field and they get dealt with. And responsibility stays where it belongs - with the church.

If a person would be a good missionary but is in a questionable church, perhaps they should first move to a good church with a strong accountability network.

Some people here are affiliated with BMA. That seems good. BMA churches should promote their own missions and perhaps distance themselves from things like CAM. This is simply because BMA’s leaders and members can provide proper oversight and accountability.

I really appreciate CAM and the donors and staff of CAM. But it seems most the work that CAM does should be being done by local churches.

[Josh]

I’m in

Am I mistaken, but wasn't grandpa Herr sent to Charity's own mission program in Haiti at one point?

They sure were!

The fact Herr’s own church excommunicated him was ignored by the Charity church.

In my opinion nobody who has a marriage so bad as Herr’s should be being sent on overseas mission assignments. Sorry but there is plenty of work to do at home. Pass out tracts on a street corner, or volunteer at a soup kitchen… we have plenty of work to do in both areas at my own home church.

As for thinking JM’S own church should be held even more accountable than even CAM: I absolutely think they should be. I have been really surprised there hasn't been more chatter about this over the last couple years since the story became public information.

Yes. It is a phenomenal passing of the buck. His family - particularly the ordained men in his family - have not taken responsibility. Instead they asked for leniency at his court trial.

Here is the bigger question: why have other churches not demanded accountability? As far as I am concerned, the rest of the plain world needs to do so - or else excommunicate this congregation and require repentance. A church that acts this way is a false church. Paul spoke very clearly about this in 1 Corinthians 5.

[ABC 123]

Yes. It is a phenomenal passing of the buck. His family - particularly the ordained men in his family - have not taken responsibility. Instead they asked for leniency at his court trial.

Here is the bigger question: why have other churches not demanded accountability? As far as I am concerned, the rest of the plain world needs to do so - or else excommunicate this congregation and require repentance. A church that acts this way is a false church. Paul spoke very clearly about this in 1 Corinthians 5.

Exactly. To all of this.

But they do not fellowship much with people outside of themselves, so what good is excommunication?