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

[steve-in-kville]

?

It's displayed at the bottom of the home page. At that particular time, I think the CAM issue had just made headlines.

That would have been a year before, so it would have been old news at that point—if something can really be really called old news when it still has the power to spawn 24-page threads. Nearly all those visitors were probably bots looking to spam us or do some other nefarious deeds. If you watch the statistics section you’ll sometimes see a wave of them come through, just never quite as big as then, I guess.

You're right. So much as happened in the last three years, both personally and worldwide that I am losing track of events.

[Neto]

I would be in favor of someone coming up with a list of Anabaptist ministries who:
1. do have thorough vetting and accountability procedures
2. do have good training for their employees on how to build good organizational culture.

I think it would be nice to have a list of Anabaptist churches who do have a good church culture as well. But not sure what to do with the list. There are good people in churches with bad culture. Somehow there needs to be a way for individuals to welcome accountablity and good leadership values and be able to go into missions, even if their church does not fully welcome/embrace these things.

I wonder if there could be a public way to vett present and would-be ministry workers. I wouldn't mind my name being on a public list somewhere and anyone who knows me could raise objections to me being in ministry. You would of course get some people with grudges raising objections, and those would need to be discerned, but you would also likely get some helpful feedback on folks who are corrupt.

A person's reputation, their witness, everything can be quickly ruined. I think I have mentioned this case before, but a pastor friend of mine (from years ago) was accused by a teen boy from the boys' home where this pastor also worked. Accused of molesting him. It hit the papers, Big city, front page. When he was later cleared (as I recall the teen later admitted that he was just angry about being disciplined), there was a small article, buried in the back of the newspaper. The pastor was ruined, the boys' home ministry was ruined (it closed), and the congregation where my friend was a pastor also had to close down. The negative impression created by the first wave of "news" was too great to overcome. Perhaps it might have been different if the newspaper had printed the outcome as "loudly" as they had printed the accusation.

On the other hand, I was personally acquainted with a fellow Bible Translator/Missionary who was accused of molesting both native girls, and possibly also MK girls. He never admitted any wrong-doing. Was he innocent? Only God, his reported victims, and he himself really know for sure. But if he was innocent, then his ministry was also ruined because of this. (I personally felt that the evidence was quite convincing. That is, I think he was guilty, but I was never at that level of administration in the mission, to have dealt with the situation, or to have even heard the full evidence.)

So, How do you lay the blame? How do you know if a given ministry has policies or a vetting process in place to avoid, to the greatest degree possible, this sort of evil in their membership? About the best you can do (as far as I can think) would be to either talk with those who do the examination process for new members, or go through the process of application yourself. But the latter option would be resented when they found out that you were not a serious candidate, because of the man-hours required for this process, at least in WBT, the only mission for which I have gone through that process. In the case of WBT, however, you wouldn't get to first base unless you had the required level of formal education. I do know that they send out reference requests, because the candidate gives names. My best friend was one of my references. Years later he "confessed" to me that he had not given a very positive reference, because he felt that I had areas of my life that needed more development. No one knew me better than he, because we talked about everything. I do not know to what degree the interviewers were concerned about me as an applicant because of that, nor do I know exactly what he pointed to as an area where he felt I was not ready for service. Obviously, the mission agency would not disclose that sort of thing to the applicant.

[ohio jones]

Not to steal anyone's thunder, but remember this?

Most users ever online was 747 on Sun May 03, 2020 1:50 pm

?

It's displayed at the bottom of the home page. At that particular time, I think the CAM issue had just made headlines.

You're not boeing to convince me those were all real people. As Pelerin notes, mostly bots.

[steve-in-kville]

?

It's displayed at the bottom of the home page. At that particular time, I think the CAM issue had just made headlines.

You're not boeing to convince me those were all real people. As Pelerin notes, mostly bots.

I realize that. But that's a lot at one time. Almost like the parents were out of town and they decided to throw a party

[RZehr]

I would be in favor of someone coming up with a list of Anabaptist ministries who:
1. do have thorough vetting and accountability procedures
2. do have good training for their employees on how to build good organizational culture.

I think it would be nice to have a list of Anabaptist churches who do have a good church culture as well. But not sure what to do with the list. There are good people in churches with bad culture. Somehow there needs to be a way for individuals to welcome accountablity and good leadership values and be able to go into missions, even if their church does not fully welcome/embrace these things.

I wonder if there could be a public way to vett present and would-be ministry workers. I wouldn't mind my name being on a public list somewhere and anyone who knows me could raise objections to me being in ministry. You would of course get some people with grudges raising objections, and those would need to be discerned, but you would also likely get some helpful feedback on folks who are corrupt.

A person's reputation, their witness, everything can be quickly ruined. I think I have mentioned this case before, but a pastor friend of mine (from years ago) was accused by a teen boy from the boys' home where this pastor also worked. Accused of molesting him. It hit the papers, Big city, front page. When he was later cleared (as I recall the teen later admitted that he was just angry about being disciplined), there was a small article, buried in the back of the newspaper. The pastor was ruined, the boys' home ministry was ruined (it closed), and the congregation where my friend was a pastor also had to close down. The negative impression created by the first wave of "news" was too great to overcome. Perhaps it might have been different if the newspaper had printed the outcome as "loudly" as they had printed the accusation.

On the other hand, I was personally acquainted with a fellow Bible Translator/Missionary who was accused of molesting both native girls, and possibly also MK girls. He never admitted any wrong-doing. Was he innocent? Only God, his reported victims, and he himself really know for sure. But if he was innocent, then his ministry was also ruined because of this. (I personally felt that the evidence was quite convincing. That is, I think he was guilty, but I was never at that level of administration in the mission, to have dealt with the situation, or to have even heard the full evidence.)

So, How do you lay the blame? How do you know if a given ministry has policies or a vetting process in place to avoid, to the greatest degree possible, this sort of evil in their membership? About the best you can do (as far as I can think) would be to either talk with those who do the examination process for new members, or go through the process of application yourself. But the latter option would be resented when they found out that you were not a serious candidate, because of the man-hours required for this process, at least in WBT, the only mission for which I have gone through that process. In the case of WBT, however, you wouldn't get to first base unless you had the required level of formal education. I do know that they send out reference requests, because the candidate gives names. My best friend was one of my references. Years later he "confessed" to me that he had not given a very positive reference, because he felt that I had areas of my life that needed more development. No one knew me better than he, because we talked about everything. I do not know to what degree the interviewers were concerned about me as an applicant because of that, nor do I know exactly what he pointed to as an area where he felt I was not ready for service. Obviously, the mission agency would not disclose that sort of thing to the applicant.

This is why I think that the best way to do missions, is to have churches do it. Not para-church organizations. If a church does them and staffs them, they no the people. No need for some elaborate vetting process.
Of course churches couldn’t be involved in ginormas missions, and we couldn’t outsource our mission work while building business empires. But I think it would make for healthier and stronger churches and missions.

I think there is a place for collaboration between churches. And I’m not saying there is no place at all, ever, for parachurch organizations. Nonetheless…

[Josh]

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.

[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.

[Biodegradableglitter]

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. Even this thread indicates clearly how far we have to go as an Anabaptist culture broadly. This is why we need education and accountability from outside of our groups. It’s ok and important to admit we often get this issue wrong, and need help.

ETA: There are a lot of great questions being asked on this thread. Thing is, there are answers. Not perfect answers, but good ones. This is what GRACE would bring to the table.

[dkreider]

For example, the executive board of CAM continues to insist in a recent statement along with the public statements on their website that the only knowledge of Jeriah’s abuse withing the org was that it was “homosexual relations with youth, but never of a crime committed such as abuse with young boys.” Yet one of CAMs own high ranking managerial staff serving on the CAM base in 2013 and beyond stated that the abuse was clearly understood to be the abuse of children. Never did he understand or was made to understand that the sexual activity was consensual. He was also incredulous that after the 2019 exposure that never once did anyone from CAM inquire as to what knew about the situation.

Randal,
I'm curious about this high ranking managerial staff member on the CAM base. Is this something that was said publicly or privately? I was a member of the CAM Titanyen team in 2013 and have personally spoken to some of the principals in this Jeriah situation. This is the first time I've heard what you said here....

[RZehr]

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.

Hmm. Well, for one thing, wouldn't have they then sent JM and Herr to their own church missions? I think that sometimes it can be easy for someone to hand off a problem to someone else. If it blows up, someone else has to deal with it. In this case, for example, we are seeing CAM take much more responsibility than the church. I don't see calls on Mennonet for GRACE to investigate the church that he was from. The blame and responsibility is predominantly being placed at CAMs doorstep. All I'm saying, strictly speaking, is that, even if it is subconsciously, when we send someone to work at a someone elses mission, there is a level of responsibility that gets handed off. For example, non-profits are being exhorted to do a better job of vetting. Yet few are the exhortations for churches to do the vetting. Why? Because that is the non-profits job, under the current "sub-contracting" of missions to para-church organizations.
When someone is responsible for something, they tend to care a bit more about vetting. If, for example, I find out that someone in my church is going on some parachurch mission, as a church member, I have nothing much to say to that organization, and I don't have much responsibility to provide unsolicited commentary to that organization. After all, no one asked me. My responsibility lies with the fellow church member, not the organization who perhaps I've never heard of before.

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

Probably so.

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.

Or, maybe missions should only and entirely accept volunteers from their own churches. I think these kinds of decisions: who is qualified, should GRACE be hired, how much training is needed, who ought to be fired - these decisions are difficult enough to make when all the people involved are in the same church. Expand the constituency of a mission from BMA to Amish, to conservative Mennonite, and see how difficult it is to achieve a consensus.

Another thing that concerns me a little bit about these non-profits, is that they can create sort of an environment that seems to replace the church. People can be part of no church at all, but can give to these organizations time and money, and feel like these organization are more important than the church. I see people at CAM events who aren't part of any church. But they can go to these events and, I don't know, apparently get some sort of fulfillment that, I think, rightfully belongs to the church. But this is sort of an aside. I think there probably is a place for these orgs too. I just get a touch uncomfortable when they displace what I believe, should rightfully be under the churches purview.