This weekend, I watched the HBO premiere of “Mary and Martha,” a compelling story of two women of different ages from different countries who are drawn  together by the common experience of having their sons die from a threat they never expected: malaria.

As the pair struggle to come to grips with the untimely loss of their sons, Mary (played by Hilary Swank) and Martha (Brenda Blethyn) forge a deep friendship and become advocates in the fight against a deadly disease that kills 655,000 people every year, most of them children.

As I watched the drama unfold, I couldn’t help but hope that the movie’s message reaches people who are currently unaware that children are dying from a preventable disease at an unconscionable rate. I hope that it moves them to action.

Hassan Sesay and his wife, Amindalo Sesay, sit with their children in front of the mosquito net they received through Imagine No Malaria at their home outside Bo, Sierra Leone, in 2011. Photo by Mike DuBose.

Like Mary and Martha, too many people are simply not cognizant of the impact of this killer illness.

My own connection to malaria runs deep. I’ve had it twice, first in the 1980s, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, when I walked in ankle high grass around a killing field while doing work on a film about Cambodia shortly after Pol Pot. I had another bout with the disease in Gondar, Ethiopia, a year or two later.

In both cases, I was fortunate enough to be able to get to a doctor and receive medication as soon as I began to feel symptoms—chills, fever, and listlessness.

I’ve also seen dozens of children die from malaria, and I’ve seen the grief etched on the faces of parents who have lost their children.

I recall a young mother in Honduras who brought her semi-conscious infant to a clinic, after walking miles from a small village in the rural mountains. By the time she arrived, the baby – only a few months old – was in serious danger, and the clinic lacked the medicines for an infusion for the child. As the mother sat before the nurse who attempted to treat her child, the baby died.

In a tent clinic in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, where dozens of people staggered in after a severe famine, I saw a grandmother carrying a comatose baby. Breathing heavily, the baby clearly was in desperate condition. A doctor started an infusion of medication through an IV, but it was too late.

These images are emblazoned in my memory. I cannot forget them.

Those were only two children, and those scenes are repeated in similar fashion every single day. In Africa, malaria takes the life of a child every 60 seconds.

Our children, our responsibility

In the movie, Martha stays to help for a while at the orphanage in Mozambique where her son, Ben, was a teacher. When she decides to leave, the children give her a collage that says, “We are all your children,” as a parting gift.

“We are all your children.” That’s a striking statement. The children of the world are our children. Imagine what we could accomplish if everyone made a commitment to take some responsibility toward providing a healthy life for all of God’s children.

Programs like The United Methodist Church’s Imagine No Malaria initiative and its partner organizations are making a difference, producing life-saving results. Malaria’s impact has been cut in half in just a few short years, but the battle is still far from over.

Millions of nets have been distributed, but millions more are needed before we are able to cover every child in every village at the end of every road.  And nets are not enough. More lasting solutions are required. More health workers must be trained to recognize and treat symptoms at the outset of the disease. More health clinics are needed. More mothers and fathers need to know what they can do to prevent it.

This week on April 25, we will observe World Malaria Day. There’s no better time to join a movement that is saving lives. My prayer is that one day, there will be no malaria. My hope is that day will come soon.

For more information, visit ImagineNoMalaria.org.

The debate about allowing gay leaders and scouts in the Boy Scouts has under-played a critical issue. I’ve been told that in some troops upwards of half the scouts are from single parent families, the vast majority of those headed by mothers. And these young people are from the neighborhoods in which local churches exist. They often walk to the building for troop meetings.

My colleague, Gil Hanke, General Secretary of United Methodist Men, which relates to Boy Scouts of America on behalf of The United Methodist Church, tells me “in a typical scouting program, 25% are from the sponsoring church, 25% are from other churches, 50% are from un-churched families.”

Scouting offers these boys interaction with a male figure, provides them with opportunities for learning and for skills that they likely would not have otherwise. Scouting is about values education, the development of a sense of personal responsibility and service to others. And, it brings young people inside the church building on a regular basis.

In my experience as a scout, this range of activities, contacts and values are exactly what I needed growing up in a family that was, at best, dysfunctional. As we moved about following oilrig locations in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Wyoming one of the constants in my life was Scouting. Scout troops were always located in a Methodist church in the small, dusty towns where we temporarily settled.

We moved every six months until I was thirteen and chose to go another way. This nomadic existence was simply a way of life for itinerant oilfield workers and their families, and for me, Scouting was part of the glue that held this transient life together.

It was also a window on the world through which I could peer and see a wider field of opportunities and a future beyond the hard labor of the oilfields. I went on camping trips, floated down rivers, worked on merit badges, and even went to the state capitol and met the governor. These activities expanded my life in significant ways.

Without Scouting it would have been a more difficult, less hopeful existence. I interacted with adults in a different way than in my family setting, which was not altogether positive and certainly not constructive.

A place of haven

When I hear local church leaders, especially pastors, say they will drop Scouting for the modest change that is proposed to allow gay men and scouts to participate at the will of the congregation, I’m perplexed. The church should be a place of haven for youth who are struggling with their identities. They should have the opportunity to come to know they are loved by God and by others. They should be provided the support necessary to see new horizons, have meaningful experiences and envision a newer, brighter future. Scouting provided this support for me.

Moreover, given the fact that Mainline denominations are in decline, it’s ironic that congregations would turn away from a program that serves needs of families within walking distance of their buildings; families experiencing hardship; families with young people in need of positive interactions with adults. Scouting is not designed to be a tool for evangelism, but it introduces young persons to values-oriented civic responsibility that is complementary to the teachings of the church, and it invites young people into the church building. Referring to Gil Hanke’s data begs the question: What church would not want to host a meeting each week in which half the folks present do not have a church home?

While attention is focused on churches that might leave Scouting if the ban is lifted, it’s also possible that churches that have not sponsored troops because of the ban might reconsider and make Scouting even more inclusive.

A modest move

There are ways to monitor adult interactions, conduct due diligence when selecting adult leaders and safeguard children. These are issues for all congregations regardless of the gender or sexual orientation of adult leaders. They’re pertinent for Sunday School, youth groups, choirs and other activities involving youth. So it’s difficult to understand why a congregation would consider banishing children in scouting from the building when it’s the mission of the church to reach out to them, especially when it’s so explicit in the teachings of Jesus that we are called to bring the little children to him.

The decision the leaders of Boy Scouts of America are considering is not a radical leap forward. It’s a modest half-step toward inclusion. But it’s one that should be supported and affirmed, for the sake of the children, boys and young men for whom Scouting is a helpful guide to a better adulthood.

A World Health Organization report raises concern that lack of money will weaken efforts to combat malaria. This is disheartening news. Great progress has been made against this disease and it has produced life-saving results.

Last year more than one million children were saved as increased funding made it possible to provide more bednets, diagnostic kits and medicines. However, distribution of nets dropped sharply according to the WHO from 145 million two years ago to 66 million last year. As more children are born and existing bednets wear out, this drop will result in an increasing number of children left unprotected. The result will be more deaths and debilitating illness.

This is bad enough, but a hidden result concerns me even more. In the past, when the world cut back on funding malaria treatment and prevention, the malaria parasite spread rapidly and developed greater resistance to existing drugs. An even stronger parasite evolved making it more difficult to contain and control.

A particularly strong parasite has been identified in parts of southeast Asia in the past decade and some malaria specialists believe it could spread to Africa with devastating results.

The WHO estimates the disease could be contained with an expenditure of $5 billion per year globally. The cost of the war in Afghanistan to the U.S. is $3.6 billion a month. Tackling malaria is not beyond the capacity of the world’s governments and non-governmental organizations.

The fight against the diseases of poverty–HIV-AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, and polio among the many–is a longterm fight. They all deserve funding and a comprehensive approach to global health is within the world’s capacity.

The tendency of politicians and others to focus on a disease for a season, or with a short-term view is inadequate and dangerous. It provides opportunistic diseases the time to develop into more virulent strains which makes the task of combatting them more difficult. The result in the loss of life and debilitating, costly health problems for more people. NPR is providing a comprehensive overview of malaria in a series called Malaria: Pushing Back.

The effort to contain and significantly reduce malaria is a longterm struggle. If the world reduces the funding to support this struggle, the result will a stronger foe in the future, and a more costly one.

Our short attention span can be deadly. Over 100 global health advocates from The United Methodist Church last month delivered the message to their representatives that we want to continue funding the fight against malaria, for the sake of children who deserve the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life.

In addition,United Methodists and members of the ELCA continue to raise funds to combat malaria. The United Methodist effort is Imagine No Malaria. It’s necessary to take a long view toward this life-saving struggle as the Rotary Club International has done in its fight to end polio. Today, the disease is limited to regions of India and Pakistan. It has taken twenty five years, and Rotarians have been consistent and committed for the long haul, an admirable commitment in light of the difficulty the effort faces as it approaches its successful end. Let’s hope this commitment under hardship inspires governments and non-governmental organizations as well.

The risk of failure is too great. And too many lives are at stake to pull back now.

I like big thinking. I don’t mean big for the sake of bigness. I mean thinking about how to transform the world for the better–at scope and scale so that the billions whose lives are a daily struggle can see a better future, and live healthier, more comfortably and safely. Now.

I’m not opposed to small groups and individual action. Early in my pastoral ministry, I helped organize a small support group for parents of terminally ill children and I found it enormously helpful personally.

Our Problems are Intertwined

But as I travel, I see that the problems we face as a global community are intertwined. We’re all affected by climate change, water management, infectious diseases, interrelated economic ups and downs and galloping technological changes. While small groups can tackle some of the effects of these wide-ranging issues, in many instances they are bigger and more complex and we need to tackle them at a level of scope and scale that can truly affect global transformation. We need to work on them together.

Traveling through the mountains of the Philippines last week, a local man riding with me pointed out mountaintops left bare by clear cutting. He told me when he was a child, they were forested with old growth trees as wide as six feet. The global market for exotic wood led to their decimation.

Local groups mounted a protest and the cutting was eventually halted. This complex interweaving of global and local binds us in ways that we sometimes don’t appreciate because the connections are nearly impossible to perceive at each end of the chain.

Making Connections and Confronting Complexity

Therefore, I’m really glad for the likes of Bread for the World  and Sojourners who help connect disparate parts of the complexity. They seek to inform and affect policies and perceptions at a level that achieves scope and scale. When Bread for the World provided an analysis last week of President Obama’s approach to the U.S. budget compared to that of Rep. John Boehner, it was a helpful guide with useful information for a constituent group who can act collectively to influence policy. David Beckman, the head of Bread for the World, said in a meeting recently it’s essential that the faith communities in the U.S. advocate for a “circle of protection for the poor,” a phrase I’m told was suggested by my colleague James Winkler, general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church. That’s scope and scale. And it’s transformational.

Sojourners is perhaps the most effective ecumenical voice in the faith community today bringing biblical teaching to bear on economic policies and how they affect poverty and human wellbeing.

The Common Good is Global

Such efforts lift our thinking from how taxes and budget cuts will affect me and put the question into a larger context. How will these cuts affect us, all of us, particularly those of us who do not have the same influence, strength of voice and access to policy-makers that the rich and powerful have?

For people of faith, it’s important to recall that Jesus was steeped in Jewish teaching about justice and mercy, community and individual responsibility. Jesus instructs us how to treat each other individually and how we treat each other in the wider community. Both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are clear about our responsibility to each other at a level that rises to the whole community. There is a common good, and today it is global.

I am grateful that Bread for the World and Sojourners remind me frequently that a fundamental part of being faithful is seeing the wholeness of God’s creation, beyond the reductionist definitions of life: it’s about me, my house and neighborhood and my tribe and my people.

And more importantly, I’m grateful that they understand that individual transformation and collective transformation are not polar opposites. They are interwoven parts of a whole cloth called faithful discipleship.

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, troops came home not to the accolades and war heroes’ welcome of days past, but to personal attacks on character based on the condemnation of the war itself.

Today, we face an unprecedented number of troops coming home from what has become the United States’ longest war – Afghanistan – in addition to the thousands having already come home from Iraq. While this class of veterans may not always face the verbal attacks as did those from the Vietnam era, many face a pervasive communal silence in their transition home from war. The silence may not come from an aversion to these wars, but an apathy about them. Returning troops face a nation sublimely oblivious to the intense pain of war, loss of life and disruption of global community.

Contrast the last decade with the era of the Second World War. During “The Good War,” ration books adjusted everyday home front living with staples like coffee, sugar, fuel and more all coming under government regulation. No such costs have been exacted upon us during America’s longest war. War bonds are a thing of the past … grocery lists remain the same … the American automotive industry has survived recession and is coming back in spite of ongoing war.

In addition, while today’s returning troops suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and TBI (traumatic brain injury) are added to safety-net programs, many of the same people who herald patriotism call for budget cuts to these very programs. And, unless we live near a military base, we’ve seen little press coverage of the lives lost.

Tobias Wolff, Vietnam Veteran and professor at Stanford University has said,

“The sign of a really decadent civilization is one that sends young people out to do and to suffer the things that soldiers do and suffer in war and not to care about what those things are … not to have any costs laid on them [civilization] even of knowing … we seem to have avoided every other cost … but to avoid even the cost of knowing is an unforgiveable decadence.” (Operation Homecoming)

As a society, we can learn from a past that has resulted in over one-third of our homeless population consisting of veterans. Caring for returning troops is an act of responsibility taken by a civilization that recognizes their participation in sending them into harm’s way. Caring involves not only providing government programs that care for the mental and physical health of veterans, but participation in communal acts that envelop the whole person and empower them to fully return home.

A very powerful communal act is storytelling. In listening to the stories of those who’ve participated in war, healing can eventually come to those individuals and the cost of war can be understood so new ways of resolving global conflict can arise. Unless they speak, veterans may remain captives of war’s demons. Unless we listen, we fail to comprehend the horrors in which we collectively participate. Storytelling is a powerful, ancient ritual that moves people beyond language itself – shaping not only perceptions but also the ways in which we live together in the future. Storytelling provides a means of sharing the cost of war among all people, so we develop an aversion to war, and seek true and just alternatives for resolving conflict.

In January, many United Methodist congregations will participate in America’s Sunday Supper with Points of Light Institute – engaging communities in dialog about the issues that most impact returning troops and working together to address them. Some of our faith communities will provide free screenings of Operation Homecoming, or The Invisible Ones followed by dialog to raise awareness and assist in telling the story. Some congregations may provide job fairs, financial literacy programs, or initiate Habitat for Humanity builds for and with veterans. As important as the concrete results of these acts of service are, they offer more than the help itself. They offer a means of coming home.

Print and video stories that show the many ways United Methodists are involved can be found at www.umc.org/military and you can learn more about how to get involved.

It’s happened. More babies born in the past 12 months in the United States have parents who are Asian, African-American, Central or South American or of ethnic origins other than “non-Hispanic” whites. We’ve reached a hinge-point in U.S. history.

Children participate in a multicultural vacation Bible school in Nashville, Tenn. A UMNS photo by Kathleen Barry.

In the lead article in the New York Times, demographer William Frey said this represents “a transformation from a mostly white baby-boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Viewed in a global context, it’s even more than that. The global population is shifting in a similarly dramatic fashion. A surging youth population in the industrializing nations, declining birth rates in Europe and the rise of a globalized, multicultural and hyperconnected youth and young adult population are changing the world.

This rising tide of demographic change has been occurring over the past 40 years. It’s more than an unexpected tsunami, according to a paper released in 2007 by the British Council, a nonprofit educational and cultural organization.

And the changes are not benign. Demographic shifts will create cleavages across societies. Policymakers and social institutions, including the church–perhaps especially the church–must address them. We need public discourse that is deeper and more substantial than the polarized point-counterpoint posturing that passes for political dialogue in the United States today.

What the British report says of Europe applies to the U.S. in this regard: “At least equally as important is a societal discourse on how we in Europe want to live (with one another) in the future, since the presently perceived roles of the state, civil society, and economy will function only conditionally under the new demographic circumstances. Regional disparities will be more visible than before, since demographic processes will have increasingly heterogeneous effects.”

In the church, we need to look at our theology with deeper consideration for how we speak to these different groups with their unique life concerns, fears, hopes and aspirations. We will need to speak to the desire for inclusion as we speak to the fear of being left out, the demand for equity in contrast to the fear of losing influence, the desire for opportunity as the young and their seniors fear an uncertain future.

“In the church, we need to look at our theology with deeper consideration for how we speak to these different groups …” 

These and a host of other matters are not only about social policies; they are also theological. They will require the church, if it is to remain relevant to this new age, to offer more than pietistic bromides as surely as it will require politicians to go beyond their current level of simplistic, divisive posturing.

They will require us to look at:

• how we are connected as a global church,
• how we fund and carry out mission and ministry,
• how we communicate effectively with various groups as we share the good news of God’s love for all, and
• how we create communities of faith that offer hope, support, growth and compassion.

Within this global reality we will need to

• find our voice for justice,
• assess how we reach out to others as a servant people, and then do it,
• find new ways to express the faith to new people in new circumstances,
• demonstrate through our actions that even in this unsettling change, we continue to believe it is God’s world after all,
• affirm that it is a world of goodness, and
• live out the biblical teaching that it is God’s intent for all of us to flourish.

I’ll be posting about how I think these dynamics will affect my own religious community, and I welcome your reactions and reflections. Please feel free to contribute to this important conversation.

A few years ago at a worship conference in Seoul, I watched a group of young Koreans perform street dances more typical of the South Bronx than South Korea. Ball caps sat crosswise on young men’s heads and their pants precariously hugged their hips. Young women wore brand-name jeans and designer tops known the world over. They might have been from any urban neighborhood in the United States or China, Brazil or the Philippines.

Mfundo Zonke, a delegate from the South African Provisional Conference, speaks at General Conference. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.

A rising global middle class is emerging, not only in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries but in parts of Africa as well. I’ve been thinking about this as I reflect on the recent General Conference of The United Methodist Church. United Methodists are members of this global middle class, and I’m wondering how this will affect the church in the future.

According to Brink Lindsay of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the rising global middle class is shifting the economic and political center of gravity eastward and southward, from North America and Europe toward Africa, Latin America and Asia. It’s also leading sweeping cultural change. The 2012 General Conference saw a similar shift with increasing numbers from outside the United States.

Formal education levels are rising around the world in response to a growing need for knowledge workers. Billions of people are moving from meeting basic survival needs to a more affluent lifestyle. It’s estimated that by 2022 those living in poverty will be a minority.

A new generation of leaders

Most delegates to General Conference are white-collar professionals, fulltime church workers and clergy. They have the wherewithal to devote 10 days to the work of the church in an international setting. Assuredly, many make sacrifices–using vacation time, for example, as well as supplementing their allowances for lodging and food. But the ability to do this speaks of a level of autonomy and position worth noting.

Lindsay writes that “the explosive growth of choices and capabilities is ushering in a fundamental reorientation of culture: away from subservience to age-old tradition and established authority, and toward a new ethos of autonomy and self-realization.”

In addition, a generation of young, educated and technically savvy leaders is rising. These young leaders will reshape the church and take it in new directions. They reside in the North and the South; they are more globally aware, multicultural and diverse than previous generations.

“These young leaders will reshape the church and take it in new directions.”

This is already occurring. In hallway conversations, I heard criticism of authoritarian leadership styles, patronage appointments to committees, frustration about not being included in decisions and other expressions of autonomy, as well as desire for participation that reveal change is at hand.

Entering new territory

While there were many dynamics at work, the inability of the church to pass a restructure plan was informative. Restructure ran headlong into the rising expectations and voting strength of the global middle class in The United Methodist Church, expectations that include participation and influence in decision-making.

When debate in plenary focused ever so briefly on the economic participation of jurisdictional conferences and central conferences in supporting the general church budget, it was a sign of things to come. The central conferences (the regions of the church in Africa, Asia and Europe) will be asked to contribute more to the general church budget. And we will likely take a second (or third) look at the Worldwide Nature of the Church study, which calls for more regional autonomy.

Other issues are being discussed, sometimes in subdued voices, sometimes not. These include the role of the episcopacy, lay leadership, equitable representation, unresolved theological matters about human sexuality and other concerns, how we fund the general church budget and what we mean by the phrase “global church.”

How we deal with these questions will affect how different regions of the world church relate to each other and redefine partnerships and missional efforts.

In the near term, these issues are likely to become more acute and require greater attention than we’ve given them thus far. Unlike cultural affectations–the donning of brand-name jeans and rap music–they go to the heart of who we are as a church, and they will require us to have a serious, long-term conversation about how we want to move forward together in a shifting landscape for which there are few roadsigns and the territory is new to all of us.

With the close of a deadlocked United Methodist General Conference, it’s now time to look forward and begin the work the church agrees is before us – revitalizing congregations in the United States, concentrating on recruiting young clergy for the 21st century and developing the church in growing areas of the world.

Elizabeth Soard is commissioned as a United Methodist missionary. The April 29 commissioning took place at Palma Ceia United Methodist Church in Tampa, Fla., site of the 2012 General Conference. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.

A framework for this challenge already exists. The 2008 United Methodist General Conference affirmed Four Areas of Focus that are not only serviceable but are directly relevant to the challenges. While some are saying these are dead, I would suggest that, in fact, they are the means for us to move forward with actionable steps to implement outcomes that we agree are priorities.

We did not reject these priorities. We lost focus due to the emphasis on restructuring, which, as General Conference proved, was of debatable significance to achieve the outcomes of renewal and missional vision.

In real practice, the four areas intersect with remarkable compatibility, if we work with them as I’ve seen them implemented in various parts of the world. They provide a powerful means for engaging youth and young adults in the life of the church and for helping us live into being a denomination that is truly global in focus.

A new reality

We are seeing progress in every one of the Four Areas of Focus, and much of the discussion and action at General Conference reinforced — directly or indirectly – their importance.  For example, General Conference appropriated funds to move the leadership focus forward.

In Africa, the focus on global health has resulted in the engagement of local congregations in community outreach, evangelism, leadership development, and addressing the conditions of poverty and disease that compromise quality of life.

In the United States, engagement of local congregations in outreach efforts leads to internal renewal as well as involvement with new people, youth and young adults.

These efforts must fit the context of local communities yet also operate with the understanding that, no matter where we live, we live in a pluralistic, hyper-connected world.  It is a new reality. We will be influenced by a variety of cultural ideas and values, more than we may realize because of his hyper-connected pluralistic reality.

One model doesn’t fit all

This also means that multiple models of local faith communities are necessary. Those who advance a single, simple model should be met with healthy skepticism. With the fragmenting of social structures, the creation of communities of interest, a heightened emphasis on individual fulfillment in the North and the challenge of tribalism in Africa and ethnic and religious  differences in Asia, contextual models of how to be the church are more essential than ever.

Unfortunately, this General Conference did not focus on theological or missional vision. It was about organizational structure. But the vision we inherit from the previous General Conference offers us a comprehensive, future-oriented framework for carrying out mission and ministry. I believe this makes the Four Areas of Focus even more relevant because the context to which I refer is changing rapidly around the globe.

For example, youth and young adults the world over live with different economic challenges than previous generations. This is creating a fundamentally different perspective about hope for the future, meaningful employment and the value of education, all of which inform how they view themselves and their place in the world – in connection with others and as they stand before God.

Creeping secularism, the reshaping of life into consumerism, and pervasive skepticism that results from false promises and manipulation by marketers create a worldview among many youth and young adults that is unlike the worldviews of their elders.

They are skeptical in a way unlike those of previous generations. They demand honest dialogue, truth telling, inclusion, transparency and flexibility. Many see the church as an institution that is inflexible, hypocritical, exclusive in attitude and rife with hypocrisy. They connect differently, using media as a tool for face-to-face community. They are empowered by new media in a way that allows them to voice their feelings of marginalization and organize around them unknown in earlier periods of history.

Removing our blinders

Here’s the stunner. The adaptive challenge, which provided the foundation for the recent effort at restructuring the church, speaks to a global reality, but it was presented as addressing a U.S.-centric reality.

Exploding populations of youth in the South are creating huge paradoxes. On the one hand, young adults are more connected and aware, and some have greater opportunities than previous generations. On the other hand, they are also more aware of the effects of corruption, authoritarian rule, lack of educational opportunities and limited employment opportunities, and many are disaffected and economically marginalized.

In many parts of the industrialized world, young people are coming to an awareness that the opportunities open to previous generations are not as accessible to them. The need for astute clergy leaders from this generation has never been greater globally. The adaptive challenge is not just a U.S. problem.

The church must see this global challenge and remove the blinders that led us to a deadlocked General Conference and set the stage for an even more divided house in four years.

I contend that discussing the decline of the church in the United States and the growth of the church in Africa and Asia is too simplistic and reduces our options to narrow, dare I say, myopic responses. At issue is the relevance of the gospel to changing cultures and social realities in a globally, hyper-connected world of digitally informed young persons. They live in a world that is fundamentally different from the world their elders inherited. And they are faced with problems their elders never had to face.

This is a challenge to our theological understandings of hope, the sacred value of human personality, community, justice and the fruitful life that God intends for all. We need fresh thinking, global thinking that assimilates local context with actions that fit in a more expansive understanding of the role of the church in a global society as complex and multifaceted as the world evolving today.

I also contend that the Four Areas of Focus offer us the most readily accessible pathways to wrestle with this complex global reality and our local contexts. We need to develop principled Christian leaders for the church and world; create new places for new people; engage in ministry with the poor; and tackle the diseases of poverty.

In doing so, we will be challenged to think theologically with missional vision – to think globally and act locally. Let us begin.

I think it was 1978 when I first heard African church leaders discuss the “white savior complex” and blame the media for creating images of Africa in perpetual crisis.

We sat in a small, airy, modern building in Dakar, Senegal. It was hot. Dust devils swirled the sand outside. It was my first trip outside the United States and everything seemed noteworthy, even the flat, dry landscape beyond the windows.

This memory was conjured up by the public debate about the “Kony 2012″ campaign and its viral video.

The African church leaders complained to me as if I were representative of the entire journalism profession. They had wanted to unload on someone for a long time, and here I was, so they unloaded. I heard about their frustration that positive stories of Africans solving problems and creating economic progress were of no interest to Western journalists. The journalists only wanted stories of crisis, death, destruction, graft and political corruption, the church leaders said.

They only show up when something goes wrong. They take pictures, shoot video and leave. When they leave, the story goes away until a crisis pops up somewhere else. They don’t get the story accurate. They look only at the things they can see on the surface. They don’t understand the culture or the underlying circumstances that lead to human suffering.

They see drought but ignore longstanding issues that have roots in colonial exploitation, roots that create inequity and injustice and keep Africans in a subservient position in trade relationships, lacking the money to build infrastructure, education and viable businesses to compete globally.

But there was more. The African church leaders were also frustrated with the parade of celebrities who come for a day or two, get their picture taken and speak on behalf of Africans. Then they retreat to the most expensive hotels and leave on the next flight out. I heard about white people who come to Africa with a savior complex, as if Africans don’t have the intelligence or capabilities to solve their own problems.

“We lack resources, not resourcefulness,” the Africans told me. We don’t need white saviors telling us how to survive. We’ve been surviving here long before white people came and exploited the people and the land. After they leave, we’ll still be here, they said. I got an earful. Welcome to Africa!

All of these themes have come up in the “Kony 2012″ campaign flap. I was surprised by a blog post by a PR professional in the United States who said Invisible Children had deftly managed the public relations flap. Not from what I have read in reactions of Africans to the film. They raise issues that have been percolating for at least 30 years and the fact that the film steps into these troubled waters and stirs them anew is not a sign of deft PR. It’s a sign of good intentions run aground by lack of historical understanding and context.

In reviewing this criticism, I’m not making a case for ignoring the horrendous human suffering caused by Joseph Kony. The criticism does, however, provide perspective. For as long as I’ve been writing about poverty and its effects globally, which is now going on 30 years, I’ve been concerned about the exploitation of children, especially as child soldiers and through sex trafficking. It’s heartbreaking. It makes me angry. It deserves focused, ongoing attention until we’ve put an end to it.

For me, focus and ongoing attention are key. It’s unfortunate that the “Kony 2012″ campaign’s attention got diverted to the accuracy of its claims and the role the storyteller. 

I’m willing to give great leeway to the young filmmaker and his aspirations to put an end to Kony’s reign of terror. I’m reminded of Ann Lamott’s comment in Bird by Bird, “Reality is unforgivingly complex.” I’m grateful that he’s taken on this terribly important issue. And I’m hoping the attention Invisible Children has brought to the issue creates a sustained effort to put an end to Kony and others who exploit children in merciless ways.

This will require a multi-pronged  effort to empower African human rights advocates to press for action by governments in Africa, public support of the kind Invisible Children is creating in the United States and elsewhere to pressure Western policymakers and governments to pursue Kony and others, and to implement aid programs  that include measurable outcomes to protect human rights and prevent exploitation of children, and women who continue to experience rape and other indignities daily in Africa.

It’s been such a long, long time.

Postscript–March 16, 2012: Nicholas Kristof defends the young filmmaker with a compassionate defense. This BBC coverage contains African reaction to the video. David Reiff critiques the advocacy methodology and its outcome (or lack of it) in this article in Foreign Affairs. A tragic turn of events occurred today with the arrest of the young filmmaker. He is in my prayers.

March 20, 2012: Journalist Angelo Izama provides a lucid overview of the political context in which Joseph Kony operates and discusses how this complex context makes it possible for tyrants like Kony to function as proxies for the various political interests that help them to survive.

This collection of posts gives insight into the white savior complex from different points of view.

The controversy that has been stirred by the Invisible Children organization’s “Kony 2012″ campaign has created public discussion about important issues regarding human rights and humanitarian aid that need to be aired. The campaign is valuable in this way, regardless of its stated outcomes. A Foreign Affairs article on Invisible Children’s call for intervention last November makes one of the most damning critiques. Recently Foreign Affairs guest blogger  Joshua Keating charged that the organization “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) abduction and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony–a brutal man to be sure–as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.”

Over the past 30 years, humanitarian efforts have become entangled with political realities to a dangerous degree because human rights are invariably a part of humanitarian crises. The record on this entanglement is mixed. The Berlin blockade following World War II led to treaties that attempted to protect aid to civilians in conflict areas from the political and military agendas at work. This meant keeping aid itself as neutral as possible.

However, great human need always occurs within a complex political equation. Helping people in these situations is rarely as simple as it appears on the surface. Those most likely to suffer in natural disasters and war are the poorest and most vulnerable in the population. They live in the least substantial housing, lack the resources to flee to safety and are the least influential in the social structure.

A history of brutal leaders

Northern Uganda, where Kony operated before taking refuge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been in turmoil for longer than young Invisible Children filmmaker Jason Russell has lived. The people of the Karamoja region, home to 1.1 million, have long endured drought and political and social instability. Since its independence as a U.K. protectorate, Uganda has experienced a succession of despotic leaders who plundered the country and ruled by terror. Its first president after independence, Apolo Milton Obote, suspended the constitution and ruled under martial law, creating tribal conflicts and insurgencies that brought the country to ruin.

Obote was overthrown in 1971 by a military coup that implanted the infamous Idi Amin Dada, whose quixotic and deadly leadership has been well-documented in popular culture in the book and movie “The Last King of Scotland.” Civil war erupted and continued from 1979 through 1986. Government troops carried out genocidal raids that terrorized the region known as the Lewuro Triangle.

Obote returned to power in 1981, and some Ugandans say his second term was even bloodier than Amin’s. Yoweri Museveni became president in 1986, and he has brought relative peace and stability, except in northern Uganda. While he instituted progressive programs to combat HIV/AIDS, he is criticized on human rights by many international observers. Uganda is particularly harsh in its rejection of homosexuals today, for example.

A volatile mix

Reliefweb says the Karamoja region has the “lowest human development indices in the country.” The Reliefweb assessment also points out that 80% of the population faces food insecurity exacerbated by drought and lack of sustainable jobs. More than 1.1 million internally displaced people have returned to their homelands or have resettled to new locations after a peace agreement reached with Kony’s insurgency, but their ability to earn a living is still hampered by the broken economy across the region.

It is into this highly volatile mix of historical and contemporary political, economic and environmental currents that Invisible Children has stepped into and is suggesting military intervention. The Obama administration has put military advisers into Uganda to aid in locating Kony. However, their value is also being debated.

Looking past the fact that the assessment by Invisible Children is flawed (which should be enough reason for caution), it is also questionable how introducing yet another military operation in a region plagued by instability for the past 30 years could contribute to stability, especially when it would inevitably involve cross-border operations into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Kony is said to be operating now.

Sometimes doing good is not as simple as it seems from the outside.