Fr. Ernesto’s subject from yesterday will continue tomorrow.
There is little doubt that parachurch organizations now have a large part in providing many services and/or evangelism and/or missions that the Church is supposed to be doing. This sometimes places the Orthodox in a difficult position. On the one hand, it is difficult for us to support organizations that may very well lead a person to join a group that is not the Church, maybe even end up in a group that has a negative approach towards the Orthodox. On the other hand, our heart often goes out to the people to whom those organizations minister, and we may give to some organizations simply because they are the ones who have “feet on the ground” and are able to help those in need at that moment, even if they may end up leading some to join a group that is not the Church.
Frankly, for all the problems of the Medieval Western Church, there was some things they got right. Among them was that they had ways of incorporating groups that functioned outside of the local parish, but performed functions that the Church very much ought to be performing. There were a plethora of recognized ways for Western Christians to peform those functions yet remain within the Church. For instance, the oldest way to do so was by becoming a monk or nun. But later, the friars and sisters developed. Then there were the lay orders. Then there were interesting secular orders such as the Knights of St. John Hospitalier. Everyone of these groups had their own internal authority line, but at some place in the process they connected to Church authorities. In some cases they connected directly to the Pope, as with the Jesuits. In other cases, they might connect to the local bishop, if it were purely a local monastery or order of friars or sisters.
But, what is important to note is that a local member of a parish could know with a certain degree of confidence that it was probably all right to give to that group, because somewhere along the line, they were supervised by the Church. They could also know that even if the group went bad, eventually some outside Church authority would step in to correct the problem or disband the group. Such is not true today. The modern Christian giving to a parachurch organization has to rely on reports which may, or may not, be reliable. Those reports may come from the parachurch organization itself or from the people who were helped or from other outsiders.
But, the biggest problem that Father Orthoduck sees is not the problem of giving through a parachurch. One can, and should, always check whether the parachurch organization is a member of some reliable oversight group such as the ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) or the BBB (Better Business Bureau), etc. The problem with Father Orthoduck, as for so many Orthodox, is that one can never predict what will happen to those who decide to follow the Lord as a result of the ministrations of that particular parachurch. Since most parachurch organizations are not affiliated with a particular group, this means that it is a matter of some chance as to which church the new believer will be directed to join. The problem is that one cannot know for certain whether the new believer may be directed to a group that will disciple them in a safe and sound way. This is what makes it difficult to consider giving to a parachurch organization.
And yet, there are some parachurches that are doing such wonderful things that are not being done by the local Christian groups, or that function better for being done outside the local Christian groups. For instance, many of the pro-life organizations actually function better precisely because they are not tied to one Church or one theology. But, I digress. For the majority of Christian parachurch organizations, one is left with the difficult choice of supporting them in the work they do that is not being otherwise done (such as Bread for the World, or World Vision or the Wycliffe Bible Translators) and simply asking the Lord to take care of new believers, or of supporting only organizations that will bring new believers into the Church, but perhaps letting people suffer during severe times of need (such as the Haiti earthquake).
Father Orthoduck has no solution for the parachurch dilemma. He simply wanted to share the dilemmas as he sees it.
Care to comment on your years as a missionary with the South American Mission Society? How did it fit in with your observations here? We were honored to have a part in your ministry with financial and prayer support. It is now called the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders.
http://samsusa.org/
In one sense SAMS (whether England, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Singapore) only ever existed in the sending country. When we were in the host country, we were completely under the local bishop. There was no SAMS presence in any of the countries that received missionaries. In fact, for many decades, the missionaries were not even paid directly by the society, but rather the society sent the missionary’s money to the diocese, and the diocese disbursed it.
SAMS-USA chose (within a couple of years of its founding) to not follow the English system of paying the missionaries through the diocese. Eventually, the English went to the American system to resolve some problems with their taxing authority, problems that we could have had as well. You see, whether the IRS or other taxing authority, sending the money to a different organization to pay your missionary, but issuing a W-2 to them (or the English equivalent) in the name of the mission apparently could be construed as crossing some legal lines.
Nevertheless, the principle was clear, the sending agency was just that, only a sending agency. So, every SAMS missionary was under the direct authority of the local bishop. So, there was no parachurch organization “over there.” In the home countries, SAMS was part of the Anglican system (except for the USA) and would have been akin to a lay brotherhood/sisterhood. The USA was a particular problem because authorities at 815 were quite jealous of anything that was not them, particularly if it was an Evangelical organization. But for the SAMS organization, that was a purely USA problem.
One of the reasons we chose to go with SAMS was particularly because with SAMS the questions I posed above did not arise. And, I am glad to read that they are going around the world now. We still receive the Misionero.
But the Orthodox Church, especially in North America, has parachurch organisations like OCMC and IOCC.
I was interested to learn of your SAMS connection. I was born in Durban, and my great great grandfather is buried there in the same cemetery as the daughter of Allen Gardiner, the founder of SAMS.
Well, let’s look at the definition of a parachurch organization. According to Wikipedia (and other sources), parachurch organizations, “are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside of and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism, usually independent of church oversight. These bodies can be businesses, non-profit corporations, or private associations.”
I was asked a question about the SAMS organizations earlier and the answer would be the same for the IOCC and OCMC. None of the three organizations are independent of church oversight (except SAMS-USA, which unlike the other SAMS organizations is in a very non-supportive environment). None of the three really work outside of their respective denomination. In the case of IOCC and OCMC, they both have a rather strong ties to SCOBA and now to the Episcopal Assembly, meaning that while they work with all the jurisdictions, they are not truly fully outside of them. And both IOCC and OCMC work, just like SAMS, directly with the local bishop in the receiving country, and only with his approval.