20 Feb Gary Dilley: Well Done!
Here in the national office, we’re excited about the upcoming arrival of Jeff Bleijerveld as the new Director of Global Ministries. He’s a quality guy who will fit right in. I’ll enjoy watching him take our missions program to the next level…whatever that is. Jeff starts on March 3.
Tomorrow, the office staff will hold a farewell luncheon for Gary Dilley, who served as Global Ministries director from August 2001 until January of this year. Because of a prior commitment, I’ll miss that luncheon. Pat Jones has offered to eat my pizza for me, and he’s welcome to it. But since I’ll be gone, I thought I’d use this space to say some words about Gary, who has been a beloved friend, in addition to a coworker.
The 1990s were a time of unprecedented expansion in our worldwide ministry. In 1993, Ray Seilhamer was elected bishop and Kyle McQuillen was elected as Director of Missions, and they both served until 2001. At that time, we had churches in eight countries, and had opened only one new field per decade–Nicaragua in the 1960s, India in the 1970s, and Macau in 1987.
But from 1993-2001, the number of fields nearly doubled:
- 1993: Thailand
- 1995: Costa Rica
- 1997: Mexico
- 1998: Myanmar
- 1999: El Salvador
- 2000: Haiti
- 2000: Guatemala
In addition, the church planting work in India grew by leaps and bounds, and a number of Hispanic churches in the United States arose through the work of Denis Casco. Disclaimer: we in North America can’t take credit for this expansion. Much of it came from the initiative of our churches in Hong Kong and Central America. But in each case, we were involved, often heavily involved. So a great deal of new territory needed to be assimilated into worldwide United Brethrenism, and numerous new demands were placed on Global Ministries funds.
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