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Covenanter Leads World Mission Center's Programs

NEW HAVEN, CT (April 5, 2005) - When Covenant missionaries come home on furlough, one of the places some stop is the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OSMC), where Evangelical Covenant Church pastor Dwight Baker is the program director. Baker also is associate editor of the center's distinguished International Bulletin of Missionary Research, a missiological journal with subscribers in 130 nations.

The family of gospel hymn writer William Howard Doane founded OSMC in 1922 as a housing and renewal center for missionaries on furlough. Doane penned the music for many hymnal standards, including "To God Be the Glory" and "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior."

Since 1967, OMSC has offered an annual series of seminars and workshops for continuing education in cross-cultural missionaries. Missionaries from around the world can participate in a residency program that lasts September through May. They also may attend for shorter periods of time.

While at the center, the missionaries form their own international community and worship together. Representatives from as many as 15 countries have stayed at the center at the same time, says Baker. These have included South Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, South Africa, China, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many different traditions also worship together ranging from Pentecostal to United Church of Christ.

Pastor Lygunda Fohle, a former leader of the Covenant Church of Congo (CEUM) currently is in residence and is writing several articles for the center's Dictionary of African Christian Biography. To read more of that work, please see Dictionary.

The missionaries get time to rest and be refreshed, Baker says, and "They get to hear more about what is going on in mission fields in other parts of the world. They do a lot of interacting."

The residency also offers workshops and seminars that are offered each week. Christian scholars from around the world lead the workshops. Ray Dahlberg, former executive director of the Department of World Mission, has taught at the center and has been an attendee as well. "In addition to the relationships and information gained, it increased my perspective of the problems being experienced by missionaries all over the world," Dahlberg says. Covenant missionary Ken Satterberg is scheduled to teach a workshop this week.

Presentations cover a range of topics, such as helping missionaries deal with the unique issues faced by their children, whom Baker refers to as being part of a third culture. These are children who must navigate the foreign cultures in which they may have spent much if not all of their lives, as well as the culture of their "home country." These children don't feel at home in either culture," Baker notes. "They have affinities with the different cultures, but even more with other similar kids from different cultures."

Dwight Baker joined the center in 2001, after having worked seven years on staff for the U.S. Center for World Missions. To learn more about OMSC and its programs, visit the center's website at OMSC.

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