"I think the Decade of Evangelism is a dumb idea," said the Rt. Rev. Herbert Thompson, Bishop of Southern Ohio. "What are we going to do when the decade is over? It's like having a decade of the Eucharist, or a decade of prayer, or a decade of love."

Evangelism is now and always has been the primary work of the church, Bishop Thompson told representatives from 11 dioceses who gathered April 28-30 in Cincinnati for an organizing meeting of the Global Episcopal Mission (GEM) Network. The GEM Network was founded at last year's General Convention to maintain and enhance missionary efforts by the Episcopal Church in the face of significant budget shortfalls.

The Rev. Canon Patrick Mauney, director of Anglican and Global Relations at the Episcopal Church Center, spoke of the recent history of missionary activities.

"In the 1950s, there were 400-plus missionaries in the Episcopal Church," said Fr. Mauney, who served as a missionary in Brazil.

"In 1985, we had 80-plus appointees - long term people - and about the same number of volunteers. In recent years, we have had a steady decrease. Now we have 25 appointees, and about the same number of volunteers.

"In 1991, we ran into a brick wall, with significant cuts in staff," he said. "In a little over three years, one-third of the national staff that supports mission work has been cut. Last year, there was a very real possibility that the national church would no longer sponsor any missionaries."

Last summer, when it appeared that missionary funding might be eliminated from the national church budget, Bishop Thompson and the Rt. Rev. Richard Grein, Bishop of New York, gathered more than 40 bishops at General Convention to discuss the future of world mission.

Judy Gillespie of Trinity Church, New York City, former staff officer for world missions of the national church, told the bishops in Indianapolis "that even if we had not had this problem with the budget, we needed something like the GEM Network, and every head nodded," she said during the Cincinnati meeting.

"There's a frustration there, as well as at the grass roots level. We need to bridge a gap.

"In the past, the primary sending agencies have been the national church and private mission groups" such as the South American Missionary Society (SAMS), she said. "If GEM works, the primary sending agency will become the dioceses. This allows the diocese to set standards for discernment, training and support of individuals called to missionary work."

During the Cincinnati meeting, one recurring theme was the need for mutual dependency and mutual accountability that must exist between the people in the pews, the congregations, the dioceses, the national church, independent sending agencies and other parts of the Anglican Communion.

Ruth Jones of Southern Ohio, a member of the GEM steering committee, said the basic purposes of the GEM Network are to work with dioceses to increase awareness of global mission and active participation in the development, sending and receiving of missionaries and to enable dioceses to develop their own process for mission sending and receiving.

Speaking to the structure of the network, the Rev. Eugene Sutton of the Diocese of New Jersey noted that, "GEM will be a membership organization initially made up of dioceses who want to engage their congregations in the expansion of the missionary efforts of the Episcopal Church." Each member diocese will name a primary contact person who is ideally "supported by a global mission committee."

"Our task," said Bishop Thompson, "is to remember who we are - the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church."

This article originally appeared in Interchange, the newspaper of the Diocese of Southern Ohio.