Cameroon and Senegal Also Lost in Cote d'Ivoire Exit

UMC Made Big Mistakes in Cameroon Mission

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

June 1, 2024

The news from Côte d'Ivoire came as a shock, but not a surprise.

On May 28, 2024, the Côte d’Ivoire Annual Conference voted to leave the United Methodist Church, reversing its decision to join the denomination back in 2004. Effectively, a million members left the UMC in a single day, an astonishing and eyeball-popping accomplishment.

But something else happened that day, which has yet to be acknowledged or remarked upon. For the first time in over twenty years, Cameroon and Senegal do not have an official United Methodist presence.

In 2020, the General Board of Global Ministries handed over its two Mission Initiatives in Cameroon and Senegal to the Côte d’Ivoire Annual Conference, where they became districts under the episcopal leadership of Benjamin Boni. Therefore, unless the districts’ leadership chooses otherwise, Cameroon and Senegal will go wherever Côte d’Ivoire goes.

I take this news personally, because I served as the mission superintendent of the Cameroon Initiative from 2004-08 as a commissioned UMC missionary. This development greatly saddens me; I can’t help but feel as if my mission service was a failure. After all, the objective given me by Global Ministries was to grow the Cameroon Mission into a self-sustaining annual conference of The United Methodist Church that would be able to make its own determinations about ministry and mission. Instead, the Cameroon Mission was unable to nurture capable, stable indigenous leadership and build strong, flexible institutions and systems needed to enable its growth. The Mission was turned over to an annual conference located over 1,500 miles away, where it is merely an afterthought.

However, the truth about what happened in Cameroon is a complex, messy, and intrigue-filled tale of the wrong way to start mission ventures. I made mistakes certainly; I would never make a claim that my approach to ministry was flawless. But I did try to learn from my missteps, make adjustments, roll with the punches, up until my forced departure in 2008.

But Global Ministries, bishops, and American congregations made mistakes in their approach to Cameroon, too. I can’t see any evidence that anything was learned from their mistakes because they kept making them, over and over until the mission is no more.

The demise and loss of the Cameroon Mission was avoidable. And that's what bothers me the most.

A Brief History of the Beginning

In the 1980s, Victor Enow Ayuk (who died in 2021) landed in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to start classes at Calvin College. He arrived on a Saturday and was eager to find a church to attend on Sunday morning.  He picked up the phone book and called the first church he found – Trinity UMC. The pastor’s wife picked up the phone, instantly fell in love with the young African’s voice, and arranged for someone to pick him up for Sunday services.

Victor grew up in the English-speaking Southwest Province of Cameroon, in a village called Sumbe. His father was a Baptist minister and educator, who wanted the best university education for his son and managed to secure a place for him in an American college.

While at Trinity, Victor began a close relationship with its pastor, the Rev. Charles Garrod and his wife, Marcile. The entire church treated Victor like a king, taking care of many of his temporal needs as well as allowing him to stay in one of the parsonages for a time.

By the time he graduated from Calvin College, Victor was a committed United Methodist Christian. He decided to pursue ordination, and enrolled at Wesley Theological Seminary, a UMC-related institution in Washington, D.C., and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. After completing only one and a half semesters at Wesley, however, Victor received an urgent message from the prime minister of Cameroon – his country needed his service. Returning to Yaoundé, Victor took a position in the prime minister’s office and began a career in government.

From here, the story of Victor Ayuk’s involvement in the United Methodist Church of Cameroon becomes more complicated. According to Rev. ST Kimbrough’s authorized version of the mission's origins, as told in "In Their Own Words," Victor began planting several United Methodist congregations and cell groups across the country with the help of Rev. Garrod and Trinity UMC. Rev. Garrod finally contacted Global Ministries and alerted them to the young burgeoning Methodist movement in Cameroon. Global Ministries’ interest culminated in a 1999 visit by then-General Secretary Randy Nugent and the beginning of an official relationship.

When Rev. Nugent visited Yaoundé with a small group of Global Ministries staff, they were met at the airport by Victor, a delegation from the prime minister’s office, church leaders, and a youth choir called The Wesley Singers. Victor himself showed up at the airport decked out in full clerical robe and vestments, although he was not ordained.

The Global Ministries' team was taken to the Hilton, the most luxurious hotel in the city, and promptly checked in. A series of meetings were then held in a second-floor conference room over the following days. During that same visit, someone from Global Ministries took a handful of Cameroonian pastors to a new car showroom in town and inquired about pricing and availability of certain vehicles.

It’s hard to know what was promised during the first official visit of the United Methodist Church to Cameroon. But it’s clear that the trip made one resounding and long-lasting statement — “We’ve got money and we’re ready to spend it!” Victor understood this message loud and clear. He lobbied Global Ministries to put him on its payroll and make him “staff.” Though his request was denied then and, in the future, he made continued and frequent requests for financial support over the years even though he had a good government job.

In 2000, Global Ministries sent a team of pastors, scholars and denominational leaders back to Cameroon for two weeks of lay pastor training; the first week was held in the French-speaking part of the country, and the second in the Anglophone area. This training consisted of teaching about basic Methodist history, polity, and theology. Following the training, participants received certificates of completion. The promises and rights inherent in receiving these certificates soon became a problem; many pastors took them to be proof of employment by an American business.

It’s not as far-fetched as it seems. Not long after the team left, the lay pastors who had participated in the training began to receive monthly stipends from the mission office. By the time I arrived at the mission, the most experienced pastors received approximately $170 per month; the rest received $110.

I knew very well that this monthly stipend is what attracted all our pastors to the mission; though a paltry sum by American standards, it was roughly commiserate with what civil servants made – and Cameroonian civil servants never knew for sure if they would be paid in a given month or not.

During my time in Cameroon, I received a steady stream of prospective pastors in my office. Each one had a stirring story about how he or she had become disillusioned with their own Presbyterian/Baptist/Pentecostal church and had come to believe that the United Methodist Church was the one “true” church.

Our pastors also fully expected that there was more remuneration to come, and that if they would only be patient the church in America would soon be sending more money for salaries, pensions, church buildings, cars, and other luxury items. The fact that this never happened became a bigger and bigger problem for the pastors. And I faced the brunt of these exaggerated expectations.

Mission Foundations

On this flimsy foundation, the mission in Cameroon began. By the time I arrived as mission director, I inherited 19 churches and 21 pastors who were receiving some sort of financial assistance from Global Ministries. Their allegiance to the denomination was predominantly determined by money. And their backgrounds proved it.

Victor was responsible for selecting the pastors in the Anglophone part of the country. He chose family members and friends, mostly uneducated rural farmers, who knew little about the Bible, theology, or church practice. This was a conscious choice meant to preserve Victor’s power in the fledgling church; he wanted to make sure that there were no other rivals to his authority. But he enticed these pastors by promising them that they would be making lots of money soon.

At various times during my term in the mission, Victor referred to himself as the mission’s founder, president, and bishop, though he didn’t fit any of those titles, officially or unofficially. Repeatedly, Victor asked for financial favors from the mission, Global Ministries, and overseas churches. Once, he even suggested to me privately that the two of us could start a diamond mining business in his home village and get rich!

However, Victor was distracted from church affairs by his promising career in politics and made a significant misstep by trusting a man named Jean-Daniel Billong to start working with the mission in the Francophone area. Billong only had Bible school training from Pentecostals in Nigeria but was a charismatic leader and gifted worship leader. Billong recruited his friends in Yaounde and Douala to become pastors with a similar promise that more money would be coming soon. They were a mixed bag of dubious histories, intentions, and spiritual gifts.

Flawed Strategy

I know now that my ministry was doomed before I ever set foot in Yaounde. I believe that Global Ministries should have known that it was doomed, even though it clearly didn’t. My supervisors continued to push me in the direction of making all the correct administrative maneuvers in the service of helping the Cameroon Mission progress through the steps required in the Book of Discipline to become an annual conference. At the same time my supervisors ignored the fact that the only reason there were any people and churches in the mission was because of the looming presence and promise of the American dollar. They failed to discern that the foundation which had been laid could not sustain a true and genuine Methodist movement.

While serving in Cameroon, I began to sense that the focus of the mission needed to move away from checking administrative boxes and handing out money. In retrospect, I believe that the goal in Cameroon should have been to plant and grow new Christian communities of faith, inspired by the Wesleyan emphasis on scriptural holiness of head, hearts and hands – period. Any talk of becoming a conference, provisional or otherwise, was premature. I should have placed less emphasis on the organizational goals of Global Ministries and more emphasis upon relationship-building and leadership training, so that a genuine Wesleyan movement might emerge.

I can not say for certain whether Methodism ever really took root in Cameroon. All I know is that today only 17 churches are still in existence, with 20 pastors. The mission is not self-sustainable; as of this writing, pastors still receive stipends from Global Ministries.

This result was avoidable. It was the product of an outdated approach to mission work which throws money and resources into a mission context without allowing for the careful vetting and nurturing of indigenous leadership.

Outside of the control and sphere of Côte d’Ivoire and Global Ministries, perhaps Cameroonian Methodists — if there are any left — can now truly discover what inspired John Wesley so that they can reform their nation with a vision of social holiness.

The Rev. Dr. Wes Magruder serves as Office Director of Church World Service in Wilmington, North Carolina, a refugee resettlement office. Previously he was a pastor in the North Texas Annual Conference and served as a United Methodist missionary in Cameroon, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.