printer-friendly email a friend

Young Missionaries Take Gospel to Ukraine, Cambodia and Beyond

By Eleanor L. Colvin, Director of Communications

The three newest missionaries in the Texas Annual Conference are no strangers to service. With Methodist roots firmly planted in White Oak, Houston and Champagne, Ill., each is uniquely equipped to take the gospel all over the world.

Missionary couple, David Goran, of Illinois, and Shannon Goran, of Texas, have been working among the roughly 150,000 college students in L’viv, Ukraine, for the past year. While Joseph Bradley of White Oak, serves the Cambodia Mission Initiative in Phnom Penh.

The trio was among 40 people commissioned during the October annual meeting of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries in Stamford, Conn.

Call of a Missionary

Although their ministry areas differ, they share a common calling – and each said the call to ministry became apparent over time and through service.

“Being someone who grew up in the church I always saw myself serving in the church, but it wasn’t until I graduated high school and began attending Lon Morris College that I really started looking at problems on a global scale,” Bradley said. “Once I started learning about the different ministries of the church and ‘other’ ways people serve, I started to see myself changing.

“I no longer saw myself as someone simply serving in the church but someone who served through the church to the outside world.”

For Shannon Goran, it started at Lakewood UMC in Houston, where she served with UM ARMY every summer while in high school. The spirit of service stayed with her at the University of Texas, where she traveled as a member of its Wesley Foundation on international mission trips and served a summer in Mexico.

“Through these different opportunities, I felt a calling to this type of service,” Shannon said. “The summer of 2001, I attended a college gathering in Knoxfield, Tennessee, called OneDay, where my calling was confirmed.”

Like Shannon, David Goran’s calling developed gradually, and “through a number of different experiences in mission, the affirmation of the church, and a God given desire to do something truly significant,” he said. 

At 26, David’s rich missionary experiences include a college opportunity to shadow a missionary in Zambia and learn different approaches to Christian mission.  His next major experience was in Cairo, Egypt – studying under a full-time missionary, who planted churches throughout the Middle East and organized historically Christian populations in Egypt.  

In contrast, Bradley’s ministry experience started closer to home, as he concentrated on prayer and Bible study as a means of learning what “service” would look like for him.

“I began at my home church in Ore City, Texas as the youth director of a small but wonderful youth group,” Bradley said. “This job taught me a lot about what it meant to work for the church and I first began to get a sense for what it was about ministry that really drew me in – it was the relationships – getting to know people on a personal level, their stories and their faith.”

Next, Bradley became a local pastor and served two churches outside Jacksonville in 2005.

“I noticed that all of my sermons where about going and doing,” he said. “After years of reflection on what this meant and where my heart was, I found myself entertaining the idea of a call to missions.”

Once he learned of the Mission Intern program, Bradley said he knew it was the perfect opportunity to serve and further discern his calling.

Forming Faith Abroad

It was serving as a mission intern that introduced Shannon Goran to her current work in the Ukraine in student ministry.

Because the schools there do not have campuses, she and David run their ministry from a fourth-floor apartment in a downtown building. There, they offer tea and cookies, free Internet access, a clean bathroom and a place for students to hang out, do homework and take part in Bible studies.

They provide a place for faith-forming relationships. And, so will Bradley, who suspects that the relational skills he’s learned after five years in youth ministry will be a blessing in Cambodia.

“I look forward to ministries where I can work with people face to face, learn their stories and get to know more about who they are,” he said. “As you may know, Cambodia has seen its share of dark days … I want to know, to the best of my ability, what it must be like growing up in such a time of fear and chaos and see how out of the terrible time people have begun to rebuild their lives.

“So, in short, I want to know people, I want to help people. If it seems simple, it probably is. When Jesus said it, it sounded simple: ‘love God and love your neighbor.’ We serve a God that desires to be in relationship with us and for us to be in relationship to the world.”

A Future with Hope

Although the three new missionaries already have fruitful mission ministries, they are hopeful about the future of missions in the United Methodist Church.

“My hope and prayer for the global mission efforts of the United Methodist Church is that we might – in many places and in many various ways – see the power and redemption of God as we spread a message of salvation and abundant life in discipleship and from that foundation witness to Christ through service,” said David, who comes from the Free Methodist Church. 

Shannon’s prayer is for help.

“I pray that more missionaries come forward and are supported by the church around the world because there are a lot of people and nations to reach,” she said. “I pray the evangelical part of missions is coupled well with the justice side of missions. I pray that the congregations of the United Methodist church become more involved and informed of what their denomination is doing in global ministries.”

Bradley’s prayer echoes Shannon’s. It’s a prayer for help –in telling the story of missions and in doing the work of missions.

“My prayer ... is that we would do a better job of letting people within the church know what all we are doing and how they can help – as conferences, as districts, as local churches – what they can do to make a difference on a global scale, whether it be committing to a covenant relationship with a missionary in service, or a particular country or cause.

“We as the Texas Conference already do a lot, but we can and must do more to strengthen our ties with the rest of the world. I pray that we would not be content … but realize that there is always more that we can do to help ease pain and suffering around the world. It is our calling as the church – to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned. Not one or two of these – but all of these.”

To become a covenant partner and missionary sponsor, contact Rev. Noel Denison, TAC global ministries coordinator, at ndenison@att.net. For more information on Texas Conference missionaries and their areas of service, visit www.gbgm-umc.org and click on missionary biographies.

Linda Bloom, United Methodist News Service, contributed to this report.

Comments

There are no comments
be the first to post one...

view discussions throughout the site