Mission agency names new director for Advance

By Elliott Wright*

NEW YORK (UMNS) - Shawn S. Bakker, who has broad professional experience in religion, nonprofit management and fundraising, is the new director of the Advance for Christ and His Church, the designated mission-giving program of the United Methodist Church.

Her selection was announced by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The Advance is a major funding channel for the support of missionaries, mission projects, and humanitarian relief and rehabilitation around the world.

Bakker, who starts Dec. 1, succeeds the Rev. William T. Carter, who retired in June after 28 years with the mission agency and the Advance.

She is "dynamic and bold," according to Cashar W. Evans, a North Carolina layman who chairs the Advance Committee. Bakker also is well-grounded in theology and United Methodist practice, said the Rev. R. Randy Day, chief executive of the mission board.

The Rev. Jan Davis, secretary of the Advance Committee and executive pastor of Christ United Methodist Church, Plano, Texas, called Bakker a "young, bright woman with a strong track record of innovative program experience. She will bring new vision to our work."

The Advance represents what is known in United Methodism as "second-mile mission giving," that is, donations beyond congregational apportionments for the World Service fund. Annual giving through the Advance in recent years has averaged between $30 million and $35 million, not including the amount given for disaster relief.

Bakker is a native of Sioux Falls, S.D., and grew up in a Christian congregation there. She joined the United Methodist Church while at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minn., where she graduated in 1996. She then worked for a decade with United Methodist-related ministries in Dallas and studied at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, earning a master of theology degree.

In 1998, she became the first director of Project Transformation, a program developed in the North Texas Annual Conference that employs college and university students in urban ministries with children and youth. This involved the annual coordination of more than 300 students, 1,200 volunteers, 90 local churches and 15 institutions within the conference.

Bakker also had served as a missionary through the former 10-10-10 program of the mission agency and worked for the Wesley-Rankin Community Center, a national mission institution in Dallas.

She left Texas in 2005 to accompany her husband, Jeremy Bakker, to New Haven, Conn., where he was entering a doctoral program in theology at Yale University.

*Wright is the information officer of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.