Stephan Bauman, the president of World Relief, has many memories of Madison. As a University of Wisconsin student he spent four years in college here and then worked in finance for two years after graduation.
He also remembers the orange carpet that used to grace the floor of the sanctuary at Madison Gospel Tabernacle, now City Church, at 4909 E. Buckeye Road. “We were married on that carpet,” he said, as he spoke at the church Sunday morning to kick off this week’s missions conference. “We kneeled in prayer on that carpet. And we received our vision and calling on that orange carpet.”
Now the president of a compassion ministry with a 60-million dollar annual budget, the relief and development arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, Bauman said that City Church “will always be our home.”
Bauman grew up in Burlington, in southeastern Wisconsin and came to the UW with no sense that he would devote his life to ministries of compassion. “I was a prodigal kid,” he said. “But I had a classic ‘Damascus Road’ conversion and repented spontaneously at age 18.”
Bauman and his wife Belinda became actively involved in the college ministry of Madison Gospel Tabernacle, at that time led by a young minister named Tom Flaherty. Flaherty is now senior pastor of City Church.
The Call to Missions
The Baumans also joined the church missions committee and soon felt God call them onto the mission field. For seven years they were with Mercy Ships, a part of Youth With a Mission. They worked on a hospital ship based in west Africa. He then spent three years with another relief and development organization before joining World Relief as the Country Director for Rwanda. Before becoming World Relief CEO last year he was Senior Vice President of Programs.
“World Relief has a great history and a great heritage, an incredible story that hasn’t been told well,” said Bauman. “Our mission is empowering the local church to serve the needs of the most vulnerable.” World Relief has 2500 salaried staff, who work with 100,000 volunteers, providing assistance in programs focusing on microfinance, AIDS prevention and care, child development, agriculture, disaster response, refugee resettlement, and is a leading advocate for immigration reform.
Many of these services are provided overseas, on U.S. government contracts with USAID and other agencies. The World Relief international headquarters is in Baltimore. But World Relief also provides services in the U.S. The nearest World Relief office to Madison is in Oshkosh.
The Importance of Justice
In his talk to City Church on Sunday (available online at: http://www.citychurchonline.org/media) Bauman said, “Without justice the will of God is incomplete.” He described three aspects of justice:
- justice fixes what is wrong
- justice means right relationships: with the earth, with yourself, and with others, including the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, and the poor
- justice is the full summation of the will of God
He said that fulfilling the mission of God is not just for missionaries, “it’s for every single person who follows Jesus.”
Photo: Stephan Bauman (middle) with InterVarsity president Alec Hill and Urbana Conference Director Tom Lin. Alec Hill worked with World Relief as a Regional Director in the 1980s.