NOTE: This is a digest of news features provided by United Methodist Communications for August 25-29. It includes summaries of United Methodist News Service stories and additional briefs from around the United Methodist connection. Full versions of the stories with photographs and related features can be found at umc.org/news.
Top Stories
A UMNS special report on immigration
MCALLEN, Texas (UMNS) - A United Methodist delegation recently visited the Rio Grande Valley to get a first-hand look at the border crisis caused by a surge of unaccompanied minors and families crossing into the United States. UMNS reports on what delegation members saw and how that shapes recommendations for a deeper United Methodist response on immigration issues. The coverage includes stories on a United Methodist Women-supported community center in Laredo, Texas, and on United Methodists who do full-time ministry on the border, and what this summer has meant for them.
Mike DuBose, UMNS
A coyote, or smuggler, (right) uses his hands to paddle a rubber raft full of immigrants across the Rio Grande from Mexico to the U.S. side of the river in Roma, Texas. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS.
Border visit brings immigration crisis into focus
First in a three-part series by Sam Hodges, McALLEN, Texas (UMNS)
IMMIGRATION CRISIS SLIDESHOW
United Methodist leaders learn first-hand about the recent border crisis in South Texas.
View Slideshow
In a Catholic church fellowship hall turned immigrant relief center, United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño huddled with Elmer Moreno Gonsales and his two daughters, 13-year-old Mariela and 12-year-old Katerin.
She joked and prayed with them in Spanish, and gently drew them out about the month-long journey they had made from Honduras to Texas.
Southern Mexico was the toughest place, Gonsales said. He spoke of getting separated from his daughters and beaten by men demanding money. He started to pull down his shirt to show the wounds, then stopped.
“What’s behind stays behind,” he said through a translator.
The often abstract issue of immigration turned into vivid reality for Carcaño and about two dozen other United Methodists leaders as they visited the Rio Grande Valley last week.
Their fact-finding and strategizing meeting, underwritten by the United Methodist Committee on Relief, United Methodist Women, and the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, was prompted by the tens of thousands of families and unaccompanied minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have crossed Mexico and into the United States this year – mostly in Southern Texas, along the Rio Grande River.
Experts say the surge owes to increased violence and persistent poverty in Central America, and to a 2008 anti-trafficking law passed overwhelmingly by Congress, allowing children coming from those three countries at least a chance of getting to stay legally.
Of late, the numbers have dropped sharply, as has news coverage. It could be a lull, owing to disrupted train service in Mexico, to the extreme late summer heat, or both.
BORDER CRISIS RESPONSE
Read the UMNS series on the border crisis.
But people are still coming across. A United Methodist News Service reporter and photographer made a random, late afternoon stop on Aug. 19 at Roma, Texas, and saw a raft full of immigrants cross the Rio Grande, then run down a dirt road on the U.S. side.
Carcaño — a Rio Grande Valley native and organizer of the border gathering — believes the urgency for the denomination on immigration issues remains.
“My hope is that we as United Methodists will continue to learn about this opportunity of ministry that Jesus is calling us to, that we would strategize a national and regional plan for how we can respond,” said Carcaño, leader of the California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference.
So to the border, she and other United Methodists came.
United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño (right) and the Rev. Javier Leyva (standing) pray with Elmer Moreno Gonsales and his daughters Mariela (left) and Katerin at the immigrant welcome center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, Texas. The family immigrated from Honduras following a monthlong journey. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS
Riverside tutorial
The Aug. 17-19 meeting drew Bishop Julius Trimble of the Iowa Annual Conference and co-chair, with Carcaño, of the United Methodist Immigration Task Force; Bishop James Dorff of the Southwest Texas and Rio Grande Conferences; retired Bishop Elias Galvan, who oversees the United Methodist mission in Honduras; Bishop Felipe Ruiz Aguilar of the Methodist Church of Mexico; and various United Methodist agency and ministry representatives.
After a Sunday panel discussion with local United Methodists and others involved in responding to the summer’s border crisis, the delegation set out early the next morning.
The caravan stopped first at Anzalduas Park by a narrow bend in the Rio Grande River where, usually at night, people cross in overloaded rafts to the United States.
The Rev. Javier Leyva — recently appointed by Dorff as director of United Methodist immigration ministries in South Texas — gave a riverside tutorial.
He noted that, unlike Mexicans who face immediate deportation if caught, unaccompanied minors coming from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have the promise of an immigration hearing under the 2008 law, and tend to surrender themselves to the Border Patrol.
“They walk toward the shining light,” he said.
Leyva and Susan Hellums, a longtime United Methodist relief worker in the Rio Grande Valley, told the group that some families making the journey are actually middle-class Central Americans in despair of increasing drug cartel- and gang-related violence in their countries.
Leyva said some sell everything – paying, on average $5,000 to $7,000 – for the cost of travel and escort by generally unscrupulous “coyotes.”
After a question-and-answer period, the Rev. Jorge Luiz Domingues of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries led the delegation in prayer, asking God to “help us that our hearts will be open to you and to the love of all people, especially those who are suffering and those who are in need, the migrants who are coming our way.”
The chorus of amens had to compete with the rising whine of engines.
Eyes open now, heads unbowed, the United Methodists could see two motor boats churning at high speed up the Rio Grande.
“Border Patrol,” confirmed Leyva.
A delegation of United Methodist and other church leaders prays together on the U.S. shore of the Rio Grande at Anzalduas Park in Mission, Texas, directly across the border from Reynosa, Mexico. The group is holding a strategy meeting to learn more about the border crisis and improve the United Methodist response. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS.
Highs and lows
The group’s tour would include stops at the McAllen bus station, a departure point for immigrants released after initial detention, and the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, where United Methodists and many others have volunteered and made donations.
Probably the tour’s high point was Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown McAllen, the local center of interfaith humanitarian relief effort for the surge of immigrants.
There, Carcaño met not only with the Honduran family but also with a young mother who had traveled from Guatemala with her 5-year-old son.
“She’s very concerned about the violence. She’s concerned about the welfare of her child,” Carcaño said. “It took her a month to get here.… They walked some of the way. She has a sister in San Francisco, and hopes to be reunited with her.”
As Carcaño visited with the immigrant families, others in the delegation toured the Sacred Heart-based relief effort. They marveled at two staff members supervising a team of volunteers — everyone from Texas Baptists to yarmulke-wearing Jews — who helped immigrants get showers, clothing and food, and make phone calls.
“That thing down there at Sacred Heart is amazing,” Dorff would say later. “It runs like a machine.”
If there was a tour low point, it was a new federal processing center where unaccompanied minors are held.
A few weeks before, Dorff and others had, at the peak of the influx, visited a holding facility badly overcrowded with just-arrived youths, exhausted and dirty. He and others struggled to give words to what they’d seen.
Since then, the Border Patrol has remade an old seat-belt manufacturing facility into a new, spacious processing center. During the United Methodists’ visit, workmen were still putting benches into place. The roomier space, plus dropping numbers — the facility is handling about 40 a day, compared to 300 at one point this summer — has made for a situation that Dorff pronounced dramatically improved.
But the interior of the new facility is full of metal fencing, beyond which the group could see young children at play. The Border Patrol officer who led the tour acknowledged that the bright lights burn all night. Even brief pastoral visits with the minors are, for security reasons, extremely limited.
Galvan said he trusted reports of improvement, but still had concerns.
“The feeling you get inside is that you’re in a prison,” he said.
United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño (right) shares letters of encouragement with Regino Enrique at the immigrant welcome center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, Texas. The 5-year-old and his mother, Macaria, who did not share their last names, arrived from Guatemala after a month-long journey. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS.
Poignant homecoming
Delegation members returned to First United Methodist Church in McAllen on Monday night and Tuesday for discussion of what they’d seen, and for sharing information about United Methodist humanitarian and advocacy efforts.
The Rev. Laura Merrill, superintendent of the Southwest Texas Conference’s McCallen District, spoke about the ongoing need for volunteer groups and monetary donations.
“Please don’t bring us any more old clothes,” Merrill said. “If you’re bringing us new stuff, we’re going to find a place for that.”
On Tuesday, the delegation members broke into small discussion groups. One looked at coordinating and bolstering United Methodist response to immigration issues right at the border. Another considered how to do that across the United States. Others focused on renewing the denomination’s advocacy for immigration reform and on coordinating Methodist efforts in the United States with those in Mexico and Central America.
Those groups agreed to stay in touch by phone and email, and report with recommendations that will inform discussion at a Sept. 29-Oct. 1 meeting in El Paso, Texas, of the United Methodist Immigration Task Force and Methodist Border Mission Network.
For Carcaño, the Texas border tour had represented a specific and poignant homecoming. Anzalduas Park is where she came long ago with other United Methodist youth to celebrate completion of their confirmation class studies.
“To have been at that park when I was 11, talking about what it meant to take the steps to become a full disciple of Jesus Christ, and now to come back when I’m 60 and to be at the same park, thinking about what discipleship means in the light of the immigration situation … is really quite amazing,” she said.
Next: In Laredo, Texas, a United Methodist Women-supported community center finds new purpose as a welcome center for immigrants.
Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
Mike DuBose, UMNS
Elizabeth Jimenez (foreground) helps sort clothing for immigrants from Central America at the Holding Institute. Jimenez was a student in the boarding school at Holding, a United Methodist Women National Mission Institution. With her, from left, are Rosa Maria Narvaez, Lydia Mejorado and Elva Guzman, UMW volunteers from La Trinidad United Methodist Church in Laredo.
Nonprofit finds new life in meeting immigrants’ needs
Second in a three-part series by Sam Hodges, LAREDO, Texas (UMNS)
Less than a year ago, Michael Smith found himself trying to breathe life into a dormant community center known as Holding Institute.
Now he could get winded just keeping up with all that goes on there.
Holding — a United Methodist Women National Mission Institution with a storied past — has become Laredo’s go-to place for humanitarian relief in the summer border immigration crisis.
“We’re an old battleship that’s been re-commissioned,” said Smith, Holding’s director.
Since June, about 1,500 just-arrived immigrant parents and children from Central America have stopped by Holding after release from federal detention.
BORDER CRISIS RESPONSE
Read the UMNS series on the border crisis and immigration.
They get refreshments, a shower, toiletries, and a chance to make phone calls before moving on by bus to connect with relatives in the United States.
Holding’s sprawling, one-story facility — a former lumber mill in a historic but hardscrabble part of Laredo’s downtown — now teems with donated clothes, snacks, hygiene items and water bottles.
Catholic Social Services from the Diocese of Laredo has set up shop here, to help meet needs. The Texas Baptist Men brought portable showers.
Volunteers — including a Buddhist group and Methodists from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the Rio Grande River — are regularly present to help with sorting and distribution.
Terry Schoenert, the Southwest Texas Annual (regional) Conference president for UMW, witnessed Holding’s renewal during the challenge of coping with an immigrant surge.
“They were looking for things to do to be more vital in the community, and this has enabled them to be much more vital,” she said.
Serving since the 19th century
Holding Institute began in 1880 as Laredo Academy, a boarding school for young women from the United States and Mexico. The school was established by the Women’s Board of Missions for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
In 1883, Nannie Holding of Kentucky arrived to teach. She soon became superintendent, overseeing rapid growth and the addition of male students.
When she retired in 1913, the school — right by the Rio Grande — was renamed for her.
Holding Institute would survive as a school for decades, despite being flooded out in 1954, and having to relocate within Laredo.
“It was known all over Mexico,” said Delia Whitfield, a 1976 graduate and member of First United Methodist Church of Laredo. “If you went to Holding Institute, that was a big deal.”
But by 1983, financial problems forced the school to close. Holding reemerged as a community center, occupying the old lumber mill.
Leadership and recession-related funding woes caused Holding to shut down altogether in 2011. (UMW owns the property and provides free rent and property insurance, as well as a $20,000 annual grant. But most operating funds must be raised by the local nonprofit.)
Last year, Holding’s board tapped Smith, a bilingual, long-term resident of the area with a background in non-profit consulting, to get things going again.
“They gave me the keys to the property, and they told me there was $3,000 in the bank account,” he said. “The first challenge was to repair and clean up.”
Last December, Holding began offering low-cost classes in English, computers and financial literacy, serving about 75 people.
Cots and cheeseburgers
In late May, Smith had a request from community activist Viky Garcia.
She wanted Holding to help with the swell of parents and children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who were showing up at the Laredo bus station, having been briefly detained by federal authorities, then released and given an immigration court date.
While not the unaccompanied minors who attracted so much media attention this summer, they were joining them in fleeing countries beset by poverty and the violence of gangs and drug cartels.
Most families were arriving in Laredo dirty and exhausted from a long and frightful journey, with little money left.
Smith had doubts about expanding Holding’s mission, but agreed to provide shelter.
“I remembered that in a closet there were some old Army cots,” Smith said. “My wife went to the 24-hour McDonald’s and we bought everybody cheeseburgers.”
The city reminded Holding that it wasn’t licensed as a shelter. So that service ended. But as the immigrant numbers grew through June and July, Holding joined Catholic Social Services and Bethany House of Laredo, a local homeless shelter, in forming the Laredo Humanitarian Relief Team. The team used Facebook to post updates and photos of their work.
At first, Holding was the place to get showers and clothes. But because of its large property – covering essentially a city block – it took on more relief distribution. Catholic Social Services accepted Holding’s offer to relocate there, and the Texas Baptist Men brought in portable showers to supplement Holding’s rusty ones.
Leaning forward
A logbook shows 741 immigrants passed through Holding in June alone. Donations have more than kept pace, as witnessed by rooms full of clothes and other supplies.
Holding has been hopping with volunteers, both individuals and groups. Some have come from long distances. Many are local.
One day last week, the Rev. Jaser Davila, pastor of Aposento Alto Methodist Church across the river in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, led a youth group in hauling in donated goods. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Gallardo-Jimenez, a 1958 graduate of Holding, sorted clothes with other UMW members from La Trinidad United Methodist Church of Laredo.
Holding also has received financial help this summer, including a special $7,500 UMW grant to restore air-conditioning and assist generally. But Holding remains precarious, operating on a $40,000 budget.
“This facility needs a lot of work,” said the Rev. Paul Harris, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Laredo and a Holding board member. “And it needs money. We have a director that serves fulltime at a quarter-time pay.”
Hortense Tyrell, UMW executive secretary for national ministries, visited Holding last week. She alerted Smith to other UMW grant possibilities.
With a year’s track record, Smith believes he’ll be able to attract support from a range of philanthropies. He notes that Holding’s classes are about to start again, with 150 students signed up.
The number of immigrants coming through dropped in August. Smith wants Holding to continue to offer relief as needed, but to go a step farther, adding a resource center for those just arrived.
The summer emergency did indeed prove a crucial opportunity, he said.
“Because we stepped up, I think that did help us an organization. People started to talk about Holding again.”
Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
Next: For some United Methodists in the Rio Grande Valley, helping meet humanitarian needs from the summer immigration surge became a full-time challenge.
Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNSSanuanita Leal (left) greets the Rev. Javier Leyva near her home in Mission, Texas. Leyva, now director of immigration ministries for The United Methodist Church in South Texas, previously served as her pastor and baptized Leal and her family.
Church draws on border natives in immigration crisis
Third in a three-part series by Sam Hodges, MCALLEN, Texas (UMNS)
The Rev. Javier Leyva was only three weeks into a new appointment in New Braunfels, Texas, near San Antonio, when he got sent back to where he’d just come from: the Rio Grande Valley.
Bishop James Dorff, leader of the Southwest Texas and Rio Grande Annual (regional) Conferences, felt he needed someone to oversee humanitarian response to the summer surge of Central American youths and families crossing through Mexico and into South Texas.
So in mid-July he created a new position — director of United Methodist immigration ministries in South Texas — and appointed Leyva.
Now Levya, 61, and his wife are living in a garage apartment in McAllen, with most of their belongings in storage. He’s using borrowed office space, and driving the heavily patrolled highways between three key border cities: McAllen, Brownsville and Laredo.
He’s not complaining.
“I was happy that they’d asked me,” Leyva said. “This is right down my alley.”
Leyva joins Susan Hellums and Cindy Andrade Johnson as Rio Grande Valley natives in the thick of the United Methodist relief effort for immigrants there.
They have local knowledge, and contacts. They’re part of a longstanding ecumenical and interfaith effort to respond when there’s an emergency in the Rio Grande Valley.
“These folks have been networking down here for years,” Dorff said in McAllen, during a recent immigration fact-finding and strategizing meeting of United Methodist leaders.
BORDER CRISIS RESPONSE
Read the UMNS series on the border crisis.
Find more resources and stories about the church's response to immigration.
`God works on us’
Hellums, 60, helped with logistics for that meeting, organized by Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference.
When the group visited Anzalduas, Park, where many immigrants try to cross the Rio Grande River, Hellums and Leyva both fielded questions. They noted that Central Americans have tended to surrender to U.S. Border Patrol, hoping for an immigration court hearing.
Mexicans, more likely to face expedited deportation, usually do not.
“They’re the ones that try to go on themselves,” Hellums said at the river gathering. “And they’re the ones who die in the ranchlands.”
Hellums and Carcaño are the same age and both grew up in Edinburg, Texas, just north of McAllen, attending different United Methodist churches there.
Hellums went away to college, and with her husband would live in Wyoming, Colorado and elsewhere in Texas. But she’s been back in the Rio Grande Valley for three decades. She’s had a long career as a border area mission coordinator, a staff position she currently holds for First United Methodist Church of McAllen and the McAllen District of the Southwest Texas Conference.
She’s also a leader of the Methodist Border Friendship Commission, a United Methodist Board of Global Ministries project that promotes fellowship, evangelism and mission on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. And she was an early board member of Faith Communities for Disaster Recovery, which formed in the Rio Grande Valley in 2003, after severe flooding.
When the immigration surge began this summer, Hellums called Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. They agreed the disaster recovery group needed to be involved. Thus began meetings that have helped coordinate the faith-based response.
Hellums also has been a liaison for United Methodist church groups that have wanted to donate or volunteer, just as she has long placed such groups in the colonias, or substandard housing areas, of the Rio Grande Valley, one of the nation’s poorest communities.
“God works on us,” Hellums said. “And I get to work with a lot of wonderful, passionate people.”
Tipped off by stories
Johnson, 51, retired as a public school teacher in Brownsville last year, a move that let her quicken her already considerable pace as a social activist and volunteer.
It was in volunteering at Brownsville’s Ozanam Center, which assists the homeless as well as refugees, that she noticed something happening with immigration by Central Americans.
“From conversations and stories, that’s where I could see that clearly it was going up,” she said.
Johnson grew up in Brownsville, in a faithful United Methodist family. Her younger sister is the Rev. Lorenza Andrade Smith, known to many in the United Methodist Church for living on the streets, in solidarity with the homeless.
Smith encouraged Johnson to consider becoming a United Methodist deaconess. Johnson took that step in 2009. Recently, she’s been serving as an immigration consultant to United Methodist Women. She’s also a board member of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society.
This summer she has been working with, and cheering on, both her church, El Buen Pastor United Methodist, and First United Methodist Church of Brownsville, as they’ve helped meet immigrants’ needs. She and her husband are board members of Brownsville’s Good Neighbor Settlement House, a United Methodist Women National Mission Institution which has seen increased demand for its services, including meals and showers.
“United Methodists have stepped up,” Johnson said. “I’ve had three calls today, asking, ʿHow can we help?’ ”
Persisting factors
In the first two weeks in his new job, Leyva put 800 miles on his car, touching base with United Methodists and other faith groups across the Rio Grande Valley.
Johnson, an old friend, was among those glad to have him coordinating the United Methodist response.
“Brownsville tends to get lost in the shuffle, but he’s been on it,” she said.
Leyva grew up Catholic in Laredo. He married into a United Methodist family, and about five years later joined the denomination.
But he worked many years in other fields, including in quality control at Lockheed Martin, before going into fulltime United Methodist ministry 18 years ago. He’s been a pastor, a starter of Bible studies and other ministries in the colonias, and coordinator of disaster relief for the Rio Grande Conference.
Leyva was leading El Divino Redentor United Methodist Church in McAllen when Dorff appointed him to a new position as consultant for Hispanic Ministries for the Rio Texas Conference, a merger of the Rio Grande and Southwest Conferences that takes effect Jan. 1.
“I was going to start a new church, and teach how to start new churches,” he said.
Then the summer immigration crisis hit, and Dorff sent him back to the Rio Grande Valley. The appointment is for six months, after which they’ll reassess.
The numbers of families and unaccompanied minors detained at the border has dropped in recent weeks. But the triggering factors of poverty and violence persist in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
“It’s not over,” Leyva said.
Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
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Downtown Napa earthquake damage includes church
NAPA, Calif. (UMNS) - A 97-year-old United Methodist church was among the historic buildings in downtown Napa damaged by the Aug. 24 earthquake that struck northern California. First United Methodist Church of Vallejo suffered superficial damage in what is being called the strongest earthquake to hit the area in 25 years.
Photo by Amy Herzog, Napa First United Methodist Church
The interior of Napa First United Methodist shows debris and damage to the church.
Update: Downtown Napa earthquake damage includes church by Linda Bloom,| NEW YORK (UMNS)
An earthquake-damaged wall at First United Methodist Church in Napa is no longer in danger of collapse but it likely will be a year before the congregation can worship in the sanctuary again.
A quick assessment was possible with the help of Evan Kilkus, a Napa resident who received permission to fly a drone he had purchased over some of the downtown buildings damaged by the Aug. 24 earthquake.
As reported by San Francisco’s ABC 7, Kilkus shared the video both with the Rev. Lee Neish, the church’s pastor, and with structural engineers assessing the damage to the wall.
“That’s what makes this community a real community, when people reach out and help each other,” Neish told reporter Jonathan Bloom.
“The best news so far is that upon initial inspection we will be able to save our stained glass and restore our Sanctuary to its former glory,” the church reported on its website.
In a status report, First Church also noted the individual losses and injuries among Napa residents because of the earthquake and asked church members to “take the time to pray for all who are hurt or who have lost much in Napa, remember them and help those in need.”
The congregation’s traditional Sunday worship service and Sunday School will be held at the Napa Community Seventh-day Adventist Church, which holds its own worship on Saturdays.
First United Methodist Church in Vallejo, which also had some earthquake damage, has been cleared for occupancy.
Earlier story
A 97-year-old United Methodist church was among the historic buildings in downtown Napa damaged by the Aug. 24 earthquake that struck northern California.
Later that day, Phil Bandy, director of Volunteers In Mission for the United Methodist California-Nevada Annual (regional) Conference, met with the Rev. Lee Neish, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Napa and joined the watch over a sanctuary wall that was bulging away from the building.
The wall was in danger of collapse, but Bandy said it was too early to know the extent of the damage. The chair of the building trustees, who was “obviously pretty distressed,” told him the church had been poised to launch a remodeling campaign, Bandy added.
The larger impact on Napa church members from what is being called the strongest earthquake to hit the area in 25 years probably occurred in their personal households, he noted.
First United Methodist Church of Vallejo suffered superficial earthquake damage when some of the brick façade fell onto the sidewalk but “the integrity of the building itself wasn’t compromised,” Bandy said.
After living for 15 years in California, Bandy has become adept at estimating the strength and location of an earthquake by feel. “This was a hard one,” he said. “I was afraid the house might actually come down.”
Although his home was the same distance from the 6.0-magnitude earthquake’s epicenter as Napa was, most of the Vallejo area sits on bedrock, while Napa is built in a sediment-filled valley. “It (Napa) has a much different shake profile,” he explained.
San Francisco Area Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr., and the Rev. Schuyler Rhodes, superintendent of the Bridges District, which includes the affected area, sent prayer and support from Fiji, where they are part of a California-Nevada Conference delegation celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Methodist Church in Fiji as an autonomous conference.
Coincidentally, the United Methodist Committee on Relief is scheduled to hold a consultation with the conference cabinet and staff in three weeks to review the conference’s disaster response plan.
“We will be thinking preparedness now,” Bandy said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe or contact her at (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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Officially closed, but open to new ministry
SAN DIEGO (UMNS) - When it seemed inevitable that Christ United Methodist Church in San Diego would eventually close, the Rev. Bill Jenkins convinced his dwindling congregation to take a slightly different path. Now, rooms that hadn't been used in decades are providing space for community programs and worship.
Photo courtesy of the Rev. Bill Jenkins.Kat Kawasaki (left) kisses her grandfather, the Rev. Bill Jenkins. The 66-year-old United Methodist pastor help guide a de-commissioned San Diego church into a new life as an urban ministry center.
Officially closed, but open to new ministry by Linda Bloom, NEW YORK (UMNS)
Eight years ago, when it seemed inevitable that Christ United Methodist Church in San Diego would eventually close, the Rev. Bill Jenkins convinced his dwindling congregation to take a slightly different path.
In the process, the congregation offered a home to a dozen multi-ethnic congregations of various faiths and space to social programs serving their North Park neighborhood while saving a historic building.
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SHARING INFORMATION
The success of Christ Church Ministry Center led the Rev. Bill Jenkins to the realization that while many San Diego organizations offer assistance to the poor, information about those services was not readily available.
He used his technology experience to create a central online directory, The Fount of Blessings, using metaphors from the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” to detail the hundreds of resources available in San Diego from churches, charities and social agencies. A short video at MyFount.com explains how it works.
“The Fount has the potential to revolutionize the way organizations can more easily and effectively work together to direct those in need to almost any resource available in their area,” Jenkins explained.
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When it was constructed in the 1950s, what was then the First Evangelical United Brethren Church of San Diego housed the largest EUB congregation west of the Rocky Mountains. The Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist denominations merged to form the United Methodist Church in 1968.
As with many urban churches, times had changed at Christ church. “Here was a church that was used one hour on a Sunday morning,” explained Jenkins, who became pastor there in 1999. “Some of those rooms had not been used in decades.”
Today, the doors at the 25,000-square-foot Christ United Methodist Ministry Center open at 8 a.m. daily and don’t close again until 9:30 or 10 p.m., touching some 1,000 lives a week, he estimated. “It was just amazing the people God brought to us,” the 66-year-old pastor said.
The transformation came with the support of the United Methodist California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference. “Like a lot of urban congregations, its core members were mostly commuting from other places,” recalled the Rev. Myron Wingfield, who was the South District superintendent at the time and now is on staff at the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry in Nashville, Tennessee.
What made the project work were good collaborative choices, Wingfield added. Church members were willing to start meeting the needs of the community, with Jenkins providing the leadership.
“It’s an uncommon collection of factors that really has led to a vital presence of ministry in that location,” he added.
Trajectory toward social justice
Perhaps the most important factor is Jenkins himself, who stayed on the center’s executive director. Like the church, he has been on a lifelong journey of transformation and faith.
As a teenager living in segregated Yazoo City, Mississippi, in the 1960s, Jenkins found his white friends were more interested in the 100th anniversary of the Civil War than the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
But he had a different perspective, he said, gained from the summers he spent helping his father with a dry cleaning route in the Delta, where 90 percent of the clients were black sharecroppers. As a Delta State University student, he broke the color barrier at an all-black high school when he took a student teaching position there.
The two experiences, Jenkins explained, “set my life in a whole different trajectory.”
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ADVICE FOR MINISTRY CENTER MODEL
The Rev. Bill Jenkins offers some advice for those contemplating the ministry center model:
Don’t Just Survive. Keeping the doors open is not an indication of vital ministry. Many dying urban churches find ways to prolong their existence while avoiding facing the reality of failure to connect with their changing neighborhood and culture.
It’s God’s church. We all form emotional attachments to our home church, but the building, traditions or rituals are never a substitute for genuine ministry.
Relinquish Control. Declining urban churches need to trust other groups to do what they do best without trying to control them.
Use the “Matthew 25 Model.” Have as many ministries focused around hunger, thirst (including spiritual thirst), clothing, wellness, prison and befriending strangers as possible.
Get Down and Dirty. There is no sanitized way of doing urban ministry or any ministry, for that matter. Expect that often those in greatest need may appear the least lovable.
Think Abundance, not Scarcity. Jesus took a few loaves and fishes to feed five thousand (just counting the men). There is an abundance of help out there being provided by churches, charities and social agencies but it needs to be coordinated.
Trust God. Urban ministries will always struggle to survive, much like those we are called to help. Revenues will come and go. Charities and congregations will, too. Anxiety is the opposite of faith.
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His life in the ministry began with ordination in the Southern Baptist Church at the age of 20. The ideological shift in the Southern Baptist Convention after 1978 was troubling to Jenkins and when he joined The United Methodist Church in 1988, “I knew that I was home,” he recalled.
Wingfield credits the “tri-vocational” experience that Jenkins gained over the years — in education and technology as well as the ministry — “combined with a very passionate faith and guided by a generous willingness to truly be the church” with making the project sustainable.
“The diversity of the community brought together there is also a key piece,” Wingfield said, adding that Jenkins’ willingness to open the space to congregations of other denominations and develop a relationship with their leaders and key members was in “the Catholic spirit” espoused by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
Fostering diversity
A prime example is the Haitian gospel music group, “Louange a Dieu” – Creole for "Praises to God.” Jenkins befriended the group in 2009 after he learned gangs in Haiti were persecuting them.
Jenkins made the chapel available to the group on Sunday evenings, but the help didn’t stop there. “We converted space in the church so they could live, sleep, cook and shower in the huge building,” he explained. Then he searched for “the best immigration attorney I could find.”
After a massive earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, the now-established Haitian Methodist congregation became “the hub” of relief efforts in San Diego, Jenkins said.
When Haitians refugees began to reach the U.S. border through Mexico, U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers turned to the congregation and Christ Church for help and translation services. With assistance from the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Catholic Charities of San Diego, former Sunday school rooms in the education building were transformed into temporary housing for more than 300 Haitian refugees.
The granting of temporary protected status to Haitians who were in the United States before the earthquake “was a game changer for them,” Jenkins said about the Haitian congregation. “They were able to get jobs, such as orderlies and custodians at the hospital and nursing homes. Most enrolled in extension courses to pick up marketable skills.”
Jenkins said he is humbled and proud to be called “father” by the Haitian group. “I consider the Haitians my children, especially the original Louange a Dieu group,” he explained. “They are young adults, and we have been through so much together.”
Death leads to resurrection
Realizing that the original Christ United Methodist Church was no longer sustainable in a traditional sense, the South District, which includes San Diego, and then Bishop Mary Ann Swenson were willing “to name that and embrace a certain type of death with hope of resurrection,” Wingfield said.
The church was de-commissioned in 2011 — although Christ Chapel, a small United Methodist group, still worships there — and the ministry center emerged. As a retired elder, Jenkins could still serve the sacraments and provide denominational oversight.
Admittedly, for a period of time after the transition, Christ Ministry Center “kind of fell off the radar” for the conference, said the Rev. John Farley, Wingfield’s successor as district superintendent. “Bill was there just keeping things going without any official capacity.”
Farley said he admires the way Jenkins has claimed the history of change, renewal and rebirth in an older neighborhood that is ethnically diverse and becoming popular with young families.
“Bill’s kind of an entrepreneurial spirit and a great evangelical spirit at the same time,” he said.
What’s most exciting to Farley is the connection that is growing among four of the faith groups meeting at the ministry center who together average 220 in worship. “The story we say is they fell in love with each other,” he explained. “They began to feel like a unique family. Organically, this diversity began to sort of merge.”
The groups have been studying Methodist theology and are considering a constituting conference to become a new United Methodist congregation. “They’re finding a home in Wesleyan grace,” Farley said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe or contact her at (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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Slight budget gains projected for agencies
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - The denomination's general agencies will soon start preparing budget proposals that will go before the 2016 General Conference, and for now they expect to have slightly more money. Church leaders approved a bottom-line budget of $611.4 million for general church funds in 2017-2020.
Photo by Kathleen Barry, United Methodist CommunicationsThe Rev. Stephen Handy from McKendree United Methodist Church leads the opening worship at the quadrennial budget discussion of the Connectional Table Finance Committee and the General Council on Finance and Administration held in Nashville, Tenn.
Slight budget gains projected for agencies by Heather Hahn, NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)
The denomination’s general agencies soon will start preparing the budget proposals that will go before the 2016 General Conference, and for now they expect to have slightly more money.
In a joint meeting, the General Council on Finance and Administration's board and the Connectional Table’s finance committee on Aug. 21 approved a bottom-line budget of $611.4 million for general church funds in 2017-2020. That’s about a 1.4 percent increase above the $603.1 million general church budget approved at the 2012 General Conference.
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WHAT ARE APPORTIONMENTS?
Apportionments are the share each annual conference or local church pays to support international, national and regional missions. At the general church level, the money supports seven apportioned funds. These include bishops, United Methodist ministerial education, most general agencies and denomination-wide efforts such as the Black College Fund and Africa University in Zimbabwe.
About 2 percent of local church dollars supports the denomination's seven apportioned funds. This percentage does not include special offerings churches take up such as collections for Special Sundays or Advance designated giving to disaster relief.
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Still, the projected bottom line is below previous general-church budgets approved by General Conference in 2004 and 2008. General Conference is the denomination’s top lawmaking body. In 2008, before the economic downturn, the assembly set a budget of more than $641 million.
One question still before church leaders is whether to add a proposed special allocation on top of the $611.4 million. The allocation would fund grants for annual (regional) conferences to use to foster more vital congregations. But the Aug. 21 meeting did not provide any details about what those grants might look like or which agencies would distribute them.
“This is only the beginning,” Moses Kumar, the finance agency’s top executive, told United Methodist News Service. “Agencies now have something to work on. …Budgets were going down, so this represents a small increase. We’re hoping that will be a good beginning.”
Impact of economic forecasts
Kumar noted that the approved bottom line is also below a realistic budget proposal of $628.4 million suggested by the Economic Advisory Team, a group of eight United Methodist economists and other financial professionals.
The team, which is independent of any church agency, based its recommendation on forecasts around such variables as: the U.S. gross domestic product, inflation, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and United Methodist-specific data including giving per attendance. At this point, the U.S. church supports the bulk of general church finances.
The team forecasts that the U.S. church will continue to see its average weekly attendance decline about 1.6 percent a year. But the team also predicted a payout rate of around 92 percent starting in 2017.
Since 1984, the Economic Advisory Committee has had a good track record projecting how much money will be collected at the general church level, usually within a percentage point of what’s actually received.
But some GCFA board members were skeptical of a predicted collection rate of more than 90 percent. Last year, the general church received about 89 percent of requested apportionments.
Kumar said he expected more conversation around the team’s budget recommendation at the General Council on Finance and Administration’s next meeting in November.
Possible vital congregations’ fund
By far, the biggest source of debate was whether there should be a special allocation at the general church level to support vital congregations.
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GRANTS FOR VITALITY
Church leaders still are weighing the question of a special general church fund for vital congregations. For now, General Council on Finance and Administration board on Aug. 22 has approved $300,000 to be used toward the effort of fostering more vital churches.
The Connectional Table and active bishops also approved the allocation out of the World Service contingency fund.
• $100,000 will be used for a “Benchmark Strategy Study” by Don House, a lifelong United Methodist with a Ph.D. in economics. He is looking at ways churches can invest in growth.
• $200,000 will be used for grants which the United Methodist Board of Discipleship will distribute.
The Board of Discipleship will offer more information soon on how United Methodists can apply for grants.
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The Budget Leadership Team, which includes leaders of the Connectional Table and General Council on Finance and Administration, had recommended an additional $17 million be allotted for agencies to award as grants for vital congregations. With that special allocation and the approved $611.4 million bottom line for apportioned funds, the Budget Leadership Team’s recommendation is in line with the Economic Advisory Committee.
But many of the church leaders at the meeting pushed back against the proposed vital-congregations fund. They argued that annual conferences could best determine how to use money for increasing vitality without waiting for grants from general agencies.
Indiana Area Bishop Mike Coyner, president of the finance agency, said that argument was already a big source of discussion among the Budget Leadership Team members.
He summed up the question before church leaders: “Do you focus better on vital congregations — which I think lots of us want to do — by leaving more in the hands of conferences? Or do you focus more by setting up a fund that’s visible and that says to the world that we’re serious about this?”
What happens next
For now, agencies will begin their budget preparations using the $611.4 million figure.
In November, the full Connectional Table and finance agency board agreed to set the same distribution among the seven general church funds as exists in the 2013-2016 period. That means the agencies and various funds will divvy up the financial pie roughly the same way in 2017-20 as they did in the current quadrennium. The decision on Aug. 21 gives agencies and Connectional Table a projection of the size of that pie.
Detailed budgets will go back before the full Connectional Table and General Council on Finance and Administration for approval in May 2015. Ultimately, the final budget will be up to General Conference, which will meet May 10-20, 2016, in Portland, Oregon.
What many of those voting Aug. 21 want to avoid is the kind of last-minute allocation that happened at the 2012 General Conference. That year, the legislative assembly voted for two new line items in the World Service Fund, which supports most United Methodist agencies. The delegates designated a $5 million fund for theological education in the central conferences — church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines — and $7 million to recruit and train young clergy in the United States.
That move required agencies to scramble to readjust their budgets and accommodate the $12 million, and it left $591.1 million altogether for general church funds.
Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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Bishop: Beware costs of sexuality debate
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - The United Methodist Church's intensifying debate around human sexuality has substantial financial implications for the global church, a bishop warned the denomination's finance agency.
Photo by Kathleen Barry, United Methodist CommunicationsBishop Scott Jones leads a discussion on the implications of the church’s sexuality debate at the board meeting of the General Council on Finance and Administration held in Nashville, Tenn.
Bishop: Beware of costs of sexuality debate bBy Heather Hahn, NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)
The United Methodist Church’s intensifying debate around human sexuality has substantial financial implications in the global church, a bishop warned the denomination’s finance agency. Those costs could include a drop in church giving and the division of property.
“The question is: Is there a middle ground that will allow most of the traditionalists to stay and yet satisfy most of the progressives?” said Great Plains Area Bishop Scott Jones.
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BISHOPS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
“I am not accountable to the Council of Bishops in any way whatsoever,” Jones told those gathered. “Let that sink in. I am accountable to my jurisdictional conference because that’s who elected me and that’s who can do something to me.
Jones noted that many United Methodists look to the Council of Bishops to discipline its own members. But as a matter of church law, he said, the council does not “have the right to impose significant penalties on its own members.”
In the case of Bishop Melvin G. Talbert, for example, the Council of Bishops at its November meeting recommended a complaint be filed against the retired bishop. But in a statement, the council indicated it could take no further action.
“I think one of the key problems in this whole debate is: Where is genuine leadership that can or will act?” Jones said.
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Since spring, Jones has collected some of the proposals on the matter that could be heading to the 2016 General Conference.
On Aug. 21, he shared an overview of these proposals and their potential impact on church unity with a group that included the board and top staff of the General Council on Finance and Administration as well as top executives from other general agencies. He also shared his paper on the topic, “Finding a Way Through: Options for the UMC and Homosexuality.”
Jones plans to share a similar presentation again in a webcast at 10 a.m. CT Sept. 13.
The Book of Discipline, the church’s book of polity and doctrine, since 1972 has stated that all people are of sacred worth but the practice of homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
General Conference, the church’s top lawmaking body that meets every four years, has consistently voted to keep the language and over the years has expanded on restrictions against “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy and same-gender unions.
For just as long, United Methodists have debated this stance and how best to minister with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. Most United Methodists have chosen to stay in the conversation rather than split the denomination.
But Jones, who is also a church historian, told those gathered that he thinks two developments are unsettling the equilibrium in the denomination’s debate.
- He said it is only a matter of time before same-sex civil marriage becomes legal in all 50 U.S. states.
- Another factor, he said, is the “disobedience of bishops.” Specifically, retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert is now facing a complaint after officiating last year at the same-sex union of two men. While not going as far as Talbert, other bishops publicly have expressed their disagreement with the church’s stance and some have called for an end to church trials related to this issue.
Possible General Conference petitions
For now, a number of United Methodists are preparing legislation to be considered by the next General Conference aiming to settle the dispute in some way.
Among the options on the table are plans to:
- Enhance the ability of congregations and clergy that support same-sex unions to leave the denomination with their assets and benefits, while increasing consequences for violating the Book of Discipline’s stance.
- Let local churches decide — after a discernment process and super-majority vote — whether to host same-sex unions and welcome gay clergy.
- Empower annual conferences to make decisions on all matters not restricted by the denomination’s constitution.
- Replace the current five, regionally defined U.S. jurisdictions with two ideologically-defined jurisdictions and letting annual conferences vote on which jurisdiction to join.
- Amend the Book of Discipline to allow full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals.
- Enable amicable separation into one or more denominations.
Possible fallout
Jones also noted that so far, the proposal for amicable separation has not gone into details about what an amicable division of general church assets might look like. The Methodist Church’s split over slavery in 1844 was not amicable from a legal standpoint, ending up with a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
FORUM ON SEXUALITY AND CHURCH
The topic can be challenging for people of faith. Read a variety of first-person reflections, meant to help us understand one another better.
The Rev. Steve Wood, a GCFA board member and pastor of Mount Pisgah United Methodist Church in Johns Creek, Ga., agreed with Jones that the finance agency should think of the financial and legal ramifications of each of the proposals.
“Just because you get to a vote …doesn’t mean you are at the end,” Wood said. “There are lawsuits, there’s collateral work, there’s all kinds of implementation issues that have very real costs.”
Jones urged those gathered to talk to counterparts in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (USA). Those denominations all have faced the departure of congregations and in some cases, whole regional bodies, after changing denominational policies on ordination and same-gender marriage.
Thinking about possible exit strategies that General Conference might approve is key, Jones said. He used the example of a departing Episcopal congregation in his area that offered to give up its building to the diocese and thus saddle the diocese with the property’s $2 million debt. Ultimately, the diocese and congregation came to an agreement, but Jones said he could imagine a similar scenario involving a United Methodist conference.
“As these proposals come through, GCFA has data and ...a legal department,” Jones said. “There are things you can do to serve to raise the conversation, not to choose among the proposals (that’s where neutrality comes in), but to serve so conversations don’t take place in a vacuum.”
Delmar Robinson, a GCFA board member from Mississippi, said he found Jones’ overview “enlightening.”
“I was not aware that the issue existed to the extent that it did,” he said. “What he laid out, I think we should continue to discern. I don’t think we should do anything rash.”
Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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New forum on human sexuality and the church
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - "Sharing in Faith" is a new online forum where United Methodists can share perspectives on human sexuality and better understand one another's journeys on this issue. United Methodist Communications is providing this forum for first-person perspectives. The idea is not to persuade or dissuade people, but to help them understand one another as persons of faith dealing with a challenging issue.
Photo by Hidesy / iStockphoto.com
Sharing in Faith: A Forum on Sexuality and the Church
SHARE YOUR VOICE
Forum contributors will be identified by name, state, and country. Names may be withheld in unusual circumstances.
Essays may be any length, but 500 to 800 words is recommended. Video or audio clips of four minutes or less may be shared instead of written essays.
Submissions will be edited and UMC.org reserves the right to decline articles that do not fit within the purpose or spirit of this feature.
Send your contribution by e-mail.
Welcome to “Sharing in Faith,” where United Methodists can share perspectives on human sexualityand better understand one another’s journeys on this issue.
The perspectives are offered in the first person, not with the intent of persuading or dissuading but of helping people understand one another as persons of faith dealing with a challenging issue.
We invite people to share their personal experiences and understandings on the topic using one of the following starters:
- “I believe the Holy Spirit is telling me …”
- “This is how Scripture speaks to me …”
- “I have questions …”
- “This issue concerns me because …”
- “This is my story …”
This feature aims to reflect the faithful and genuine spirit that each person brings to this topic, regardless of view.
Contributions
RELATED
Prayers going out to West Africa in wake of Ebola
FRANKLIN, Tenn. (UMNS) - Thousands of United Methodists in the U.S. with family and friends in West Africa are donating, fasting and praying for an end to the Ebola outbreak.
Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS
Members of the Bonn family pray during a service at Christ United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn., to lift up those facing the Ebola crisis in West Africa. From left are: Ashley, Debbie, Danny and Miles.
Prayers going out to West Africa in wake of Ebola by Kathy L. Gilbert, FRANKLIN, Tenn.
“Prayer is not the least we can do, but the most we can do.”
That is Bishop Hope Morgan Ward’s video message on the North Carolina Annual (regional) Conference’s website. She echoes what many concerned United Methodists are doing in response to the deadly disease striking down so many people in West Africa.
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ADOPTION ON HOLD DUE TO EBOLA
How do you look at more than 100 children and pick out three to adopt?
Debbie and Danny Bonn grappled with that question. They didn’t doubt that it was part of God’s plan for them to adopt three children from Sierra Leone but how to do that was puzzling, Debbie said.
“I didn’t pick the children I have now, you know, you don’t do that,” she said, half laughing and half crying. “We prayed. We just really felt God was going to show us (our children) when we got there.”
“There” is the Rainy Season Orphanage in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Their oldest daughter, Ashley, took a year between high school and college to serve at Rainy Season. She introduced the family to the orphanage.
God answered their prayers and “picked out” three children for the Bonn family, members of Christ United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tennessee.
Debbie said when she got to the orphanage, an 11-year-old boy left a group of playing children and stuck to her like glue. Then, an 8-year-old girl joined them and the three bonded. “I thought, ‘Is this really happening? God, did you just pull these kids out to me?’”
Their third child is a 5-year-old boy with special needs. The Bonns are sure God picked him out for them as well.
The three children from Sierra Leone will join with big brothers and sisters Ashley, 20 and in her second year at college; Corey, who is a high school senior; and Miles, a seventh-grader.
“It will be a huge transition, but one we have been looking forward to for some time,” Debbie said.
The adoption is currently on hold because the orphanage is on lockdown due to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. Before going on lockdown the orphanage had to raise $80,000 to buy enough food and other supplies for the next six to nine months. Donations can be made here.
“We pray a lot on our knees,” she said again — through laughter and tears.
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Debbie Bonn’s family, members of Christ United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn., is waiting to bring home two boys, 11 and 5, and one girl, 8, from the Rainy Season orphanage in Freetown, Sierra Leone. They were hoping to have them home by Christmas, but that is delayed because the orphanage is on lockdown due to the Ebola outbreak.
“I am scared for West Africa; our family prays constantly for their brothers and sisters, the aunties and uncles that are really affected by Ebola,” Bonn said. “We lift them up in prayer and ask God for miracles.”
The Bonn family is one of thousands of United Methodists with personal relationships to people in West Africa.
Fred Clark, outreach director for Camp Hill (Pennsylvania) United Methodist Church, said, “Our relationship with Sierra Leone has been transformative for our church. We have been fasting and praying and we wish we could do more.”
Camp Hill has been supporting doctors and the Panguma Hospital for several years. Panguma is about 25 miles from Kenema Government Hospital where the first Ebola patients were brought when the virus started in May. The Sierra Leone Initiative in the Susquehanna Conference is a partnership between churches in Sierra Leone and the U.S. conference.
Adding to the needs
Quarantines are adding to the pain and suffering in areas without Ebola.
“We are hearing that life in Liberia is getting difficult as a bag of rice is costing $50,” said the Rev. Archibald Bing, an ordained elder from Liberia serving as a chaplain in Columbus, Ohio. “Rice is the staple food in most of West Africa. We learned that prices of everything, including medicines, are very costly for the common citizens struggling to survive. The Ebola epidemic is causing a lot of havoc and fear among the people. We who are family members in foreign countries like the USA and Europe are praying daily for a divine intervention.”
The Rev. Richard Stryker, director of ethnic ministries for the North Alabama Conference and a native of Liberia, said communication is crucial. Texts on cell phones are sometimes the only reliable way to receive critical messages, he said. Stryker worries that the poor will not have money to spend on minutes for their phones.
“They will have to decide between food or something else,” he said.
The crisis hit close to home for the Rev. Wnyston Dixon and his congregation at Braden United Methodist Church in Toledo, Ohio.
“Dr. Samuel Brisbane, who was medical director at JFK Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, died from Ebola. His wife and children are members of my church. He was dedicated to serving our people, and he died doing what he pledged to do,” he said.
Brisbane’s family is collecting supplies to send to Liberia.
Peter Gailah, a native of Liberia and a member of Hillcrest United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, is part of an organization of Liberian natives. They are praying and sending funds, too.
“We are just a few Liberians that meet on a monthly basis. When this Ebola started in Liberia, we decided to collect money from each member and send it to Liberia.”
Churchwide support
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas, sent a $25,000 grant to the United Methodist Committee on Relief to construct isolation units for Ebola patients in Liberia. UMCOR matched that grant with another $25,000.
UMCOR is taking donations through the International Disaster Relief Advance #982450 and launched an Ebola Emergency Response Plan for Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
The Indiana Conference has a long-term relationship with Liberia and Sierra Leone through programs such as Operation Classroom and Sierra Leone Health Partners. Many churches and individuals have personal relationships with people in West Africa, said the Rev. Dan Gangler, director of communication. The conference is urging people to send donations to UMCOR.
The Holston Conference donated over $18,000 worth of supplies to the Liberia conference, including food buckets, health and school kits and home kits for sanitizing purposes.
The East Ohio Conference is partnering with MedWish to send eight pallets of gloves, masks and gowns to both Sierra Leone and Liberia. The conference is praying for protection for health care workers, family and friends of the deceased, and for people handling dead bodies.
United Methodist Communications, the communications agency for the denomination, is sending out text messages using Frontline SMS to people in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In the morning a health message goes out: “Ebola is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or animals. Always remember: prevention is one of the best ways to contain the virus.”
Messages of pastoral hope go out in the afternoon from both bishops in Liberia and Sierra Leone:
“One person who dies of Ebola is one too many. Do not allow fear of Ebola to motivate bloodshed. God calls us to bring healing and hope.” — Bishop John Yambasu, Sierra Leone.
“Let us use this difficult time of sorrow and grief to pray together. Be assured that God will give us hope and comfort.” — Bishop John Innis, Liberia.
United Methodist Communications also sent a $10,000 grant each to Liberia and Sierra Leone to use for communicating about the virus.
The Foundation for United Methodist Communications has established an emergency communications fund, and people can donate here.
Bing said many of his colleagues pray every Tuesday morning for West Africa.
“This is all we can do at this time. Surely, God will answer our prayers!”
Gilbert is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
Full coverage of The United Methodist Church's response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa can be found at www.umc.org/ebola.
Photo courtesy of Christian Zigbuo.
Christian Zigbuo (right) works to distribute printed information to educate people in Liberia about the Ebola virus.
Education, economy suffer in Ebola outbreak by Kathy L. Gilbert, NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)
“Ebola is killing people in Liberia. Help your friends and family here,” Christian Zigbuo wrote on his Facebook page Aug. 15.
Zigbuo is a graduate of United Methodist-related Africa University and was a United Methodist Young Adult Missionary for the denomination’s Board of Global Ministries. He is pounding the streets and byways these days, handing out posters to educate his home country about the deadly Ebola virus.
In one poignant posting, Zigbuo honored one of his friends who died from Ebola.
“We have lost our sister, classmate and friend due to the Ebola virus. Please pray for her husband and baby that are currently at the quarantine center.”
Cancelled classes
Students in other colleges and universities in Liberia and Sierra Leone are unable to return to classes because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Students and staff from Wesley College of Theology and Management in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Gbarnga School of Theology in Liberia, have not been able to return to their classes because of restrictions and quarantines put into place by health and government officials.
“We are scheduled to commence first the semester of the 2014/15 academic year, this won't take place if the virus continues to kill so many people,” said Sidney Cooper, a staff member at the Wesley College of Theology and Management in Sierra Leone. Wesley is an ecumenical school involving United Methodist and members of other denominations.
Instead, like Zigbuo, the students are using their break to volunteer during the crisis.
“At the moment, all of our students are off campus and back into their cities, towns and villages as we all battle it out in prayer, sensitization, awareness and community outreach to ensure that this dangerous and deadly virus is wiped out of Liberia,” said Jerry Kulah, dean at Gbarnga.
“Our major concern is the denial attitude of our people. Traditional practices of washing corpses and touching them exacerbate the high affection rate,” said Cooper. “We are in constant touch with our students on phone educating and advising them to take the necessary preventive measures; such as don't shake hands, don't touch, washing hands and report early when you are sick with the symptoms.”
Kulah said many of the United Methodist students in Liberia are volunteering to mobilize prayers, create awareness and distribute needed items such as bleach and buckets.
“The situation is highly volatile and hazardous, be we are determined to fight this deadly virus until God takes it out of Liberia,” Kulah said
Food security threatened
When the Ebola outbreak became an international health crisis, governments began quarantines restricting travel from areas where the disease was present and areas where the virus hasn’t been found. The quarantines are creating a different kind of victim.
“When you make an executive health emergency to quarantine certain areas and the people do not have food to eat, you kill them. That is what we are now facing,” said Cooper.
The fall semester of 2014-15 at Wesley College has been delayed until students are free to travel again.
Graduation at Gbarnga School of Theology in Liberia, scheduled for Aug. 12, was postponed due to the Ebola crisis.
There are two other United Methodist schools in Monrovia, Liberia—the United Methodist University and A.M.E. Zion University College. Those schools have not responded to questions about how their universities may be affected.
Africa University, United Methodist related university in Zimbabwe has students from across the continent. In 2013-14 the university had seven students from Liberia, 35 from Nigeria and six from Sierra Leone. The university did not respond to questions.
Gilbert is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
Post-war trauma, mistrust, fuel Ebola crisis in Communications and Media,Economics and Development,Global Citizenship,Global Health,Media & Culture,Tech Tools
A posse of young boys armed with slingshots blockades a road to prevent a Red Cross vehicle from bringing medical supplies into a village wracked by Ebola. In another area, residents throw stones at an arriving health team. And in a another, villagers flee when a health worker in a white lab coat makes calls in the neighborhood.
Christian Zigbuo (right) works to distribute printed information to educate people in Liberia about the Ebola virus. Photo courtesy of Christian Zigbuo.
Why?
These reports remind me of conversations I have had with survivors of horrific conflict. Having worked around the world, I have seen and heard the fear and mistrust that people have of government and others in official capacities in places such as Kampuchea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Africa. In these places, the common historical theme is social conflict, and in some places outright war.
I recall a conversation I struck up with a young man sitting under a large umbrella by the roadside in Monrovia a few years ago. He was selling lottery tickets and gasoline in quart glass bottles. I learned he was a high school student when his education was interrupted by the civil war in Liberia. He wanted to study agronomy, but the post-war economy was making survival difficult and the dream of college unrealistic.
I asked him where he spent the war. His voice lowered and his expression changed.
“I moved about,” he said. “Sometimes to the bush, sometimes hiding in the city.”
Pointing to a now-empty swimming pool in an abandoned hotel across the street, he said, “See that pool? I was caught once by a gang of young guys who put a tire around me and threw me into that pool to drown. They were crazy.”
As if the war was not horrific enough, when peace came, gangs of young men armed with military weapons roved the city, robbing and intimidating the people until the U.N. established order and disarmed the former fighters. Without effective government, there was no security, and pronouncements by those who claimed leadership were unreliable. The nightmare of war does not end when the shooting stops.
Liberia and Sierra Leone are post-conflict societies. They are recovering, but strong civil institutions and governance are still evolving. Infrastructure such as sanitation, electricity, communication, health and education are weak. In both, a generation of children lost their childhood because they were born in a time of war. They didn’t attend school, and many were internal migrants or refugees in neighboring countries. And they’ve experienced trauma.
Health systems, never particularly strong, remain weak and fragile. For example, in the county most affected by Ebola in Liberia, according to a story in the New York Times, the health surveillance officer does not have a computer to track disease statistics. As a consequence, the health officer could not track the outbreak of Ebola in real time, and was relegated to an inadequate pen and paper record that was woefully behind the rapid spread of the virus.
Trust depends on the effectiveness of the government and its institutions to deliver adequate, impartial service to its citizens. Weak institutions cannot do this.
Hidden source of conflict
It’s true that people fear the Ebola virus and the toll it takes. But I think there is another, less obvious factor at work as well. It is the residual emotional state of people who are recovering from traumatic experiences in post-conflict societies. This trauma is often masked.
In daily survival it goes unnoticed, and in many places it does not figure into ongoing relationships. In others, of course, it remains a prickly source of conflict that has not been resolved. However, it’s been my anecdotal experience that in post-conflict societies, trauma is not far below the surface, and in times of crisis, when trust is on the line, it can rear its head.
Efforts to create reconciliation commissions have been tried with varying degrees of success. Sometimes they provide a platform for the abused to have a voice, sometimes they exacerbate unresolved divisions.
When I talk with people who have been through terrible experiences such as civil war, I often hear stories told in soft voices that surface pain and loss. Sometimes this pain is expressed with strong language that reveals unresolved feelings of injustice and indignity. Sometimes people are reticent to talk about their experiences at all. They fear retribution. Some don’t want to recall horrible memories. These unresolved conflicting emotions are carried silently. They reflect great personal loss. Spouses, children and whole families have been lost. Homes and sometimes entire communities have been wiped out.
Steps to rebuilding trust
Nurses listen intently during a panel discussion at The United Methodist Church’s Mercy Hospital in Bo, Sierra Leone, to help prepare health care workers for dealing with Ebola. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS.
This emotional reservoir, along with weak government, social structures and economies, creates a stew of uncertainty, unmet needs and struggle. In the case of Ebola, I think it points to a need for clear, trusted voices to interpret the reality of the virus, and to encourage people to get medical care and avoid traditional healing. It’s also important for the church to provide messages of hope, comfort, encouragement and concern. In this circumstance, it’s a form of public witness in addition to a vital community service.
This alone cannot heal the broken trust, but it is a step toward healing. Other actions must be taken as well. Improving the health system, physical infrastructure, education and governance are critical. Economic development is necessary to improve work opportunities.
The church has another important gift to offer people in these societies. While large group gatherings are being discouraged during the contagion, under better conditions local congregations are communities of support where spiritual comfort and assurance are given, and personal growth and development occur. In faith communities, people are assured that life is sacred. Life is a gift of God, and God’s intent is not for us to suffer, kill or be killed. God’s intent is for us to flourish, and to find purpose and meaning. In The United Methodist Church, we speak of God’s graciousness. In post-conflict societies, the community of faith can be a means of grace.
What the Ebola crisis has revealed is that residual trauma and weak civil society infrastructure have long-term effects. Untended, these can threaten global well-being in unexpected ways. But this is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning.
The Foundation for United Methodist Communications has established an emergency communications fund. With your help, we can provide communications support in the event of a crisis or disaster. Donate here.
Responding to worst Ebola outbreak in history in Global Health
In Sierra Leone, Phileas Jusu receives an Ebola text message from Bishop John K. Yambasu using mobile technology. The message addresses both health and spiritual needs. (The entire message reads as follows: "This message is from United Methodist Communications on behalf of Bishop John K. Yambasu. Please save this number as UMC Alerts to identify future messages. As we struggle with Ebola, I pray that faith – not fear – will be our response. This is not the time for blame or denial. It is a time to respond in love.") Photo courtesy of Phileas Jusu
In Sierra Leone, Phileas Jusu receives an Ebola text message on behalf of Bishop John K. Yambasu using mobile technology. The message, sent by United Methodist Communications, addresses both health and spiritual needs. Photo courtesy of Phileas Jusu.
The cross-border Ebola epidemic continues to spread and claim lives. The World Health Organization said this morning that the death toll could reach 20,000, and the virus is reported to have surfaced outside Nigeria’s capital city.
A doctor in Port Harcourt, the center of international oil shipping from Nigeria, died of the virus. This means the virus was not contained in Lagos, the capital, as had been thought. It also raises concerns about containment in a region with international workers in the oil industry.
Another strain of the virus, unconnected to the West Africa outbreak, has surfaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nigeria has closed its schools until October, and countries neighboring the affected nations have been advised to step up surveillance. Air France has joined the international carriers that have temporarily stopped service to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, complicating the challenge of getting supplies and health workers into the region.
In addition to the challenge of getting disinfectants, cleaning supplies, gloves, masks and related medical tools into the region, the mistrust of public health services and government announcements continues to contribute to the misinformation and disbelief that only exacerbates the spread of the virus.
United Methodist Communications is sending two text messages a day to networks of local contacts in Sierra Leone and Liberia with content approved by health officials. And the organization is inviting bishops and church leaders in other African nations to join in this information effort as they deem it necessary.
The messages can be read on conventional mobile phones, which the majority of Africans use. They are cost-free for the recipient, so they don’t add a financial burden to end-users. The messages are sent under the approval and sponsorship of bishops in the affected countries in the belief that local trusted leaders are more likely to be heard.
In addition to text messages, UMCom is exploring an audio message system to provide information to people who cannot read. It’s clear that communication serves a fundamental need in this crisis, and it’s essential to employ as many communication tools and strategies as possible to help get the contagion under control.
The Foundation for United Methodist Communications has established an emergency communications fund. With your help, we can provide communications support in the event of a crisis or disaster. Donate here.
Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS
An educational poster about the dangers of the Ebola virus hangs in the community center at the Jaiama Bongor Chiefdom, outside Bo, Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa an international health emergency.
The Church Responds to Ebola
The United Methodist Church and its partners are responding to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The deadly virus has claimed lives in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.
The church effort involves treatment, prevention, communication and public education. The response is a joint effort by West African United Methodist church leaders and regional health boards, denominational health facilities, missionaries and the denomination's general agencies.
Church's top communication exec to retire next year
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - The Rev. Larry Hollon, top executive of United Methodist Communications for more than 14 years, announced Aug. 25 that he plans to retire in about 10 months. United Methodist Communications is the agency charged with sharing the denomination's message around the globe.
File photo by Lynne Dobson.The Rev. Larry Hollon engages a group of boys with photos of themselves taken on his camera while at Mpassa Hospital and orphanage in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010.
Church’s top communications exec to retire next year
United Methodist News Service, NASHVILLE, Tenn.
The Rev. Larry Hollon, top executive of United Methodist Communications for more than 14 years, announced Aug. 25 that he plans to retire in about 10 months.
He is departing in keeping with the requirements of the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s law book. In Paragraph 715.3, the book requires elected staff of general agencies to retire by age 70. Hollon told his staff Aug. 25 that he would soon reach that milestone.
“Leading The United Methodist Church into the digital age has been a meaningful and rewarding experience,” Hollon said in a statement. “For me, communications is ministry. It provides a variety of methods for us to deliver messages of healing and hope and invite people into relationship with a faith community. I’m very proud of the many ways in which the work we do at United Methodist Communications is making a difference in people’s lives."
United Methodist Communications is the agency charged with sharing the denomination’s message around the globe. During his tenure, Hollon has led the agency in raising awareness and funds for the denomination’s Imagine No Malaria initiative and in entering the new field of information and communications technology for development, which aims to use technology for social good.
He also helped launch the denomination-wide Igniting Ministry public media and welcoming campaign, which popularized the United Methodist brand as one of “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors.” The campaign was succeeded by Rethink Church, which embraces advertising and media messaging, training and supporting local congregations in becoming engaged in their communities.
He has been instrumental in building support for the denomination’s priorities, such as the Four Areas of Focus, and leading the church into digital communications on a wide range of fronts, from storytelling to online giving.
He is also the publisher of United Methodist News Service.
“The United Methodist Church has experienced tremendous transformation in the area of communications under Rev. Hollon’s leadership,” said Bishop Sally Dyck, president of the General Commission on Communication, which oversees the agency. “We’ve made significant advancements in connecting the denomination around the world. We’ve raised awareness of the church through advertising campaigns inviting and welcoming seekers into our churches and we’ve taken that message out into communities. We’ve created a voice for the church in the world.”
At his retirement announcement, Hollon praised his staff for helping the church see United Methodist Communications not as a U.S. agency but as a global agency. He told the staff members that they have moved United Methodist Communications from being seen as a technical-support agency to contributing to how the church communicates in the world.
At the commission’s September meeting, the body will form a search committee to lead the search process for a successor, led by Dyck and the Rev. Greg Cox, chair of the personnel committee and director of connectional ministries in the Western Pennsylvania Annual (regional) Conference. A search firm will also be sought, Dyck said.
“The Rev. Hollon will remain in his current position until a new chief executive is appointed and oriented next summer,” Cox said. “We expect that he will continue to be a powerful advocate for the value of communications to the denomination.”
Hollon came to the agency with a deep experience in both the church and the field of communications.
After graduating from the University of Central Oklahoma and United Methodist-related Saint Paul School of Theology, Hollon became an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church and an award-winning producer focused on telling the stories of people affected by poverty. He has traveled to more than 50 countries to collaborate on hundreds of projects. A former television news and commercial radio talk show host, he has written for numerous publications and is the author of “We Must Speak: Rethinking How We Communicate Faith in the 21st Century.”
He had served on the agency’s governing commission prior to becoming general secretary on June 1, 2000.
Hollon was chosen by the Nashville Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America as the winner of the 2008 Apollo Award, and was named the 2011 Communicator of the Year by the United Methodist Association of Communicators.
He told staff he has no plans to slow down during the transition. He plans to propose pilot projects that will support values formation and education for children and young families in the United States, the Philippines and Africa.
“I will retire, but I won’t stop working,” he said.
News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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McElvaney, social justice advocate, dies at 86
DALLAS (UMNS) - The Rev. William McElvaney, a retired United Methodist pastor and seminary president known for social justice advocacy, died Sunday, Aug. 24. McElvaney made news earlier this year by defying church law to officiate at a same-sex wedding for two longtime members of Northaven United Methodist Church, where he was pastor emeritus.
Photo by Sam Hodges, UMNS
The Rev. William McElvaney rested on March 1, before performing the wedding of Jack Evans and George Harris, partners for 53 years and longtime members of Northaven United Methodist Church. The service was held at Dallas' Midway Hills Christian Church.
William McElvaney, social justice advocate, dies at 86 by Sam Hodges, DALLAS (UMNS)
The Rev. William McElvaney, a retired United Methodist pastor and seminary president known for social justice advocacy, died Sunday Aug. 24, at his Dallas home. He was 86.
McElvaney had recently informed members of Northaven United Methodist Church, where he was pastor emeritus, that his liver cancer had spread and he was entering hospice care.
He died about 6:45 a.m. CT Sunday, said Shannon Mason, his daughter.
“We were all here,” Mason said. “Mom (Fran McElvaney) was with him most closely in the same room. She had stayed up all night with him, and she had just fallen asleep. Once she kind of rested, he did too.”
McElvaney served as president of United Methodist-related Saint Paul School of Theology for 12 years, and also was a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. He was pastor of Northaven, among other Dallas area United Methodist churches.
On March 1, McElvaney made news by defying church law to officiate at a same-sex wedding for two longtime Northaven members — Jack Evans and George Harris, partners for 53 years.
The action drew an official complaint, but Fran McElvaney said North Texas Annual (regional) Conference Bishop Michael McKee had relayed in a visit to her husband last week that the matter had been resolved.
McKee attended Sunday morning worship at Northaven United Methodist Church as members were coping with news of McElvaney’s death and that of longtime member Bill Warrick.
“We were grateful to have him here,” said the Rev. Eric Folkerth, pastor of Northaven.
On Sunday afternoon, McKee released the following statement:
"Early this morning I learned of the death of Rev. William K. McElvaney. Bill was loved by many in the North Texas Conference who knew him as pastor, mentor, and friend. During his courageous battle with cancer that would end his life, Bill and I had achieved a just resolution in the matter of a complaint against him. With the news of Bill’s entering into hospice care, the most important and compassionate path was for the people of The United Methodist Church in North Texas to pray for Bill, his wife, Fran, and their family members. I know that United Methodists in North Texas join me in prayer for Bill, for his family, and for the Church he served."
The bishop offered no further details.
McElvaney grew up in Dallas, in a prosperous family whose name graces a building at SMU. He earned three degrees from the school, and credited Perkins with changing his life and turning him in the direction of social justice.
He was a leader of the Dallas Peace Center and advocated on various social justice issues, including helping organize United Methodist opposition to having a public policy center as part of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU.
His writings included the book “Becoming a Justice Seeking Congregation.”
McElvaney said his only regret about performing a same-sex wedding was that he hadn’t done so earlier.
“When institutional covenants supersede radical grace, the church is protecting its own prejudice and inoculates the church against love in favor of law,” he wrote in an essay titled “Reflections on The United Methodist Church’s Struggle to Become Inclusive.”
“Bill McElvaney was a tireless prophet and preacher for more than 50 years, and time and time again took bold stands to lift up those who were often most marginalized in our society,” Folkerth said.
The Rev. William Lawrence, dean of Perkins, said: "Bill was the best kind of fundamentalist—not the kind that read the Bible literally but the kind who take the Bible seriously. He actually believed that followers of Jesus were to be held accountable for the Christ’s message about feeding the hungry. He really believed that the Beatitudes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount were serious promises made to the peacemakers and to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness."
Lawrence noted that he and McElvaney were on opposite sides of the Bush library debate. Their friendship survived.
"He would never withhold his affection from a colleague or neighbor, even one with whom he disagreed intensely," Lawrence said. "He helped lead a demonstration on the day the library was dedicated. But the next day he greeted me with a smile, an embrace, and a word of encouragement.
Perkins named McElvaney a distinguished alumnus in 2013. On his retirement from Perkins, a decade earlier, friends of his established the William K. McElvaney Peace and Justice Award at SMU. A professorship in preaching and worship at Saint Paul School of Theology carries his name.
McElvaney’s survivors include his wife and daughter; a son, John McElvaney; two grandchildren, Jace Mason and Sara Willoughby; and son-in-law Darren Mason.
McElvaney willed his body to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. A memorial service will be held at Northaven, at a date to be determined, his wife said.
In writing Northaven members about the spread of his cancer, McElvaney said: “I believe I am in God’s hands as experienced throughout 86 years of amazing grace surrounding my life in countless ways, not the least through Fran’s superb loving care.”
Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
____________________________Church helps change lives of farmworkers
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - Nothing about picking tomatoes is easy for the workers toiling in the Florida fields from October to May each year. They earn low wages and sometimes face physical and verbal abuse. The United Methodist Church has been pushing for better farmworkers' rights since 2001.
Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS
Members and supporters of the Coalition of Immokalee (Fla.) Workers march in Nashville, Tenn., to protest the Publix supermarket chain's refusal to join a farm workers' rights labor program.
Church helps change lives of farmworkers by Sandra Long Weaver, UMC.org
Nothing about picking tomatoes is easy for the workers toiling in the Florida fields from October to May each year. They earn low wages and sometimes face physical and verbal abuse.
Through the deliberate efforts of The United Methodist Church and others, the lives of tomato pickers and other workers around the world have been slowly improving over the last decade.
“What was once typical mistreatment — physical or verbal abuse or sexual harassment — is in the process of being eliminated,” tomato picker Lupe Gonzalo said through an interpreter.
Gonzalo is part of the 5,000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a 20-year-old organization fighting for workers’ rights.
Those changes have been partly driven by the work of the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits and United Methodist Women. The United Methodist Church has been pushing for better workers’ rights at least since 2001.
“In addition to our powerful new rights, in the past we didn’t earn a just wage for the challenging work that we do. Now we receive a more just wage — at least minimum wage,” Gonzalo said.
Fair and equitable treatment
The pension board believes a sustainable, stable and productive global economy requires the fair and equitable treatment of all workers and acts on those beliefs by having discussions with the companies in which the church is a shareholder.
The board manages more than $22 billion in investments for more than 91,000 clergy and lay people in The United Methodist Church.
How does the church create change through the pension board?
The Social Principles of the church guide the work of the pension board, according to Kirsty Jenkinson, managing director and sustainable investment strategist for the board’s Wespath Investment Management division. The board is the largest reporting faith-based pension fund in the world, and the Social Principles contain the denomination’s teachings about issues in the contemporary world.
“We are responsible for many members. We need to make sure the long-term investments allow them to retire,” Jenkinson said. “When you marry that with the Social Principles of the church, we look at where we feel we will have the most impact.”
Jenkinson said the board attends annual conferences and listens to the issues that concern members. “We have to prioritize. We have to be careful of single issues,” she said.
Church members are concerned about broad issues. “Climate change is very large right now,” she said. “People are looking at it because of the future impact on the demand for energy.”
Working with companies
The board has had more conversations with companies in the last 10 to 15 years about fair practices, and companies are becoming more aware of labor standards issues, she said.
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HOW CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
One church as well as an individual can make a difference in the campaign to improve workers' rights, according to a church agency executive.
"We need to have different forces from different parts of society," said Kirsty Jenkinson, managing director and sustainable investment strategist for Wespath Investment Management, the investment arm of the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits. “Consumers care about these issues,” and speaking out on them "helps reinforce what we are trying to do.”
"Some companies are recalcitrant and others are enlightened," she added.
Jenkinson said individuals “can work with local politicians. You can make the issues a priority at annual conferences. (You can) work with United Methodist Women.”
Twelve companies have signed on for the Fair Food program, and an effort is under way to get Publix and Wendy’s to join, as outlined in a video produced by United Methodist Women.
Tomato picker Lupe Gonzalo suggested joining a protest and letting the manager at Publix know that you are concerned about the supply chain of tomatoes and the challenging work to bring tomatoes to the stores. More information can be found at www.ciw-online.org/Publix.
Anita Green, manager of sustainable investment strategies for Wespath Investment Management, said individuals can also exercise their votes as shareholders of companies in which they may own stock.
“They may raise issues through the auditing process,” she said. There are eight U.S. companies “where we supported shareholder resolutions related to improving their anti-discrimination policies,” she said. They are American Financial Group, Crosstex Energy, Exxon Mobil, Leggett & Platt, Teco Energy, Universal Forest Products, AGL Resources and Conoco Philips.
“We need to call more attention to more people to get involved in the campaign,” Gonzalo said. “We need to expand rights outside of Florida. And the Publix campaign is a way to do that.”
_____________________
Colette Nies, a spokesperson for the board, says the board uses its influence as a major institutional and denominational investor to promote human rights, diversity, equal opportunity, and protection from discrimination, as well as health and safety standards, good working conditions and fair payment for workers.
Discussions with companies can range from topics on equal opportunity, diversity, environmental issues with those in the developed world to slave labor, child labor and education in developing countries, Jenkinson said.
“It may be too simplistic to just cut off child labor when that child may be supporting a family,” but you also want education for the child, she added.
The work of the board and UMW goes beyond the tomato pickers and includes ongoing work with companies producing clothing in Bangladesh. A 2013 fire in which 112 died has brought more attention to worker safety issues.
Wespath co-signed a letter encouraging 27 companies to participate in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. The document details how to make industrial buildings safer for workers. Worker representation was included. A list of companies that have signed the accord can be found at www.bangladeshaccord.org.
In 2008, the pension board engaged Walmart about the state-sponsored use of child labor to harvest cotton in Uzbekistan. The company has now stopped using cotton traced to Uzbekistan and works with suppliers to identify the source of the cotton used in the products it sells.
“When Walmart moves, the market moves as well,” Jenkinson said. “It’s an effective way to make changes in the market.”
The pension board began addressing labor standards with companies more than a decade ago on issues ranging from the labor conditions of cocoa trade workers in West Africa to worker safety in the global mining industry.
“We can also effect change through our annual shareholder voting activity as we vote approximately 3,000 annual meeting proxies a year among the companies in which we are shareholders. In 2013 alone, we supported eight shareholder resolutions calling for anti-discrimination in employment,” Nies said in her statement.
When the board approached Hershey to talk about child labor on the cocoa farms in West Africa, the company learned there were other issues in the farmers’ lives.
The farmers had gotten older, and adult children were not coming back to work on the farms. The trees were also getting older, and “communities were struggling to make a livelihood.” Now Hershey has committed to buying only cocoa produced through fair trade standards by 2020.
West African workers now receive text messages about diseases affecting trees, child labor issues and current market prices, said Anita Green, manager of sustainable investment strategies for Wespath. The messages are provided through a Hershey-sponsored mobile phone training program educating farmers in Ghana on best farming and labor practices.
This year, Hershey released the results of three-year study showing farmers increased their yields by 45.6 percent. The farmers are part of CocoaLink, a program created by Hershey, the Ghana Cocoa Board and the World Cocoa Foundation.
UMW another powerful voice
Along with the pension board, the United Methodist Women have been a powerful voice in pressing for better wages for the Florida tomato workers, Green said.
The push to increase the wage from 1 cent to 2 cents a pound for tomatoes started more than a decade ago.
“Now 12 companies and growers have finally capitulated because of all the pressure,” tomato picker Gonzalo said.
For Gonzalo, the “huge network of allies supporting the farmworkers here is enabling us to have a voice. But we’re not going to stop there. We will keep fighting for respect, for a workplace free of sexual harassment and free of violence.”
She added that when the tomato pickers are making a decent wage, “we are able to provide a different stability to our children; better nourishment and our children have better lives.”
Weaver is a freelance editor and writer in the Nashville area.
_____________________________12-year-olds preach to 55,000 United Methodists in Zimbabwe
HARARE, Zimbabwe (UMNS) - A 12-year-old girl and boy each preached to thunderous applause from about 55,000 United Methodists attending the Ebenezer Convention, a gathering that included United Methodist delegations from around the world. Taurai Emmanuel Mafora, the Zimbabwe episcopal area communicator, has the story.
Child preacher lights flame at Ebenezer by Taurai Emmanuel Maforo (Zimbabwe Episcopal Area Communicator)
Chelsea Chipendo the 12year old child preacher enthusiastically stepped onto the stage to a resounding applause from the 55 thousand-strong audience at the National Sports Stadium during the Ebenezer Convention held from 15 to 17 August 2014.
The young girl came into the lime light after initially preaching at the Harare Central District RRW (Rukwadzano Rwe Wadzimai) revival in 2013 and at the 2014 Mini Ebenezer at the Darwendale Camping Ground.
“I am blessed to be preaching at the Ebenezer Convention in the stadium that I used to come as an athlete” said an elated Chelsea.
The convention brought together members of the church from far and wide. Delegations came from the Malawi Provisional Conference, South Africa, and the Episcopal Area’s mission areas; Zambia, Botswana, Canada, and UK/Australia/New Zealand. Baltimore-Washington, Western Pennsylvania and the Great Plains were the church’s representatives from the wider connection.
Chelsea becomes the first ever child to preach before such a large audience in the history of the United Methodist Church and that of the country - Zimbabwe.
“We are excited that the church has scored a first – having a child preach in the National Sports Stadium” said Mr. Simon Mafunda the Zimbabwe East Annual Conference (ZEAC).
The Zimbabwe Episcopal Area leader Bishop Eben Kanukayi Nhiwatiwa thus declared, “The church is alive and has a hopeful future ahead.”
Tapiwa Makamba her age-mate also moved the congregation with his poetic prowess that left the audience in total amazement of his high intelligence. Thunderous applauses followed the spirited presentation.
The two young people are products of the church’s deliberate thrust towards Children’s Ministry.
Chelsea coming from Harare Central District’s two-year certification program for child lay preachers. Tapiwa, a pupil at Murewa Central Primary School is proof of a UMC school that has remained consistent in producing top-notch Grade 7 results.
“As a district we are proud that the initiatives that started with having choral festivals and talent shows for children is now producing results.” said Rev. Vienna Mutezo the Harare Central District Superitendent. Her district is among the first in the Episcopal Area to have children attend a district conference and annual conference as delegates.
Oozing with great confidence Chelsea declared in song, “Hapana Chandinotya”, there is nothing we can fear.
She set the tone of her sermon by first declaring war against the devil. “In this stadium games have been played and there has only been one winner...the devil has totally lost it.”
She went on to raise hopeful expectations to her ardent listeners, “...whether you have lost in the past, at the Ebenezer Convention you will become the winner. Your battles will be won in this stadium.”
Her words were carefully cast within the scope of the Ebenezer theme – 1 Samuel 7:12 “Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.” The text details the final triumph of the Israelites over the Philistines
“Victory is certain!” was the loud proclamation of the theme from her message on the greatest fall of the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6). The sermon filled with words of hope declared that no walls will remain a limitation in the lives of Christians but will surely fall before them.
"Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."(Matthew 28:18-20)
____________________________Resources for church planters
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - Church planters, who often feel isolated as they work to establish new churches and faith communities, will be more connected and have better resources as a result of a road trip New Church Starts (Path 1) made throughout the five jurisdictions of The United Methodist Church.
New Church Planters Gain Networking, New Resources from Road Trip
NASHVILLE, Tenn. Aug. 25, 2014 /GBOD/ – Church planters, who often feel isolated as they work to establish new churches and faith communities, will be more connected and have better resources as a result of a road trip New Church Starts (Path 1) made throughout the five jurisdictions of the United Methodist Church.
During the summer of 2013, staff and associates from Path 1, a division of the General Board of Discipleship (GBOD), visited more than 160 planters representing more than 320 of the 684 churches that were established in the UMC between 2008 and 2012.
“New people are coming to Christ, new people are coming to faith and new people are growing in their faith through the new churches that are being planted,” said Candace Lewis, Executive Director of Path 1. “We've seen that new churches are being planted more strategically and more intentionally.”
The goal of the road trip was to celebrate what works, learn what does not work and dream of what could be accomplished in new church planting. Since January, Path 1 has been sharing information and data gleaned from the journey with bishops, developers, cabinets and annual conference staffs.
“Path 1 doesn't plant churches. We resource the work of planting churches,” Lewis said. “So what we're doing now is sharing the information with the hope that it's going to broaden the perspective of what's happening in annual conferences and across the connection. These collective reports offer annual conferences more stories to celebrate and more models to consider in church planting. We want to help them see what's working in other areas and how they may be able to implement that in their particular area.”
To view a video report of the Path 1 road trip, go to http://bit.ly/1pFiDXQ. For an executive summary of the road trip report and detailed reports from each jurisdiction, go to http://bit.ly/1nfkpu1.
As a result of the information sharing, church planters already are being networked together more effectively.
“One of the things you learn from the reports is that many church planters feel isolated. So we have been able to help coordinate within several jurisdictions gatherings of church planters to help remove the isolation,” Lewis said.
Several sessions are planned to not only bring church planters from across the connection in the United States together, but also to join them with representatives from United Methodist seminaries, hopefully to begin the development of a Wesleyan approach to church planting, she said.
“During the road trip, we found that women feel very isolated, and they don't know that there are other women out there doing this.” Lewis said. “So we're going to gather women church planters in Nashville in November.”
Next January, Path 1 will host a national gathering of church planters.
“We're going to call the planters together to give them a time to connect, network, fellowship and learn from each other to help remove the isolation,” she said.
Path 1 also plans to create a database to more effectively track church planting successes. Currently, the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) reports about new church starts when they are chartered.
“We’re building a new church database that will enable church planters to input their information before the charter so they can share their stories. We call them snapshots of hope.” Lewis said.
The database will include information about professions of faith, numbers of small groups and finances in the new church starts, which can be analyzed and shared, she said.
“We want to close that gap and share what's happening more consistently across the connection because right now everybody just shares what they know in their area,” Lewis said.
A meeting to connect United Methodist seminaries with church planters is scheduled for November in Nashville. “It’s called a Gathering of Professors and Practitioners, and the purpose is to put these people in conversation with each other,” Lewis said.
Leading church planting resources currently are not written from a Wesleyan perspective, she said.
“We want to bring the seminary professors in conversation with some of our leading church planting practitioners, and we want them to talk about if John Wesley were planting a church today, what would he do?” she said.
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____________________________Looking ahead
Here are some of the activities ahead for United Methodists across the connection. If you have an item to share, email newsdesk@umcom.org and put Digest in the subject line.
National Hunger Action Month, September - United Methodist partner, the Society of St. Andrew, offers resources to make September a time to take a stand against hunger including a daily prayer calendar, study guides and children's sermon ideas. Resources.
Deadline to register for online course "United Methodism 101," Wednesday, Sept. 3 – United Methodist Communications will offer the course Sept. 3-Oct.15. $9.99. Details.
Early bird deadline for the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Leadership Institute, Wednesday Sept. 3- Gathering is Wednesday-Friday, Sept. 24-26. The keynote speaker is Len Sweet, United Methodist scholar and best-selling author. Details.
Free webinar "What Can a Congregation do to Change?" Thursday, Sept. 4 - 6:30 p.m. CT, Phil Maynard, author of " Shift: Helping Congregations Back into the Game of Effective Ministry" will offer practical ideas for congregational transformation. Details.
Free webinar "Working with Exceptional Children: ADHD and the Autism Spectrum," Thursday, Sept. 4 - 7-8 p.m. ET United Methodist Christian educator and certified special education teacher Elizabeth Christie will provide information, strategies and activities for working with those with ADHD and autism. Details.
NOMADS annual meeting, Sunday- Friday, Sept. 7-12 - NOMADS, which stands for Nomads On a Mission Active in Divine Service, provide volunteer labor for United Methodist organizations. Most travel by RV, They will meet in Branson, Missouri. Details.
Converge 2014: A Gathering of Pastors for Pastors, Monday-Wednesday, Sept. 8-10 -The event for clergy and church staff will be at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Joplin, Mo. Erwin Raphael McManus, founder of MOSAIC community of faith in Los Angeles, will be the keynote speaker.$70, discounted from what's on the website. Details.
Deadline to register for six online courses from United Methodist Communications, Tuesday, Sept. 9 - United Methodist Communications will offer the following courses Sept. 10-Oct. 22."Communicating Faith in the 21st Century," "Connectional Giving," "Moodle 100: Basic Training," "Tools for Increasing Your Church's Vitality," "Web Ministry 100: What is Web Ministry?" and "Welcoming Ministry 100." Costs vary. Connectional Giving is free. Details.
GO On Tour, Saturday, Sept. 13-Saturday, Nov.15 - A worship concert featuring Christian hip-hop artist Tedashii and speakers from next year's national United Methodist youth event YOUTH 2015, will visit each of The United Methodist Church's five U.S. jurisdictions this fall. Tickets are $15. Details of 10-city tour.
One Board Model Seminar, Sunday, Sept. 14 - 2 p.m. CT. The Rev. Bob Farr, director of congregational excellence for the Missouri Annual (regional) Conference, will lead training for churches to implement a one-board model at The Connection, 6701 Virginia Ave., St. Louis.Details on PDF.
Worship Design Studio Planning Retreat, Sunday-Wednesday, Sept. 14-17 - At Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, the Rev. Marcia McFee will guide participants through the entire liturgical year (starting with Advent) in order to map out worship themes and general plans for each season. Details.
Catapult Conference, Monday-Wednesday, Sept. 15-17 - Conference on "launching leaders into kingdom mission" will be at Cornerstone Church, a United Methodist congregation, 2125 Hamilton Road, Auburn, Alabama. Details.
Hispanic/Latino/a Heritage Month, Monday, Sept. 15-Wednesday, Oct. 15 - The United Methodist Board of Discipleship shares worship resources.
Free webinar "Becoming a Praying Congregation" Tuesday, Sept. 16 - 6:30 p.m. CT, Event includes examples and ideas for the community, for small groups, for individuals and families to have a deeper connection with God. Details.
How to Reach New People workshop by Jim Griffith, Friday-Saturday, Sept. 19-20 - Union United Methodist Church, 3543 Watson Road, St. Louis, will host event for pastors and church leaders. $25 per person or $75 per team of five (teams are encouraged). Details on PDF.
Rich Church / Poor Church: Keys to Effective Financial Ministry, Wednesday, Sept. 24 and again Tuesday, Oct. 14 - Both seminars will be from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. CT and feature United Methodist author and fundraiser, J. Clif Christopher. The Sept. 24 session will be Platte Woods United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Oct. 14 session will be at Manchester United Methodist Church in St. Louis. $25. Details.
Spaghetti dinner, Unity Run/Walk and Indian Mission Homecoming Service, Friday-Sunday, Oct. 3-5 - Spaghetti dinner is at 5-7 p.m. ET Friday, Oct. 3, the Unity Run/Walk starts at 8:45 a.m. ET Saturday, Oct. 4, and the homecoming service is at 11 a.m. ET Sunday, Oct. 5. Both the dinner and run are at Nanticoke Indian Center, and the service is at Indian Mission United Methodist Church. Details on PDF.
Deadline to apply for two discernment events for Deaconesses and Home Missioner Ministry, Wednesday, Oct. 1 - Events are Friday-Sunday, Nov. 7-9, in St. Louis and Friday-Sunday, Nov. 21-23, in Tempe, Ariz. A discernment event is an opportunity to explore a sense of call to lay ministry with a group of fellow discerners. Details.
World Communion Sunday, Oct. 5 - United Methodists observe World Communion Sunday by celebrating communion with other Christians around the world on this special Sunday. Churches are also encouraged to receive a special offering to support ethnic undergraduate and graduate students, which often enables first-generation students to attend college. To download the World Communion Sunday pastor's kit .World Communion Sunday envelopes and posters.
Deborah's Daughters Women in Ministry and Leadership Conference, Wednesday-Friday, Oct. 22-24 - United Theological Seminary announces it will hold the conference at the seminary's main campus at 4501 Denlinger Road, Dayton, Ohio, and at the Hilton Garden Inn in Beavercreek, Ohio. Details.
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