May 17, 2018
Dear Readers,
It’s been an interesting week in church news.
The recent Council of Bishops’ meeting has triggered a dialog about the way forward for the United Methodist Church and disappointment and upset about the voting of constitutional amendments.
With the discovery that incorrect language was presented to some annual conferences for the ballots to vote on constitutional amendments, all conferences will get a “do over” on voting for that amendment.
Oh, and now guests are going to be asked to pay $200-300 to attend an open meeting of the church?
The dialogue continues …
But locally – Praise for our own Sharon Thornberry, who was recognized for her service to hunger ministry across the state of Oregon. And have you heard what’s happening in Bend? The Bend Church has created an amazing homeless ministry in central Oregon.
AND – Great things are planned for the Annual Conference Session next month. If you have not registered, do it right now and avoid any late fees! Stop reading this and register.
Greg Nelson, Director of Communications
CONFERENCE NEWS
Do WHAT on Saturday of Annual Conference? Learn!
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After the business of Annual Conference wraps up there is still more learning to do on Saturday, June 16.
Members and guests have the opportunity to participate in a plethora of workshops – everything from participating in the Boise Pride parade to stewardship workshops to gratitude journaling, church culture and more -- part of the Living Hearts, Mind and Spirit activities.
“The Saturday Learning Experience opportunities are a vital part of our time together at annual conference, because through them we create a learning environment as a community of faith,” said Lowell Greathouse, director of mission and ministry for the Oregon-Idaho Conference. “And when we participate in personal growth and social engagement, the heart and soul of our church grows at the same time.”
Learning sessions will take place at the Riverside Hotel from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday to help live out the theme Conference "Do this and you shall live." These experiences offer several kinds of "doing," from advocacy to personal development to building skills for use in local churches. See descriptions below and mark your preferred choice on your Annual Conference Session registration to help leaders plan for the right size group.
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AC legislation available for review
Legislative petitions to the 2018 session of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference are now available for review on the conference website. Six action items and ten standing resolutions have been submitted to the conference and reviewed by the Legislative Assembly.
Submitted action items include changes to scholarship policies for clergy, actions to support civil rights, and a rule change to enable distribution of the conference journal via print on demand. Standing resolutions speak to the values held by the Conference. Submitted items include supporting inclusion for lay staff, a position on climate change, support for human rights in the US and Middle East, and other issues.
These will now be voted on by the annual session when it meets June 13-16, 2018 in Boise, Idaho.
Laity, don’t forget to sign up for workshops at Annual Conference
On Thursday, June 14, laity will gather in the grand ballroom at the Riverside Hotel in Boise for a laity session at 1:30 p.m. Conference Lay Leader Jan Nelson and the Board of Lay Ministries will share updates before lay members break off for workshop opportunities.
There will be six workshops offered for laity to learn about ways to lead in terms of meeting the needs of their congregations, neighborhoods and beyond. Participants will learn what is working in other parts of the Conference and can take home ideas they can adapt to their own settings.
There will be workshops on: making your church disaster resilient, churches’ role in community mental health, starting and managing a community garden, opening opportunities for people to become disciples, what it means to be a disciple, and experiencing social media.
The workshops will meet in separate rooms in the Riverside Hotel. Members and guests are asked to pre-register so Conference staff can plan for the appropriate space for each workshop.
AROUND THE CONFERENCE
In the News: Bend Church recognized for helping homeless
Originally published May 11, 2018 in Portland’s Street Root News
“You’re going to cry? Give me a hug instead of crying.”
Stacey Witte embraced a homeless woman who came to the Back Door Café seeking help.
The Back Door Café, which is located in the basement of Bend Church, a Methodist denomination, serves breakfast each Wednesday morning to between 120 and 170 homeless people who come as far as Redmond and Sisters to be there …
… Witte, who operates the café, is Bend Church’s director of homeless outreach and is one of the fiercest advocates for homeless people in Central Oregon. She approaches her work in much the same way she greeted the homeless woman: with warmth, compassion, and determination to help them improve their lives.
People also come for all manner of services: They can sign up for same-day medical appointments at a medical van operated by Mosaic Medical, the federally qualified health center in Central Oregon, which is parked outside the church. They can also get haircuts, charge their cellphones at a charging station, get their clothes mended by a seamstress who sometimes comes, take showers in another part of the church, nap at two small respite stations cordoned off by a partition wall, or choose clothes from two small racks.
Nearly 120 homeless people also receive their mail there. The mail is sorted into cubby holes for each letter of the alphabet in Witte’s office, just off the café’s entrance.
Read more of this story on Street Root News’ website.
Thornberry honored for hunger advocacy
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Sharon Thornberry was recognized as by Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon with their Ecumenical Serve Award at a Benefit Dinner and Award Celebration held Wednesday, May 16 at the Benson Hotel. Thornberry is a member of The Dalles First United Methodist Church and works for the Oregon Food Bank as Rural Community Liaison.
The award was presented in recognition of her dedication and leadership to eliminate hunger and its root causes from Oregon’s communities. This has been shown not only in her work at Oregon Food Bank, but in her support of Bread for the World, where she currently is a board member, her key role in the Bishop’s Initiative to Eliminate Hunger in the Oregon-Idaho Conference, and her support of other organizations such as Ten River Food Web, Philomath Community Services and the Community Food Security Coalition.
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Spirit Alive: Let me tell you a spiritual secret
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In his latest blog post, Rev. Lowell Greathouse, coordinator of mission and ministry for the Oregon-Idaho Conference, discusses how music moved his soul in a way is like that Pentecostal feeling of being filled with God’s spirit.
“You see, for some reason, whenever I listened to the soul-filled songs of Harry Belafonte I found myself so mesmerized by his music that it transported me to a special place and my consciousness was somehow altered. It was as if something transcendent was poured over me. I think it must have been akin to the feeling that took place for the people at Pentecost. I felt a bit drunk in the spirit!”
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Inspiring Generosity: Jazzing up those giving statements
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In her latest installment, Cesie Delve Scheuermann gives advice on how churches can make giving statements have a little bit more pizazz.
And, there it was. It said something like – and this may or may not be a direct quote - “You are behind on your pledge. Pay up.” Wow. As you can imagine, that really tickled my generosity bone.
It doesn’t take a PhD in good manners to know that this is not an appropriate thing to write to anyone who is voluntarily giving a donation …
Read more of Cesie’s latest blog on the Conference website
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AROUND THE GLOBE
Paying for the special General Conference
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Visitors to the special 2019 General Conference will need to pay at least a $200 registration fee to witness The United Methodist Church’s top policymaking assembly first hand.
Many expect the gathering to be historic. The denomination’s Council of Bishops has called the special General Conference for Feb. 23-26, 2019, to act on its report and possibly other petitions related to the denomination’s stance on homosexuality. Longtime debate over how to minister with LGBTQ individuals has threatened to split the 12.5 million-member, multinational denomination.
After a long discussion wrestling with different alternatives, the group that plans General Conference concluded the registration fees are necessary to help cover the costs of the special — and initially unfunded — meeting.
“This is a tough decision,” Moses Kumar told the Commission on General Conference. He is the General Conference treasurer and top executive of the denomination’s finance agency.
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United Methodists among dead in Congo flooding
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Nine people have died and thousands of homes and buildings have been destroyed, including five United Methodist schools, two local churches and pastoral homes, after heavy rains and flooding in the Uvira District of Kivu.
Among the dead are a United Methodist woman from Sange United Methodist Church and two children from Kasenga United Methodist Church, said the Rev. Dumas Balaganire, Uvira district superintendent, who organized a local committee to identify the houses destroyed and number of deaths.
A 52-year-old widow, who leaves behind 11 children, also died, along with four members of the same family from the Songo neighborhood.
Dikete Yale, coordinator of United Methodist schools in Kivu, said four primary schools (Senga, Suki, Walo and De La Montagne) and a secondary school (De La Montagne) were destroyed by flooding. He said school officials are forced to look for houses to rent for the children to finish the school year.
He sent a cry of alarm for “any person of good will to help these schools so that these children can end the school year in goodness.”
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Facing the Future 2018 envisions multicultural church
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While the number of people of color entering ministry grows, the main demographic of The United Methodist Church remains 94 percent white in the U.S. This means there are more and more pastors serving congregations that don’t look like them.
To help equip those pastors in their ministry, the United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race organized Facing the Future conferences. Three hundred pastors in cross-racial/cross-cultural appointments traveled to Newark, New Jersey, May 7-9 for the third installment of Facing the Future.
Erin Hawkins, top executive of the Commission on Religion and Race, referenced the ever-present racial tensions that still confront society.
“Pastors serving in cross-racial and cross-cultural appointments can serve as key agents in the task of building beloved community, especially in the face of cultural division,” she said. “If you’re in such an appointment, every time you stand in a pulpit you extend a hand to someone different from you and say, ‘Let’s make this journey together.’”
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Bishops’ action leads to questions
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Did the Council of Bishops vote to put only their recommended One Church Plan before the special session of General Conference, or did the bishops vote to send two other plans for legislative consideration as well?
Bishops have offered their own sometimes conflicting answers to the question of exactly what they meant with that vote in closed session earlier this month, leading to confusion within The United Methodist Church.
“Different bishops say different things in this matter, and it’s not helping,” said Audun Westad, a Norway Conference delegate to General Conference.
Conflict within the council has become pronounced. Bishop Scott J. Jones of the Texas Conference asserted that Bishop Bruce R. Ough, the council’s immediate past president, engaged in misrepresentation in a brief to the Judicial Council, the denomination’s top court.
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Judicial Council to hold oral hearing on bishops’ request
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The United Methodist Church Judicial Council will hold an oral hearing to consider a request from the bishops for a declaratory decision of law about what legislation can come before next year’s special session of General Conference.
The Council of Bishops decided during its April 29-May 4 meeting to request the oral hearing.
The court set the one-hour oral hearing for 9 a.m. CDT May 22 at the Hilton Orrington Hotel in Evanston, Illinois. In an order issued May 12, the court said the interested parties will be the Council of Bishops as petitioner and the Commission on General Conference as respondent. All requests for change in interested party status were denied, the court said.
The hearing will be livestreamed, and the Council of Bishops and the commission will have 20 minutes each for oral arguments. The Council of Bishops will present arguments first and the council has the right to reserve up to five minutes for rebuttal. After the oral arguments, the Judicial Council will have 20 minutes for questions.
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RESOURCES & OPPORTUNITIES
Council of Bishops invites applications for three ecumenical programs
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church is inviting applications for the following three programs:
Grant application for the 2019 Local Ecumenical and Interreligious Ministries
United Methodist Ecumenical and Interreligious Training: Young Adult Network Application (UMEIT: YAN)
Scholarship to attend The Ecumenical Institute at Bossey
For more information on these opportunities, as well as applications, read the full press release from the Council of Bishops.
COMMENTARY
May 15, 2018
… The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem illustrates the increasing isolation of our country within the international community when it comes to policy in the region. In failing to help constructively address the prolonged crisis in Syria, and after unilaterally withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, yesterday’s event in Jerusalem reflects the United States’ apparent abdication of its role as an honest proponent, broker, and partner for peace …
