News and Views

By Linda Worthington
UMConnection staff

In her opening remarks to the 2018 Mission u, formerly known as the School of Christian Mission, Bishop LaTrelle Easterling urged participants to attend the United in Love Rally in downtown D.C. Aug. 12. The rally is being staged to counteract and oppose a white supremacists’ gathering in Lafayette Park. It is the same group that organized the Charlottesville hate rally in August last year.

“Hate is never who we’re called to be,” the bishop said.

She told the audience, 194 registered adults plus 26 youth and eight children (a new program this year) gathered at the Pooks Hill Marriott in North Bethesda, that some of her remarks were what she’d told the graduates of Wesley Seminary last spring. The words were applicable to both groups.

 “Disabuse us of the sin of certitude,” she said. Empty yourselves that you might be filled with God … with goodness, justice and equity. “May the fountain of God fill yourselves with God,” she said in a blessing.

Mission u is a Cooperative School between the United Methodist Women and the General Board of Global Ministries. It’s theme this year was “We are One Beneath the Cross: Embracing Wholeness.” The opening worship Friday afternoon, the first of three plenary sessions, used soil as a metaphor for God’s creation and the place of humans, plants and animals in it. Led by several UMW officers, it used as a text “Embracing Wholeness: An Earth Perspective for Covenantal Living,” by Jessica Stonecyper, a UMC Deacon and urban agriculture specialist in Zanesville, Ohio.

Elizabeth Stemley, president of the conference UMW, led a reflection on the text. “If we accept this theology of soil, would we treat the earth like something to throw away?” she challenged.

Each person either brought a packet of soil with them or received one there, which as part of the worship were collected together in large bowls. As part of the reflection, Colleen Cates, director in the National UMW office, planted a tree in the soil-filled bowl.

In addition to the spiritual growth study, in which everyone participated together, the other studies were broken into small groups to enable more individual sharing and learning. The issue study, “What About Our Money? A Faith Response” was in high demand; four separate classes ran concurrently. The geographic mission study was on “Missionary Conferences of The United Methodist Church in the United States.”

The money classes explored what the Bible has to say about money, the systems that shape our lives, the way we spend, consume and give, and how to connect faith to money and the economy. The Rev. Carey James, pastor of Sharp Street Memorial UMC in Baltimore, one of four teachers, taught the group to see the contrast between culture’s concept of money as one of scarcity, of never having enough, of promoting accumulation. In contrast, God’s kin-dom emphasizes gratitude, abundance, that everything one has is a gift from God, wherein lies our security. It is not just “me” and “mine” but community working together.

“We’re children of God so we’re sufficient in God,” James said. Churches operate out of a fear of security, he said. “We should focus on what we have, not what we don’t.”

For a second year, the “Missionary Conferences” classes gave an overview of three missionary conferences in the United States: The Alaska United Methodist Conference, Red Bird Missionary Conference (Kentucky) and the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference. During the second plenary session, the whole group met someone from each of the missionary conferences through video that revealed some of the problems each locale faces. Many UMW units provide some support to Red Bird Mission, which serves a swath of Appalachia and the depleting coal mining industry.

The General Board of Global Ministries is holding broad-ranging conversations around the future of these missionary conferences throughout the 2017-2020 quadrennium. The course, taught at the Mission u gatherings in every conference across the U.S., will help determine the future of these conferences.

Also offered was training for each of the UMW officers’ positions. During that time, the Rev. Heath Wilson, the new chair of the conference Board of Global Ministries, held a small workshop on BOGM’s conference role. He said that in the fall, the conference will do focus groups on “Abundant Health,” one of GBGM’s emphasizes this quadrennium. Wilson is hoping to enlist a wide variety of people from many churches in the Abundant Health initiative.


Kendrick “Rick” Sullivan was introduced during a plenary. He is a US-2 Global Mission Fellow, a young adult who is completing a two-year assignment under GBGM serving with the American University Methodist Protestant Community. He spoke enthusiastically of being a US-2, “engaging, connecting, growing” in the AU local community. Among his activities, he has advocated for janitors on campus, written for CNN and connected “to some hurt by the church.”  He said, “The students taught me a lot about what it means to live faithfully,” noting that the campus is a place where faith isn’t common.

The youth had a faculty of their own, studied the same topics, but with different emphases.

Many of the materials, study books, DVDs and videos are available for churches to hold their own studies on the topics. Check with your local UMW unit for the information. One of the aims of this annual event is to prepare many people to lead discussions, small groups and classes in their own churches.