Social Justice Ministries Endowment Fund

Making Disciples for Jesus Christ and Transforming the world

During April, I was privileged to join three General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) colleagues at a training event about the United Methodist Social Principles in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The trip to the remote village of Kamina is one of five Social Principles training events planned in Central Conferences this year.

When we arrived in DRC, the Rev. Dr. Kabwita Kayombo arranged for those of us from GBCS — the Revs. Neal Christie, Cynthia Abrams, Clayton Childers and myself — to celebrate Easter at several churches in Lubumbashi. Afterwards, Bishop Ntambo welcomed us to Kamina.

For the next several days over 130 attendees from the North Katanga and Southern Congo conferences engaged in learning and discussion about the United Methodist Social Principles. We received many affirmative comments from participants about our efforts. Two of them said:

We will apply what we learned in our families, our churches and we will train others to apply these principles in their church and society.

We want to greatly thank this organization for facilitating better collaboration between ourselves and the whole world in fighting against poverty, discrimination against women or violence towards women. May God give you eternal and marvelous life.

The Kamina training was an expensive endeavor supported by GBCS’s operating budget. In addition to the financial outlay, it required hundreds of hours of staff time by teams on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a message thanking GBCS after the training, Bishop Ntambo said:

You came to open a new chapter in our Area. Now people have a real understanding of the UMC through the involvement of the Church in society. … The seminar was a great success, starting from the quality of presenters, their humility, humbleness and knowledge and the enthusiasm of participants. … I end by congratulating you for such a ministry and encourage you to do more, but more especially I end by extending another invitation to North Katanga — why not to the rest of our Episcopal Areas?

Your generous gift to the United Methodist Social Justice Endowment Fund will help ensure that such valuable training events will occur around the world in the future. As the endowment grows, its investment income will provide a significant financial resource for sharing the history and tradition of the Social Principles at events such as the one in Kamina.

Please carefully consider making a donation to the fund now. There are several ways to give your support, including options for planned gifts of appreciated assets such as stocks and real estate.

In his report on Kamina, Dr. Kabwita, who is superintendent of the Jerusalem District in South Congo Conference, wrote:

This seminar was an opportunity to reflect on the Church and Christ's resurrection. It was so challenging, interactive and informative. So we would like to have these seminars on the Social Principles that will reflect the global image of the Church throughout jurisdictions and central conferences.

Your support of the Social Justice Endowment Fund will be appreciated very much — not just by this generation of United Methodists, but by those in the years to come.

Yours in Christ,
Wesley Paulson
Chief Financial Officer
General Board of Church & Society

Ethnic Young Adult Internship Program

The Ethnic Young Adults Summer Internship program is designed for young adults, between the ages of 18 and 22, representing the five ethnic caucuses of The United Methodist church, with an interest in exploring issues of public policy, social justice advocacy, and social change. EYA Interns are active leaders in our world community serving as clergy, hospital and prison chaplains, university and seminary educators, agency staff, health care providers, therapists, legal advocates, U.S. congressional staff, missionaries, media and communications directors, as well as public policy advocates.

Your donation to the Social Justice Endowment Fund will help The United Methodist Church continue to develop leaders for today! Leaders like Damarias Diaz (Maryland).

Diaz, 18, attends Camino De Vida United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. An Hispanic/Latina, she was among 12 persons who worked as Ethnic Young Adult (EYA) Summer Interns in Washington, D.C in 2009. Diaz’s internship was with the National Council of Churches of Christ-USA, which strives for ecumenical cooperation among Christians in the United States. Each summer, interns travel to New York City to visit GBCS’s United Nations ministry, which is in the Church Center across the street from the U.N. She shared this about her experience:

"I have learned about God’s big love and sacrifice".

“The trip helped my understanding of God in the world. I have learned about God’s big love and sacrifice. I had the opportunity to see how God has been working throughout the United Nations by helping the oppressed in Africa and other poor counties.”

Diaz said she is “really grateful with God and with the people who made this great experience possible.”

In 2007, Elaine Atim served as senior EYA intern and had this reflection about the program:

"The convergence of social action, Christian community and personal spiritual growth is undoubtedly a powerful triad for any young adult hoping to 'change the world.' The EYA Internship program is indeed a unique way for young adults to spend a summer. And it is certainly no day at the beach."

Read her full article in Faith in Action, Summer Time

The annual internship program is coordinated by the General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) in cooperation with the five ethnic caucuses of The United Methodist Church.

“Funding for the EYA summer internship is, of course, very limited,” said Rev. Neal Christie, GBCS assistant general secretary for Education and Leadership Development who directs the program. “Costs for housing continue to rise. With increased funding, we could open the EYA internship to many more students from Africa, the Philippines and Europe.” In 2008, four of the interns came from overseas.

United Methodist Seminar Program

[M]y faith and my call to service ceased to be separate parts of me.

Kara Scroggins

For Kara Scroggins, the work of GBCS came alive when she first attended a seminar program in 2008. “As soon as I walked in the door and saw the words from Micah (6:8) written across the entrance hall dome, I knew I was in a place that resonated with my being.”

Scroggins said she had been brought up reciting those words every night when asked by her father, “What does the Lord require of you?” “But until I came to the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, the centrality of a pursuit of social justice to a Christian life had never fully clicked with me,” she explained. “Throughout the week of seminars and service projects, and after I went back to school, my faith and my call to service ceased to be separate parts of me and finally began to grow together, drawing on and strengthening each other.”

In reflecting on his seminar experience Joseph Matthews, from Phoenix City, Ala, said “Participating in the United Methodist Seminars program has taught us and informed us. It has helped us to live more fully the baptismal vow to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.”

Read his full article in Faith in Action, Justice takes time

 

Faith in Action

Throughout the year, GBCS advocacy staff promotes justice through legislation and grassroots activism. GBCS has 10 different justice networks that help staff share information and mobilize communities to take action on issues that impact our world. From Immigration to Health Care reform in the U.S. to protection human rights and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, the board’s ministries touch the lives of Methodists around the world.

I’m proud to be able to respond that we are busy trying to make it on earth as it is in heaven.

Jim Winkler

Our engagement in international affairs aims to help United Methodists across geographical divides and political contexts to develop lines of social action that are faithful to Jesus Christ, obedient to the Gospel, and responsive to the needs and concerns of God’s people around the world.

Through Education and Leadership Formation ministry, the General Board of Church and Society helps local churches and annual conferences interpret domestic and international social justice issues. We offer resources, educational events, and partnerships.

GBCS helps anchor UMC

“The General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) has helped anchor The United Methodist Church in the Wesleyan balance between piety and asocial action.”

That assessment comes from the Rev. Schulyer Rhodes, pastor of Temple United Methodist Church in San Francisco. “People have been showered with a sense of empowerment by this Church agency,” says Rhodes, who added that he speaks from personal experience.

Rhodes points to two programs in which GBCS has changed people’s lives during his more than 20 years as a pastor. Once is the denomination’s Peace with Justice ministry and the other is its seminar program.
“Lives were touched,” by the seminar program, according to Rhodes. “I love to watch the faces of young people as they receive information that connects their faith with politics,” he says. “It’s like a light was going on somewhere.”

Rhodes remembers a young persons attending a seminar on Capitol Hill who got to talk to his member of Congress. After learning that the Congressman was a United Methodist, the boy proceeded to quote the Social Principles about the denomination’s stand on war. The boy asked how the Congressman could be a United Methodist and vote the way he does. “The silence was deafening,” Rhodes recalls.
GBCS has also touched the local congregation through its Peace with Justice ministry, which is a Special Sunday of the denomination. He declares that peoples’ lives have been changed through that ministry. “There is no question about it,” he says. “I was deeply involved with that from the very beginning, so I know something about it.”

When GBCS produces a training manual for peace with justice coordinators, Rhodes says people responded and developed programs at the annual conference level. “Using the portion of the [Special Sunday] offering that stays in the annual conference, new ministries bloomed like flowers in the desert after a rain,” he says.

Rhodes says he knows the work continues. “I see our own California-Nevada Peace with Justice coordinator Adrienne Fong working tirelessly to move the Church further and deeper into its commitment to the gospel of peace and justice,” he says. “I see our own Conference Board of Church and Society moving and caring, and I see my own congregation engaging.

“We all do it together,” Rhodes says. “It truly is the work of the connection.” Rhodes says he is aware that the budget constraints make GBCS staffing evermore restricted. As a result, he says that outreach to local churches is “even with the best resources and staffing,” a difficult proposition.

“But keep it up,” Rhodes encourages. “The board has done a good job of keeping the energy, power and resources flowing into the local churches.”

It is recognition that the voice of the United Methodist Church on those issues crucial for transforming the world in the name of Jesus Christ may be muted by budget constraints that led to founding the Social Justice Endowment Fund. It is intended to ensure that the visionary ministry and strong, prophetic United Methodist voice of GBCS and its predecessors over the past 100 years continues for centuries to come.