DSW Mission Projects
Desert Southwest Conference Photo
While the United Methodist Insight crew is traveling, there's little time and facility to follow through on all the church-related news we gather. So here's a quick compilation of briefs from our sources, with links to follow for more information. These notes are taken verbatim from the various credited sources.
***
RIP Medical Debt Makes the National News Programming
Excerpted from Billie K. Fidlin's blog on Desert Southwest Conference website
On April 16th, CBS Sunday Morning ran an excellent piece on RIP Medical Debt. As their intro narrative states:
“At any time, one in five American households bears medical debt, the cause in a majority of U.S. bankruptcies. Since 2014, the charity RIP Medical Debt has abolished more than $8.5 billion worth of medical bills for five million Americans, by buying up delinquent medical debt at pennies on the dollar, just as debt collectors do, and abolishing it. Correspondent Martha Teichner talks with the co-founder and president of RIP Medical Debt, and with a Georgia preschool teacher whose $1,500 medical debt, that had dogged her for years, was suddenly erased.”
RIP Medical Debt
This four-minute video on the CBS website (https://www.cbsnews.com/video/rip-medical-debt-abolishing-crippling-health-care-debts/) gives an excellent overview of how the program works. You’ll remember this is one of our three 2023 Mission Projects this year. You can give at https://dscumc.org/mission-project-donation/.
Fidlin serves as Desert Southwest Conference's director of outreach and mission.
***
Excerpted from Christian Network Europe
A church employee asked the authorities if they would recognise same-sex marriages if sealed in the Methodist Church of Norway. That is reported by Vart Land. Last month, the Nordic Methodist bishop Christian Alsted promised that gay couples would soon be able to seal their civil marriage in the Methodist Church. Currently, the religious community is working on a liturgy for such ceremonies.
However, the issue is a very sensitive topic within the international community of the United Methodist Church, to which also the denomination in Norway belongs. A while ago, a special conference took place on the issue. It was expected that the Methodist church leadership would approve a resolution that left the choice for same-sex marriages in the church up to the different national branches. However, the motion was rejected.
Yet, the Norwegian Methodist Church seems to ignore this stance. It keeps working on a special liturgy. Hilde Marie Øgreid Movafagh, who is responsible for it, says it will be as similar to the old one as possible, “only gender neutral.” She does not expect significant consequences for the direction the church is taking. “Then many other churches that have already adopted similar liturgies, both in the USA and other European countries, will have to be banned.”
***
Drive 'n Drop
A poster from Washington Street UMC for its "Drive 'n Drop" campaign for foster children. (Courtesy Image)
Local church helping foster kids and their new foster families
Excerpted from WIS Channel 10
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - According to the South Carolina Department of Social Services, there are more than 3,700 kids in foster care statewide.
One church is asking people to open their hearts to help kids going through heart-wrenching times that are getting moved into foster care.
The “Drive ‘N Drop” is happening Friday, April 28, from noon to four, and Saturday, April 29, from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. at Washington Street United Methodist Church.
Jane Peterson with the Washington Street United Methodist Church says, “We believe in helping anybody. God loves everyone, no matter who you are how you feel, what you look like, who you love. We love everyone.”
Peterson says “Children who are going into foster care don’t have much and they’re taken from homes without toothbrushes, socks, underwear. Our church is coming together to collect donations for those children, and they’ll be distributed.”
***
'Targeted' attacks on Lakeview church that supports LGBTQ+ community are ramping up, pastor says
Excerpted from ABC 7 Eyewitness News
CHICAGO (WLS) -- A church in Lakeview has become victim to frequent, targeted attacks, seemingly because they support the LGBTQ+ community.
The pastor at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church spoke with ABC7 about what she calls the escalating acts of hate, and what they're doing to try to stop it.
Pastor Jennifer Stephens said the church has been undergoing attacks for almost a year now, but the vandalism has really ramped up within the past month.
"My biggest concern is to keep my community safe," Stephens said. "And not just my church community, but those that live in this area."
Nearly every other day the past month, someone has been vandalizing the church that openly supports the LGBTQ+ community.
"I really think it's an intentional, targeted act," Stephens said. "Whether the individual lives here or not, I know that they are doing this purposely to this church to holy covenant."
Welcome signs have been destroyed or stolen, forcing them to now chain their signs to light
***
Letter: Methodist church helps heal LGBTQ community
Excerpted from the News-Review
Many thanks to our First United Methodist Church of Roseburg, for hosting Soromundi choir from Eugene, for an evening of peaceful, community-building, healing music as a benefit for Umpqua Valley Rainbow Coalition.
Grateful thanks to Roseburg Police officers, who peacefully dispersed pseudo-Christians standing outside the church doors, who were using megaphones to disrupt the concert, yelling nonstop about their beliefs regarding sin and repenting. They apparently never heard that Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Their inhospitable behavior tarnishes Roseburg's reputation and brings shame to our town.
Kim Wilbur, Roseburg, Oregon
***
Build hope
Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Photo
Churches build homes at home to send to neighbors in need
Excerpted from Eastern Pennsylvania Digest
For its third annual Help Build Hope mission project, Bethel Hill United Methodist Church in Lansdale, PA, doubled down on its usual homebuilding efforts by constructing a more ambitious, two-floor duplex for some blessed new homeowners in Berks County.
Help Build Hope is a mission project Bethel Hill UMC has done at home since 2021—during the Covid pandemic—in its own parking lot, where church members, partners and other volunteers work together over a weekend to assemble interior and exterior walls for a new home. This time they did it April 14-16, along with their regular partner, Christ United Methodist Church Lansdale, which contributed leadership, volunteers and funds. Learn more.
***
Orange children receive better night’s rest through Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Excerpted from the Orange Leader
Buddy Marks and his two sons began attending Wesley United Methodist Church in Orange, Texas, approximately six months ago.
“I’m not sure how they came to the church,” said Carolyn Hillsten. “People have shown them how to do hymns and readings. They are sharp, sharp kids. Their father is very nice.”
But it came to the congregation’s attention that, for whatever reason, the young men did not have beds of their own.
So the church submitted an application to Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit that serves Orange, Jefferson and Hardin counties. Through the help of grants and donations and the work of volunteers, Sleep in Heavenly Peace delivers handmade beds — complete with bedding — to children up to 17 years old.
On Sunday, members of the church were able to assist the nonprofit as they assembled a set of bunk beds at Marks’ house in Orange.
***
How the Teen Mental Health Crisis is Turning Some Youth Pastors into First Responders
Excerpted from The Roys Report
Brayden Bishop, a youth pastor in Texas, is just 25 years old. But when it comes to working with teens in crisis, he’s a seasoned veteran. Some of the teens and middle-schoolers he works with are also practiced in talking about suicide — so much so that they toss out disclaimers, aware that going too far may trigger mandatory reporting.
“They will say, deadpan, in the middle of talking about a mental health struggle, ‘I’m not a danger to myself or others,’” said Bishop. “Then they will kind of laugh about it and move on.”
But there are young people at Grace Chapel United Methodist Church, in Aubrey, a middle- to upper-middle-class community north of Dallas, who openly tell Bishop they have contemplated or attempted suicide. Some struggle with depression or thoughts of self-harm, such as cutting. Young women confide in him about episodes of sexual violence. Some are seniors in high school, but middle-schoolers also talk about their struggles with mental health.
***
Excerpted from AL.com
First Methodist Church of Prattville and Orange Beach Methodist Church have voted to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church, but leaders of the denomination in South Alabama are organizing efforts to start new churches in Prattville, Orange Beach and in other places where churches are disaffiliating.
“We have all experienced a very difficult season of life,” said United Methodist Bishop David Graves, head of the Alabama-West Florida Conference. “However, this news gives me energy and the promise of a new day in this conference. Our focus moving forward will be starting new churches in places where there is no longer a United Methodist presence while also working with our existing churches to reach their current communities in new and innovative ways.”
The Alabama-West Florida Conference announced that it has launched a ministry strategy team to plant new faith communities and coach current churches to reach new people. The conference has not yet announced how many churches have voted to disaffiliate.