WPAUMC e-news for February 10, 2010

Here's an e-news to read if you're snowed in -- or if you're not!

Lenten Study Guide for Bishop’s Call to Hope, Action: A study guide for the Council of Bishops’ God’s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope & Action is now available. The Call to Action addresses pandemic poverty and disease; environmental degradation; and the proliferation of weapons and violence. The study guide is well-suited for a Lenten study. Free downloadable copies are available at HopeandAction.org.
Want to Make Your Worship Memorable? Pastors and leaders often look for ways to make their message touch worshippers hearts and minds. Try incorporating illusion and surprise into your worship to tell a story, illustrate a point, or simply serve as a visual memory of the service. UM Communications offers some interesting suggestions. Read more.
Alban Says It’s Story Time! After two years of research, the Alban Institute is convinced that it’s time to lift up the power of story-telling and narrative approaches to leadership as a means of transforming and renewing congregations. Read more.
Connect With Your Community, Volunteers! Communities have many talented people, but few share those talents with organizations that need them. Take the lead and have your church host a community service fair. Learn how. It can unite your congregation, the community and the organizations that can put skilled people to work.
Grow in Discipleship with Online Courses: Wesley Ministry Network offers its lay education courses on-line. Three courses begin on February 22: Simply Christian, Devotion to Jesus, and Religion and Science: Pathways to Truth.Each course features streaming video segments and on-line discussions with other students and experienced Wesley Ministry Network teachers. Courses are open to all, and CEUs are available for pastors. Learn more and register.
Black History Month: Feb. 13 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of student sit-ins and the arrival of Freedom Rider buses from the north to protest the segregation of lunch counters in downtown Nashville. There were demonstrations, buses, beatings, arrests, jail sentences, speeches and marches, but there were also prayers and singing from the jail cells. Here’s an article and two of the improvised songs the demonstrators sang in jail.
Change the World: United Methodists in the U.S., Philippines, and Zimbabwe are already preparing for April 24-25 when they will participate in outreach programs such as food pantries, prison ministries, neighborhood clean-up, legal aid for immigrants, malaria awareness and fund raising. Click here to register your event so that the world will see Google Earth lit up with Christ’s light.
Free Pharmacy in Ohio UMC to Serve Poor: United Methodists are working with community partners and staff members of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries to establish a free pharmacy to serve the poor in Columbus. The Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio, set to open by late February, is an initiative of the West Ohio Conference. A licensed pharmacist will be executive director of the pharmacy at the Livingston (Ave.) UMC. Read more and comment.
Seeking Funds? This online presentation from the Congressional Research Office, with information from both the federal government and he private sector. shows you how to use resources readily available to grant seekers on the Internet and in local libraries. The research office also prepared information that’s available on the websites of most members of Congress. Here are links to Rep. Jason Altimire’s, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper’s and Rep. Tim Murphy’s website. Altmire has scheduled workshops in his district on aspects of securing grants. The schedule includes a session with private funders from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 20 in the Plum Borough municipal building and another on government grants at 10 a.m., Saturday, March 6 in the Lawrence County courthouse. A third, on Leveraging In-Kind Support, will be at the Cranberry Twp. Municipal Building at 10 a.m. on March 27. To RSVP, call his office at 724-378-0928 or e-mail Altmire.grants@mail.house.gov.
Pastor Retiring? Check some best practices for a healthy transition from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership’s Leading Ideas e-newsletter.
Is Your Church’s Vision Distorted? Near-sighted? Cataracts? Whatever the cause, Melvin Amerson writes in Leading Ideas that we all need God-Corrected Vision.
Additional Home Energy Assistance: There’s new info on additional LIHEAP funding. Read more. Share the info with those in need in your congregation or community.
Red Bird Mission School May Close: UM News Service reports that the Red Bird Mission School may close its doors at the end of the school year. A Save Our Schools (SOS) Committee and others are trying raise the money to keep the 89-year-old school in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky afloat. Red Bird Mission is one of four mission institutions of the UMC’s Red Bird Missionary Conference.
In the News: Trinity UMC in Brackenridge offers a complete spaghetti dinner for $1 once a month. How can they do that? Check out the story in the Valley News Dispatch.
The Indiana Gazettewrote about Homer City UMC and an Anglican congregation partnering to launch a Celebrate Recovery support group for those affected by addiction. Read more.
Suburbs: The New Face of Poverty: Read Christian Science Monitor article on the rapid increase in suburban poverty. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ran a similar article last month.
Hunger on Rise in Northwestern PA: A study of Northwestern PA shows a 40 percent increase in hunger there. Read ErieTimes-News report.
Social Networking: USA Today reports that as the social networking train gains momentum, some riders are getting off to restore their privacy, regain time. Read more. You might want to watch the video on how Facebook games and quizzes grab your personal info.
USA Today’s Religion Blog quotes a Grove City College faculty member in a Feb. 9 post about the Church of Uganda’s statement proposing an exemption for pastors from the proposed law that would impose a jail sentence on those who fail to report homosexuals to authorities for punishment. Read more.
Help Haiti With Kits: Not only are we partnering with community groups to make UMCOR kits for Haiti, but Anne Dilenschneider promotes them on her Huffington Post blog. Read more.
Order One Great Hour of Sharing Resources Now: When the earthquake rocked Haiti UMCOR staff were already in country, strategizing how United Methodists could help improve the lives of the people there. Their work is empowered by the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering, which supports the operating expenses of those who bring healing and help in our name. It makes it possible, when we respond to an emergency like Haiti, to know that 100% of our gift goes directly to where the suffering is. Call (888) 346-3862 today to order envelopes and other resources so your congregation can participate in this churchwide offering. They will be sent at no cost to your church! Find more at umcgiving.org/specialsundays.
GBGM Memorial Service to be Webcast: A memorial service for the Revs. Sam Dixon and Clinton Rabb, GBGM staff executives who died as a result of injuries received in the Haiti earthquake, will be webcast live at 3 p.m. on Feb. 11. Dixon was in charge of the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Rabb was responsible for the office of mission volunteers. The service, which will originate from The Riverside Church, can be seen at http://gbgm-umc.org/memorial.
Upcoming Events and Deadlines:
Midnight tonight is the SPARK registration deadline. Click here to register.
Disabilities Awareness Special Sunday in Western PA is Feb. 14. Learn more.
First Healthy Leadership Event is Feb. 20 at Galloway UMC. Click to register.
WPAUMC Haiti Prayer Service is Feb. 28 at Grove City College.
United Methodist Center, PO Box 5002, Cranberry TWP., PA 16066-0002 | Ph. 724-776-2300 | 800-886-3382