On May 20, Moore, Oklahoma was devastated by a massive tornado.  Over 20 people were killed and more than 200 were injured.  Earlier in the week, several tornadoes roared across central Texas killing at least 6 and injuring almost 100.  Families have lost their homes and lives have been shattered.

This is a horrific reality and it is a reality into which the love of Christ will flow.  You can respond in several ways:

• Pray for those who have been so deeply hurt.  Pray for their families, for their communities, for our United Methodist Churches in the area as they respond, and for the first-responders who are offering care through the crisis.  
• Give through your United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR).  You can do this through several avenues:
  • You can make a donation on-line now for Disaster Response, United States Advance #901670.
  • You can also donate via telephone by calling 1-888-252-6174.
  • You can make an immediate $10 donation, you can text RESPONSE to 80888.
  • You can also donate through your local congregational offering by noting on your check or offering envelope:  UMCOR Advance #901670 – Tornado
  • You can send your check directly to the NC Conference Treasurer at:
    • NC Conference, PO Box 60053, Charlotte, NC 28260.  Make check payable to: NC Conference designated as Advance #901670 – Tornado
  • You can give directly through the Oklahoma Conference.  See information and directions at this link:  Oklahoma Disaster Response You can give directly through the Central Texas Conference at Central Texas Disaster Response.
• When the appropriate time comes for recovery and rebuilding homes (watch the Oklahoma Conference website and the Central Texas Conference website for this information), consider sending an UMVIM workteam from your church.

Here in the North Carolina Conference, we know what it means to experience the trauma, the loss, and the heart-break of disaster.  In the past 2 years, we have received $1.5 million in relief funding to assist in our response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene.  This gift came from the hands and hearts of brothers and sisters across our United Methodist connection.  Now is the time for us to do the same.  Please respond generously.  It is the mark of love expressed as the Body of Christ.

Stop Hunger Now Food Packaging Event at 2013 Annual Conference

Stop Hunger Now’s meal packaging program is a volunteer-based effort to package highly nutritious dehydrated meals comprised of rice, soy, vegetables, flavoring, and a mixture of 21 essential vitamins and minerals.  These meals are easily transported to crisis burdened areas or to school feeding programs around the world.

Many of our churches in our Conference Area have hosted meal packaging events.  This year, Lay Members of Annual Conference and Pastors are invited to help meet the challenge to package 100,000 meals during the 2013 North Carolina Annual Conference in Greenville—a challenging goal which has been established by Bishop Hope Morgan Ward.

To meet the goal, we need two things:  volunteers to package the meals and donations of $.25 per meal.  To accomplish the goal, we would need several hundred volunteers and $25,000 of donations.  All volunteers are MOST welcome!  You do not need to be a delegate to Annual Conference to come and join us for this exciting event.  Small groups are welcome!  Youth groups are welcome!  Sunday school classes are welcome!  Whole congregations are welcome!

Come and join the party! Having fun as we assemble meal packages for those who would otherwise go without — turning the tears into proclamations of joy!

To volunteer, go to the website by following one of the links below (Wed, Thur, or Fri) for the specific day you would like to volunteer.  On the linked form, you will see two highlighted blocks on the left side of the page.  One is to Make a Donation for the event.  The other is to Register for Event.  Please do both.  Please register, for the event and please make a donation for the meals that you will help package.  Your donation will help us pay for these meals for our desperately hungry brothers and sisters.  Also, if you are not able to be with us to help package meals, you can still join in the ministry by making a donation.

• Wednesday – Sign Up Here
• Thursday     – Sign Up Here 
• Friday            - Sign Up Here

The packaging event is scheduled to be held in Ballroom E at the Greenville Hilton next to the convention center.

To donate funds, you may donate in advance on any of the web sites above. Baskets will be available for donations at the Conference Picnic on the lawn, Thursday, 5:00 P.M., June 13^th.  Special offering envelopes will be provided in your Annual Conference registration packet.  Download PDF of Stop Hunger Now Event Here

Stop Hunger Now is an organization driven by the vision of a world without hunger and a mission to end hunger in our lifetime by providing food and life saving aid to the world’s most vulnerable and by creating a global commitment to mobilize the necessary resources.

Stop Hunger Now is celebrating its 15^th Anniversary this year.  The founder of Stop Hunger Now, Ray Buchanan, will be a guest at our Annual Conference.   For more information on Stop Hunger Now, follow this link ==> SHN

Our Lord Jesus continually reminds us that he is incarnate in the hunger of the poor when he says to us, “I was hungry …”  Please come and join us so that together we might hear Jesus say, “… and you fed me.”  Alleluia. 

We now have a Facebook presence for Outreach Ministry.  We hope this will provide another venue where we can better connect with one another as we proclaim the love of Jesus in the world through our missional community of the North Carolina Conference.  We also hope it will be a place of celebration of the many ways you share and participate in connectional mission; a space where we might continue to remind one another of God’s amazing love, particularly for the poor and vulnerable; and a point of journey where we might discover more of the many possibilities for joining in the mission and justice of the Way of Jesus.   We invite you to join us there as a friend and participate in our mission of disciple-making and transforming God’s world into that place we so often pray for, “On earth as it is in heaven.”  Please also extend this invitation to your other Facebook friends.

Nancy Van Antwerp, our Deaconess recently appointed to the North Carolina Conference and serving with the Mission Team, will be our Facebook page administrator.   We are grateful for her service.  So, please join Nancy and our other friends over at Outreach Ministry of the NC Conference of the UMC on Facebook! 

Child receives Christmas Box at AGAPE Center

In this week’s Connections address, Bishop Hope invited your church to be directly involved in Project AGAPE, the unique mission of North Carolina United Methodists with Christians in Armenia.

One of the ways we are partnering with our Armenian Sisters and Brothers is in our AGAPE Christmas Box Ministry.  For many children in refugee communities located in the Kashatagh District, this is the only Christmas gift they will receive.  For some of them, this will be the first toy they have ever received.  Though these boxes may seem like a small gift, they will carry the priceless love of Christ.  Children who receive these boxes will know that they have been remembered and loved.  We hope that you might join us in this beautiful action that proclaims Jesus’s AGAPE.

To find box contents and packing instructions, please see AGAPE Christmas Box Ministry.  

Updated:  5-07-2013 at 12:45 PM

Hurricane Irene Recovery

Waves break over railings of a home’s raised deck. Storm surges were up to 8 feet in some areas.

The NC Conference continues to have an on-going operation for disaster recovery.  Over 27,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Irene in August 2011.  We have hundreds who remain unable to move back into heavily damaged or destroyed homes.  We have deep need for work teams to do both repair/reconstruction and new construction.  The NC Conference disaster recovery call center can place your team in an area where people continue to desperately need your help.   We have had over 350 teams respond and we need many, many more.  We are deeply grateful for the efforts and gifts of these wondrous servants.  We have been staggered by the generosity of those who have responded in such manner.   Please join us.  Your efforts will make a difference.

Anyone wanting to volunteer should email disasterresponse@nccumc.org or call 888-440-9167.

We continue to need additional funds for the recovery work.  Please also consider reaching out financially by giving to NC Storms Emergency Response – NC Advance #S-00176. 100% of every gift to this Advance will go to storm response.  You can give online at:  Hurricane Irene Giving

You can also send funds to:  NC Conference, P.O. Box 60053, Charlotte, NC 28260.  Please be sure to note Advance #S-00176.

— Steve Taylor/Outreach Team Coordinator

During Annual Conference 2013 in a partnership ministry of the NC Conference United Methodist Women, Church and Society, and the Mission Team, we will be collecting UMCOR Birthing Kits.

Every 90 seconds a woman somewhere in the world dies from complications during pregnancy or childbirth.  356,000 women die every year, most of the deaths occurring in the developing world. Annually 4 million infants die within a month of being born.  When a mother dies, it dramatically increases the risk of death for her baby.  Birthing kits provide the essential items to promote a safe, clean delivery and to encourage good after care.  Using a birthing kit can double a woman’s chance of surviving the birth.

All are invited and all can participate in this life-giving ministry – youth groups, Sunday school classes, small groups, UMW Circles, UMM groups, and individuals.  Please follow the instructions below and join us in the name of Christ, as through these small gifts, we share the love of Jesus and bring health and hope and joy into the spaces that would otherwise have only contained the tears of mourning and the sounds of death.

A collection point will be available where you can drop off your kits at Annual Conference 2013 in the Greenville Convention Center, 303 SW Greenville Blvd., Greenville, North Carolina on June 12-15, 2013.   Once you are on the Convention Center campus, look for the signs.

Following Annual Conference in the early fall, we will continue to need your hands and hearts in ministry.  We have set aside three other dates for sorting and shipping the birthing kits – September 21, 27, and 28th.  Please hold these dates open on your calendar.  We will soon have information on the location for the work of shipping and sorting.

Birthing Kit Instructions, Video, & Mary’s Advent are below: Read more »

On May 18-19, United Methodists around the globe will unite in service with their local communities for the fourth annual Change the World weekend. People in more than 1,500 locations internationally observed Change the World in 2012. United Methodist Communications has created several free planning resources including a sermon series and ideas for service projects. To locate an event in your area, go to RethinkChurch.org

April 19, 2013—After a powerful explosion Wednesday night at a fertilizer factory in Texas flattened homes and caused dozens of casualties, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) approved an emergency grant to the Central Texas Annual (regional) Conference of The United Methodist Church to assist in relief efforts.

While needs are still being assessed, those who would help are being urged not to go to West, the tiny town, population about 2,500, where the disaster occurred.

Sunrise over Project AGAPE

DEAREST SISTERS & BROTHERS,

On behalf of 1500 and more families or more than 8000 habitants of Kashatagh region of Nagorno-Karabagh Republic I would like to express my deepest WORD of GRATITUDE for EVERYTHING you do to help these families survive in the conditions that NOT MANY IN THE WORLD WOULD CONFRONT.

Recently I had an opportunity to meet and speak with a 21 year old Armenian refugee from Syria. His name is Raffi and he came to Karabagh with his mother. His father and brother are still in Syria looking … for entire letter follow this link – A Proclamation of Love & Hope in a Desperate Reality.

For more on this important ministry, please see Project AGAPE. 

Rural church nominations for consideration of the Key Taylor Award are needed by May 17. 

Congregations can nominate themselves. For 2013, $1300 will be awarded.  The award, sponsored through the United Methodist Foundation, is to call attention to the mission work of all rural churches by honoring the specific achievements of one rural church.  To nominate a church, respond via email in narrative form on one page to the criteria below by May 17 to Kathy Duncan (kduncan@nccumc.org)  at the Office of Outreach Ministries.  Please include the names of the church and district.

●  The church is in a community of Read more »