One of the great traditions we have in our conference is our priority for Youth Ministry. In this video, Bishop Shelton encourages pastors and congregations to share the incredible conference youth events with their youth.
Announcements
Blueprint for Wellness and Virgin Pulse Well-Being Program
The Benefits of the Blueprint for Wellness
Maximize your benefits by participating in the annual Blueprint for Wellness health screening. Conference health plan members and their spouses will receive:
- $100 each in Pulse Cash that can be redeemed for gift cards, merchandise or transferred to your checking account.
- Up to 140 Wellness Credits based on your Blueprint for Wellness results. Achieve 150 Wellness Credits for the year and receive $150 in Pulse Cash.
- Free, personalized, confidential data on 30 health factors that can be shared by the participant with their primary care provider. Healthcare providers have said that this valuable information supports them in creating an overall plan for the health of their patients.
- That same health data can also be entered in the Virgin Pulse Health Check. By taking the Health Check, participants avoid a higher deductible in 2025. Participants and their spouses must both complete the Health Check. Plus, you’ll have a baseline for next year’s BFW screening.
Schedule the Blueprint for Wellness by logging into your Virgin Pulse account online, selecting the “Benefits” tab, and searching for Quest Blueprint for Wellness Screening. A screening will be offered onsite at Annual Conference this year! The deadline to complete the screening is August 31.
Have You Joined the Virgin Pulse Well-being Program Yet?
There’s still time to earn points toward cash rewards before the end of this first calendar quarter! Visit the Insurance Wellness Programs webpage to learn about this new benefit through Wespath. Both active and retired participants can join today!
Health Team Update: March 2024
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced March 1 that it would wind down much of its remaining guidance specifically targeted at COVID-19. The biggest change in this is a loosening of its recommendation regarding how long people should isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus.
“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses,” the CDC said in a report justifying its decision. They cited improvements in the rates of hospitalizations and deaths inflicted by the virus this past season for the change in its recommendations.
The CDC’s new guidance says everyone who is at higher risk should seek out testing when they develop symptoms. It’s important that you test if you think you have COVID so that you can gain access to the prescription drug Paxlovid in order to reduce your risk of hospitalization and long COVID. Testing can also help protect those around you from COVID. Please note that the federal government has extended the expiration dates on many COVID at-home tests.
Previous CDC guidance was for Americans to isolate for five days after testing positive for COVID-19. That is ending, and instead, the CDC is urging people sick with symptoms of respiratory viruses to stay home until their fever has disappeared for at least 24 hours without relying on fever-lowering medications and their symptoms are improving.
For people who are sick with COVID-19 or another respiratory virus, the CDC suggests masking as part of five additional days of ramped-up precautions after they are no longer staying home, alongside distancing and improved ventilation. The agency had previously suggested wearing a mask for up to 10 days after stopping isolation when indoors near other people. “Keep in mind that you may still be able to spread the virus that made you sick, even if you are feeling better. You are likely to be less contagious at this time, depending on factors like how long you were sick or how sick you were,” the guidance says.
It is important to note that the guidance for healthcare facilities, like long-term care nursing homes, will not be changing at this time.
Instead of offering recommendations specific to COVID-19, the CDC will switch to offering a unified guidance for the respiratory illnesses of COVID-19, flu, and RSV. Much of the data the CDC had tracked on COVID-19, alongside other respiratory virus trends, like flu and RSV, will also continue to be published. A county-by-county color system that assessed the risk of COVID by county will no longer be offered.
View the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Guidelines→
You can protect yourself from COVID by making sure that you have up-to-date vaccines. Consider that about 95 percent of recent Covid-related hospitalizations in the U.S. have occurred among people who had not received an updated vaccine.
Get the 2023–2024 updated COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Novavax, to protect against serious illness from COVID-19.
- Everyone aged 5 years and older should get 1 dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine to protect against serious illness from COVID-19.
- Children aged 6 months – 4 years need multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including at least 1 dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine.
- People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised may get additional doses of the updated COVID-19 vaccine. Talk to your healthcare provider.
- Learn more about COVID-19 vaccines
- Find the COVID vaccine near you
You can better protect yourself from respiratory diseases, like COVID, by wearing a mask and ventilating worship spaces. This is especially important for seniors, the immuno-suppresed, and others at-risk for COVID. You can also protect yourself from COVID by getting a Paxlovid prescription if you contract COVID.
General Conference Prayer Vigil on April 21
North Carolina Conference, we need your help! We invite you to participate in a Prayer Vigil on April 21 as we turn our hearts and minds toward the upcoming General Conference in Charlotte.
Laity and clergy across North Carolina will be praying for 24 hours for God to guide the delegates’ work at this global gathering of United Methodists from around the world.
You are encouraged to sign up for a 15-minute prayer time.
You can also download a sample prayer and prayer guide written by Rev. Carl Fraizer to help you focus your prayer time.
Prayer for Appointment-Making Season: Grief and Disconnection
As we are in appointment-making season, Bishop Shelton has encouraged all of us to pray for the Cabinet, clergy and their families, and congregations. We will be sharing prayers over the next few weeks and encourage you to share them with your church.
Read the next prayer in the series written by Rev. Cameron Merrill.
Endings scare us, Living God.
We know that all things must, at some point, come to an end, but we’ve become so skilled at living as if that were not true.
Some of our endings we expect; others come as a total surprise.
Either way, we confess that we are too easily convinced that we aren’t ready for such an ending—
surely there is still more we could do, that we should do, that only we can do.
Lord, in your mercy: remind us again that we are not you.
When an ending is in sight, we are prone to dwell on the past.
Past mistakes become more significant, while past accomplishments grow dim.
In grief, we will cling tightly to both as a way to control our present moment.
Lord, in your mercy: forgive us for our pasts.
In our anticipations, Lord, we will let go too soon.
We will create distances to protect ourselves, to make the goodbyes seem easier, to protect our hearts and nurture our hurts.
And in creating distance, we believe we can control what’s to come.
Lord, in your mercy: bring us into your great future.
We are grateful for the time we have had together:
good times and bad,
time to share each other’s sorrows and joys,
successes and failures.
We can give thanks knowing that even in our grief now, much has been added to our lives
that makes room for all that is yet to come.
And so, Living God, we offer you our regrets,
our sadness,
our remorse,
our angers and our worries—
our full selves before you,
trusting that you can receive all that we are
and make us more than we could hope to be,
in your future that is always bigger than our past.
Through Christ our Lord,
In the strength of your Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.
Image: Unsplash / Eyasu Etsub
United Women in Faith Study Resources for All Church Groups
Every year, United Women in Faith publishes a Mission Study for adults, youth, and children that serves as an excellent resource for helping us to grow on our spiritual journey. These studies are for all church groups, not just women’s groups.
United Women in Faith also hosts a Reading Program every year with books they recommend to be read and discussed in groups.
The NC Conference Media Center has the 2024 Mission Studies and some of the books from the Reading Program available for borrowing.
2024 Mission Study
The 2024 Mission Study focuses on what it means to live in the kin-dom of God. This concept is adapted for study in adult, youth, and children’s groups. One of the contributors to the children’s curriculum is from The North Carolina Conference. Catey Miller is an active member of The Peak UMC in Apex, NC.
Welcome Home: Adult Curriculum. This curriculum explores how we can know God as an intimate friend who welcomes us. Abiding in God’s safety and dwelling in God’s provision allows us to open our hearts to a fuller embrace of the power and presence of God so that we may find our home in God. Participants are invited to dig deeper into what it means to live in the kin-dom of God and how this helps us to develop practices for building and existing in healthier communities.
Author Neomi Fletcher leads participants through a journey in eight one-hour explorations that start with examining home and redefining what it means in light of Scripture’s repeated invitations to dwell with God as individuals, community members, and persons of faith. The explorations lead participants outward so that what starts with our personal homes expands to welcoming others to join us in our work as co-creators to establish God’s kin-dom on earth. The sessions include Scripture explorations, discussions, activities to apply what is being learned, and two intergenerational sessions.
Cultivating Symbiosis: The Nature of God’s Kin-dom: Youth Curriculum. This youth curriculum uses the idea of symbiosis to explore relationships with others and with God. Youth will examine different kinds of relationships and understand them as an ongoing journey toward the kin-dom. There is a symbiosis between our relationships to each other as humans and our relationship to God. By drawing closer to one another, we can collectively move, step by step, toward creating God’s kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven.
Through eight one-hour sessions, youth and their facilitators will more deeply explore what it means to live into the kin-dom of God through the lens of symbiosis. Youth will first explore what symbiosis means and that it exists on a continuum. They will examine their personal relationships and how they mirror or contrast what God desires, understanding that to love God is to love your neighbor, and to love your neighbor is to love God. Youth will then move outward in their understanding of relationships and God’s kin-dom by looking at economic injustice and how they can collectively work toward social justice.
Me in the Kin-dom: Children’s Curriculum. This children’s curriculum helps children explore the kin-dom of God through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer. Children will experience how they are unique members of God’s kin-dom and learn they are also part of a larger community that welcomes all of God’s children. Children will explore many Scriptures that will help them to learn to see, hear, and love as Christ teaches. This enables us to accept each other as God created us to be.
Each session includes Scripture study, discussion, music, artistic expression, and even some opportunities for children to participate in outreach to others. The sessions encourage children to ask questions such as: What is this kin-dom? Where is this kin-dom? What is God’s will for it? The eight one-hour sessions may be combined into four two-hour sessions if needed. The curriculum also includes a guide to adapt the study for online meetings in lieu of in-person ones.
2024 Reading Program Books
United Women in Faith offers a wide variety of books in their annual Reading Program. It includes books for adults, youth, and children. The books from this list that can be borrowed from the NC Conference Media Center are listed below.
Adults
I’m Black. I’m Christian. I’m Methodist. edited by Rudy Rasmus. Ten Black women and men explore life through the lens of compelling personal religious narratives. They are people and leaders whose lives are tangible demonstrations of the power of a divine purpose and evidence of what grace really means in face of hardship, disappointment, and determination.
Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now by Brenda Salter McNeil. McNeil calls the church to repair the old reconciliation paradigm by moving beyond individual racism to address systemic injustice, both historical and present. It’s time for the church to go beyond individual reconciliation and “heart change” and to boldly mature in its response to racial division.
Invisible: Theology and the Experience of Asian American Women by Grace Ji-Sun Kim. Kim examines encounters with racism, sexism, and xenophobia as she works toward ending Asian American women’s invisibility. She deploys biblical, sociological, and theological narratives to empower the voices of Asian American women.
Our Strangely Warmed Hearts: Coming Out Into God’s Call by Karen P. Oliveto. Oliveto discloses why and how spiritual renewal and a personal call to ministry emerge in the strangely warmed hearts of lesbian and gay Christians. This book traces the history of the church’s struggle with homosexuality, highlighting critical incidents in the culture and church polity that shape the church’s response.
The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby. An acclaimed, timely narrative of how people of faith have historically–up to the present day–worked against racial justice. And a call for urgent action by all Christians today in response.
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Mississippi to Maine, tallying up what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm–the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others.
Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week by Amy-Jill Levine. Levine explores the biblical texts surrounding the Passion story. She shows us how the text raises ethical and spiritual questions for the reader, and how we all face risk in our Christian experience.
Youth and Children
The ABCs of Diversity: Helping Kids (and Ourselves!) Embrace Our Differences by Carolyn B. Helsel & Y. Joy Harris-Smith. Equips parents, teachers, and community leaders to address children of all ages on complicated topics of race, political affiliation, gender, class, religion, ability, nationality, and sexual orientation.
Blessed Youth: Breaking the Silence about Mental Illness with Children and Teens by Sarah Griffith Lund. Removes the barriers of stigma and shame associated with mental illness in children and teens. Readers will know they are not alone and be reminded of God’s grace and loving presence in the midst of the heartache and struggle of mental illness.
The Good for Nothing Tree by Amy-Jill Levine & Sandy Eisenberg Sasso. Inspired by the parable of the Barren Fig Tree, this book focuses on a tree that grows later than expected, reminding readers that patience, care, and love can change everything – making what may appear “good for nothing” very good.
Additional Resources
The NC Conference Media Center adds the UWF Mission Studies to our collection every year. Recent studies include topics such as radical discipleship, finding peace, and embracing wholeness. See our complete list of these studies, along with DVDs about the history of United Women in Faith (formerly known as United Methodist Women) on the United Women in Faith/United Methodist Women resource pathfinder.
We also keep a list of the books in our collection that are on the Reading Program every year. It includes many excellent titles for all ages on a wide variety of topics, including church life, Bible study, Christian living, social justice, and more.
Our NC Conference United Women in Faith hosts in-person studies using the Mission Study curriculum every year. Stay tuned to their website for more information on Mission U.