Rev. Bill Haddock will be leading a mission team to Liberia May 1-13, 2023. The purpose of the trip is to enhance the partnership which the NC Annual Conference of the UMC has with Ganta Mission Station. The Ganta Mission Station has a hospital, a nursing school, a church, schools, a leprosarium, and a large amount of acreage used for agricultural purposes. The team will stay at Ganta Mission Station for most of the time and will work with local pig farmers to construct an abattoir so that their pigs can be prepared for market. The Conference will be shipping a walk-in cooler which we will construct and a trailer which will be equipped with cooling equipment. All participants will be required to purchase round-trip flights to Liberia from RDU (participants will be given the appropriate flight numbers). Housing and food will be provided by the Liberian hosts for about $300 per person for the two weeks that the team will be in Liberia. Team members will also be asked to contribute $200 per person towards the construction project. There will be some day trips to other places of mission so that team members can understand and appreciate the impact the UMC is making in Liberia. Prospective team members should contact Bill Haddock at 910.262.3831 or by email at revbillh@nccumc.org.
Events
Crossroads 2023: Prophetic Living in a Broken World – Practicing Resurrection
When: March 23-25, 2023
Where: Franklinton Center, 281 Southbend Lane, Whitakers, NC
Cost: $75 (includes meals & lodging); $50 (for commuters – includes meals only)
Registration Deadline: March 8th
As Christians and leaders, we stand daily at the crossroads of the world as it is and the world as God intends it to be. As the Church, we have a responsibility to love our brothers and sisters in Christ as Christ loved us. This commitment of Christian love is offered to everyone during Holy Baptism and extended through Holy Communion and other means of grace, including Christian conversation. Truly loving each other in the context of this Crossroads series means learning about the struggles and historical challenges our brothers and sisters of color face.
Crossroads is an opportunity to coalesce the two worlds – as it is and as God intends it to be – through better understanding and awareness. Our Crossroads 2023 series will provide the opportunity to go deeper with Rev. Dr. Janet Wolf, who was the featured 2022 Annual Conference presenter and author of Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship, along with Eric Alexander from The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and Rahim Buford from Unheard Voices Outreach.
Come join us! Registration is available online, as well as an application for a scholarship.
For more information, please contact Tuck Taylor at tucktaylor@nccumc.org.
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Engaging in prison ministry for the first time can be intimidating. But Jesus wants us to visit the imprisoned, loving these neighbors as we love ourselves. How can you serve those who are incarcerated, or minister with their family members, or advocate on behalf of those caught up in the prison system?
Register for a Prison Ministry Webinar to learn more. We will meet for one hour on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at Noon.
Leaders from Cross and Key Ministry, along with members of the NC Interfaith Bail Reform Committee and Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century will share helpful information and give practical ideas for living into this call from Christ.
Cross and Key will be launching their new online toolkit with lots of helpful information and links, to include bible studies!
Peter Dorsten and David Bland from the NC Interfaith Bail Reform Committee will outline why addressing our bail bond system is a matter of biblical justice.
And Ms. Toska Medlock Lee will fill us in on the work the Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century has been doing and share additional information and resources.
Register here to join us on February 8.
Virtual Welcoming Service for Bishop Shelton
A worship service celebrating the assignment of Bishop Connie Mitchell Shelton as resident bishop of the North Carolina Conference will be held Sunday, Feb. 5, beginning at 5 pm. The virtual service will be livestreamed at nccumc.org and on the North Carolina Conference app.
Bishop Shelton was elected to the episcopacy at the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference in November and comes to North Carolina from the Mississippi Conference. She has experience in a variety of ministry positions, including small-membership churches, director of Field Education at Duke Divinity School, Communications and Connectional Ministries Director for the Mississippi Conference, and as a District Superintendent. Bishop Shelton also served as the Executive Director of the United Methodist Radio Hour broadcast for seven years, where she was the weekly preacher.
Bishop Shelton is married to the Rev. Dr. Joey Shelton, Dean of the Chapel and Director of Church Relations at Millsaps College. They are the parents of two daughters, Bailey and Jessica.
El Corazón Ardiente for Renewing Doctrine, Worship, and Mission
The Center for Leadership Excellence invites you to a webinar with Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric…
El Corazón Ardiente for Renewing
Doctrine, Worship, and Mission
Presented by the Center for Leadership Excellence
with Edgardo Colón-Emeric
February 15, 2023, 1-2pm ET
“Church renewal” is widely discussed across Methodism today, but renewal will not happen apart from serious engagement with and from the margins of society.
In this webinar, Dr. Colón-Emeric offers key insights drawn from his new book, The People Called Metodista: Renewing Doctrine, Worship, and Missions from the Margins. Following the pattern of the book, the webinar looks to the experiences of Methodists in Latin American pueblos and Hispanic barrios to open new conversations about doctrine, worship, and mission for the sake of social renewal. In true Wesleyan spirit, the flames of renewal do not confine themselves to Methodist institutions, but from the people called metodista they can spread, sharing in the Wesleyan movement’s fundamental calling to revitalize the church universal in its mission to the world. In this webinar, we hope for more than hearts “strangely warmed”—we hope for hearts ablaze, for corazones ardientes.
About Edgardo Colón-Emeric:
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Edgardo Colón-Emeric is the Dean of Duke Divinity School and the Irene and William McCutchen Associate Professor of Reconciliation and Theology. He also serves as the director of the Center for Reconciliation at the Divinity School. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Colón-Emeric was the first Latino to be ordained as an elder in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church and was founding pastor of Cristo Vive UMC in Durham, N.C. He became founding director of the Hispanic House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in 2007 and joined the Divinity School faculty in 2008. Colón-Emeric’s work explores the intersection of Methodist and Catholic theologies, and Wesleyan and Latin American experiences. His teaching covers a broad range of theological areas: systematics, Wesleyan theology, ecumenism, and Latin American theology. His latest book, The People Called Metodistas: Renewing Doctrine, Worship, and Mission from the Margins, was released in 2022.
Messy Church Information Session
The Center for Leadership Excellence is hosting a short information session about Messy Church to determine whether to bring Messy Church leaders in for a day-long training…
The tag line for the Messy Church movement is, Church, but not as you know it. If you have attended church for a long time, Messy Church may not look like church to you. At Messy Church, all ages meet together to learn about Christ through games, crafts and activities, music, and storytelling from the Bible. A foundational ingredient of Messy Church is to gather around a table for a snack or meal and build relationships with each other, God, and the world.
Messy Church Information Session
Presented by the Center for Leadership Excellence
with Johannah Myers
Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 1pm – 1:30pm ET
About Johannah Myers
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Johannah Myers is the Associate Director of Messy Church USA. She also serves as the Director of Disciple Formation at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Greenville, SC, where she’s been since 2009. When she’s not leading Bible studies or talking about Messy Church, Johannah can most likely be found watching Duke basketball, planning her next trip, or hanging out with her Great Pyrenees Winifred.
Johannah has a B.A. in Psychology from Furman University and a M.Div from Duke Divinity School. In May 2019, Johannah received her Doctor of Ministry from Wesley Theological Seminary after studying with an international cohort at Wesley House, Cambridge UK. Her doctoral project was called “Practicing Faith Together: Messy Church and Disciple Formation” and focused on inter-generational discipleship.