UMW: “It’s All About Missions”
This past Tuesday, May 16, Wesley Memorial UMW joined other UMW circles from the South Carolina Annual Conference for a Celebrate Missions Day at Trenholm Road UMC. The theme was “It’s all about missions,” and it was clear that our UMW circles in SC support many missions around the world.
As I was sitting in worship I thought about Wesley Memorial, and all the ways we are in service to our community. Our church’s mission states, “We are a neighborhood church in service to God and our neighbors, and making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” During the year of 2011 our church has pledged to support and serve ministries in our local community. You could say that the UMW’s theme on May 16 is our theme for the year. We, at Wesley Memorial UMC, have truly been all about missions. We are a smaller congregation, but we are a very generous, giving congregation. We are people with warm hearts and active hands.
There is so much talk about numbers these days in churches, especially smaller churches who fear and feel decline immensely. But churches are not called to be all about numbers. We are called to be all about God’s mission which serves and loves those within and outside the church. I think it is too easy for churches to focus so much on numbers that such a focus keeps them from living into the mission and call of God to go boldly forth in our world to spread and share the Good News. Sometimes our fear of decline and our focus on merely getting numbers in the pews keep us from doing the work of God as faithful disciples. Doesn’t Matthew 18:20 say, “Wherever two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” Pure numbers do not make a vital congregation. Faithful disciples–whether that is 10 or 100 or 1000–make congregations vital and relevant in their communities and in the world.
I truly believe that as long as we are faithful in our service to God and our neighbors, and as long as we keep seeking and growing our relationship with God and one another, God will provide–and providing might just be sustaining. God provides for God’s people in different ways, sometimes mysterious ways and sometimes not the way we would imagine, but God provides.
God has provided for our little congregation at Wesley Memorial. We are a church that frets not only about our declining membership, but our finances. However we have a lot to be thankful and praise God for. We set out in January 2011 to not only participate in a service project each month, but we also have been doing a green project each month, and we made it our goal to be better stewards of God’s money by retiring a 7-year-old debt of $147,000. This year is truly a year that is “all about missions” at Wesley Memorial. It is a year that we are reminding ourselves that Christ’s way is a life of selfless giving; it is a year we focus on our relationship with God, the church, our neighbors, those in need and the earth. It is a year of consummation rather than consumption. It is about giving rather than taking.
We have given beyond our tithing to retire the 7-year-old $147,000 debt that has been the church’s albatross. It is only May and we only have $12,000 before we meet our goal to retire the debt in full. We have committed to giving more time in Bible Study, choir, band, fellowship and other spiritual formation opportunities at our church. We have committed ourselves to be living sacrifices by serving the community around us, and we have committed to being better stewards of the earth by going green. We are living into the Wesleyan way of following Christ by wholly giving of our hearts, minds and spirits to sharing the Good News and living out our faith in the world around us by moving our beliefs from words to hands and feet that serve those in need.
I think I said in the last post that this Sunday is Heritage Sunday in United Methodist Churches, and I am preaching from 1 Peter 2:2-10 which says in verse 5, “like a living stone, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” Our place of worship on Sunday Morning might be the bricks and mortar that sit at 2501 Heyward Street, but Wesley Memorial is more than bricks and mortar; we are living stones. The living stones of today’s congregation have inherited a long history of Wesley Memorial living stones at service to God and our community. We are a church with a long history of people who have made it their lives’ mission to be “all about missions,” all about God’s mission to transform the world.
Yes, we may be small in number, but we are a giving church who has made our mission to serve our neighbors with the trust that God is with us in our serving and that all those we serve will come to know the great love of our God.
Serving God and Neighbor: some of the folks we have served this year…
Washington Street Soup Cellar
Books for a Native American Elementary School in New Mexico
Harvest Hope Food Bank
Neighborhood Festival
Pumpkin Patch
Christmas Caroling at the Nursing Homes
Lent Connectional Offering for Local Ministries of the UMC|
VBS
Oliver Gospel Mission Sunday Worship
Oliver Gospel Mission Bags
Epworth Children’s Home Boys’ Cottage
Epworth Mothers’ Day Offering
Killingsworth Gala
Killingsworth Golf Tournament
Caps for Aveda
Tabs for Ronald McDonald House
Ronald McDonald House of Columbia dinner
UMW Missions: stamps and envelopes (Bethlehem Center Spartanburg, Bethlehem Center Columbia, Wallace Family Center, Killingsworth, and Rural Missions)
Church Women United: Migrant Farmers Health Kits
