|
THIS WEEK'S NEWS
Leaders thrilled over $1.78M grant from Kansas Health Foundation
Video, with music and stories, marks beginning of Advent
Two ‘Purple Zone’ opportunities coming up for clergy, laity
Churches begin using conference's video platform
COVID sparks interest in BeADisciple courses
CLERGY EXCELLENCE
Sermon guides, resources address vaccination, mental health, trauma
Bishop Saenz invites clergy to Orders & Fellowship, Jan. 24-26
EQUIPPING DISCIPLES
Advent podcast series uses Scrooge to explore redemption
Lay Ministry training begins Jan. 9; courses offered on call, foundations
Ministry Grant approved for laity leadership development scholarship
Advent discussion for youth workers scheduled for Monday
Upcoming online courses focus on Biblical education, interpretation
ADMINISTRATION
Gleason begins work as controller for conference
RESOURCES
New DVD studies, Bedbug Bible Gang among material available
Advent-themed online game available from new startup Checkpoint Church
ACROSS THE CONNECTION
In other news
Newsletters
Classifieds
Leaders thrilled over $1.78M grant
from Kansas Health Foundation
The Great Plains Conference’s Doing Justice Initiative is getting a kickstart thanks to a $1.78 million grant recently announced by the Kansas Health Foundation.
Ben MacConnell, lead organizer for Direction Action & Research Training, or DART, in Kansas, said the grant will help get more “boots on the ground” in justice ministry in five locations: Wichita; Kansas City, Kansas; Johnson County; Topeka; and Lawrence. The grant provides first steps to Wichita and KCK.
Read more here.
Read the press release from KHF and the Great Plains Conference.
To Top
Video, with music and stories,
marks beginning of Advent
Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr. leads a brief video service to celebrate the beginning of Advent, which was made available to churches in the Great Plains beginning last week.
Music was provided by the Rev. Phil Clay, associate pastor at Countryside United Methodist Church in Topeka. Others who contributed their talents include conference staff members Jan Swift, Jayna McFarland, Angel Jordan, Shane Warta and David Burke.
Watch it here.
To Top
Two ‘Purple Zone’ opportunities
coming up for clergy, laity
The Clergy Excellence department has two opportunities coming up to help pastors and laity preach and talk together in “The Purple Zone.”
The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade, author of “Preaching in the Purple Zone” and the 2021 Orders & Fellowship presenter, and trained facilitators have developed one-day and two-day workshops for Preaching in the Purple Zone to equip and empower clergy and church leaders in January and February 2022. Neither course is a prerequisite for participation in the other, and all workshops will be conducted online.
The one-day Entry Level Moderator Workshop is designed to equip clergy and laity with the basics to facilitate deliberative dialogue in the “The Purple Zone.”
The two-day Sermon-Dialogue-Sermon workshop is designed to help clergy use the process of deliberative dialogue in conjunction with prophetic preaching. Please note the two-day workshop requires some work before the workshop begins.
Learn more about the workshops on a special web page regarding these opportunities.
Download a printable PDF.
To Top
Churches begin using
conference's video platform
The Great Plains Conference’s video streaming platform is off and running.
The first church to use the platform — found at www.greatplainsumc.church — is Nebraska’s Dorchester UMC.
“It’s very user-friendly and very straight forward,” said Matthew Hoffman, audio-visual tech for the church, which began using the platform Nov. 21.
Read more here.
To Top
COVID sparks interest
in BeADisciple courses
BeADisciple, an online Christian learning program based at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, that encourages small groups, was a rare business aided by the coronavirus pandemic. It has offered more than 2,000 courses since 2006 and taught close to 20,000 students. Its number of students and classes actually went up in 2020.
Read more from United Methodist News Service.
To Top
Clergy Excellence
Sermon guides, resources to address
vaccination, mental health, trauma
The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund has developed sermon guides and resources for congregations to improve the health of our communities in both body and spirit.
COVID-19 cases are trending upward. Unlike last year, the COVID-19 vaccine is now widely available for ages 5 and up, as well as booster shots for all adults. Research shows that Americans trust their doctors and faith leaders for information about COVID-19 and vaccines. To help facilitate open conversations, we created Faith in Vaccines, a sermon guide and toolkit to help pastors support COVID-19 vaccination.
The Journey Toward Mental Wellness sermon series gives congregations space for mental health challenges to be named, accepted, and blessed during a season when our society emphasizes joy and festivities. The sermon series includes three weeks of sermons and a liturgy for a Service of the Longest Night. Although imagined as an Advent series, there are options provided to adopt the guide for use year-round.
Intended for use during the Lenten season, the Naming Trauma and Practicing Resilient Love sermon guide will be available in mid-January at healthfund.org. This sermon guide offers congregations opportunities and tools to name trauma and practice resilience while also deepening our relationship with and to Jesus during the season of Lent through prayer, song, and Scripture.
Sermon guides are available at https://healthfund.org/a/sermon-guides/.
To Top
Bishop Saenz invites clergy to
Orders & Fellowship, Jan. 24-26
This new video from Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr. invites clergy to the 2022 Orders & Fellowship gathering, Jan. 24-26 at the Younes Center North in Kearney.
Bishop Saenz introduces the theme of the gathering, as well as information about the keynote speaker and other presenters.
Watch the video here.
Orders & Fellowship page, including information on registration, lodging and a tentative schedule.
To Top
Equipping Disciples
Advent podcast series uses
Scrooge to explore redemption
The “In Layman’s Terms” podcast begins a four-episode series for Advent using the story of Ebenezer Scrooge from the classic novel “A Christmas Carol” to teach about the redemption we all have available to us thanks to Jesus Christ.
In the first episode, host Todd Seifert, conference communications director, explores the first Advent theme of hope, which comes into the world in the form of the Christ child and how that hope can lead to our redemption from sin.
Download the episode.
To Top
Lay Ministry training begins Jan. 9; courses offered on call, foundations
The Academy for Small Membership Church Ministries’ Certified Lay Minister (CLM) training will begin on Jan. 9, 2022. Applications are now open at https://www.tasmcm.org/application-for-the-certified-lay-ministry-program.
The training consists of two courses: Discovering Your Call to Ministry (Jan. 9 to Feb. 12) and Foundations for Ministry (Feb. 27 to Nov. 12).
Students will explore their call to ministry and discover their unique gifts during the first course. The second course helps students develop preaching, worship, leadership, evangelism, history, theology, mission, Christian Education and pastoral care.
The web-based program allows students to do the coursework 24/7, meets the United Methodist Discipleship Ministries CLM requirements, and is approved by the Great Plains Conference. Over 300 students from 15 different states have participated in The Academy for Small Membership Church Ministries program.
Students learn from reading, writing, lectures and from colleagues.
For more information about costs and scholarships visit https://www.tasmcm.org/ or email Rev. Dr. Carl K. Ellis at cellis@tasmcm.org.
To Top
Ministry Grant approved for laity
leadership development scholarship
The Great Plains Conference Lay Servant Ministries received a ministry grant from the Nebraska United Methodist Foundation. This funding is now available for lay persons wishing to further their education.
These funds are available to any lay person in the Great Plains Conference and are to be used to cultivate leadership and/or discipleship skills in lay persons. The only qualifications are that they must not be clergy and must be a member of a United Methodist Church.
Lay servants at all levels are also eligible for this financial support but these scholarships are not to be used for Basic or Advanced LSM courses including CLM training. An example event might be the Leadership Institute offered by the Church of the Resurrection. The scholarship process is managed by the Great Plains Conference Committee on Lay Servant Ministries. To apply for the scholarship, complete the application form “Laity Leadership Development Scholarship Application” found at: https://www.greatplainsumc.org/lsmforms. The deadline for the applications is March 1, 2022.
To Top
Advent discussion for youth
workers scheduled for Monday
For youth workers, tis the season of wrapping up another semester with your students.
Let’s get together over a cup of coffee or hot chocolate from the comfort of your own home and talk about Advent during a Zoom session at 6:30 p.m. CT Monday, Dec. 6. This will also be a time of sharing and seasonal encouragement with other youth workers in our region.
Register at this link.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For more information contact Amy Foster, South Central Region Youth Coordinator at pastoramyleefoster@gmail.com or 620-200-0094.
To Top
Upcoming online courses focus on Biblical education, interpretation
A pair of upcoming online courses from BeADisciple.com will focus on Bible education, with enrollment open now. “Teaching Adults” and “Biblical Interpretation” are two-week classes that will begin in January.
The courses’ instructor, Rev. Beth Perry, has more than 30 years of experience in the pastorate and has taught these classes multiple times each year for the past six years.
“One of the things that has happened during the past couple of years is that the number of Bible users actually has gone up,” Perry says. “Research by the Barna Group shows that as COVID-19 took over, there was a drop in the proportion of Americans who never use the Bible, down from 35% in 2019 to 29% in January 2021. But my experience also has shown that church leaders and teachers often struggle to effectively help persons in Bible study.”
“Teach Adults” is a technique course, focusing on how to best capitalize on each person’s learning styles. The first week outlines generational characteristics, multiple intelligences (innate ways in which a person learns), influential factors, stages of development, and the role of the teacher. Learners also look at mission statements, spiritual development, and the classroom climate. In the second week, participants explore learning hooks and teaching methods (such as storytelling), develop mission statements, and create lesson plans.
Both new and experienced teachers enroll in the class and participate in the online format. “Because everyone responds to our discussions, it’s a much richer, fuller education than you would get in an in-person course without input from quiet people,” Perry adds.
“Biblical Interpretation” is all about context, Perry says, recognizing that there was a context for the original writers of Scripture, context for us, and context for all others across time who have (or will) accessed the Bible.
"This is designed for people who really enjoy digging into Scripture, who love hearing what people hear in the Scripture and learning from that,” Perry says. “It’s for people who love words and looking at multiple meanings, people for whom the intellectual element of faith is part of their spiritual journey.”
The required textbook (which is read before class begins) asks key questions about Scripture, readers of the Bible, and how those two interact. It explores the interpretation method and gives examples of its application.
“As Bible usage continues to go up, we want our learners to have access to the tools to make both teaching and learning Bible more meaningful,” Perry concludes. “These two classes do just that.”
More in-depth information and enrollment information on "Teach Adults" and “Biblical Interpretation” is available at BeADisciple.com under the course schedule.
To Top
Administration
Gleason begins work as
controller for conference
Angie Gleason is the new controller for the Great Plains Conference.
A native of Carbondale and a Washburn University graduate, Gleason most recently worked for SLI in Topeka, which supports the efforts of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to achieve independence and actively participate in the community. She also worked as a CPA for her own accounting company.
Gleason is the mother of two teenage daughters.
She can be contacted at agleason@greatplainsumc.org.
To Top
Resources
New DVD studies, Bedbug Bible
Gang among material available
New items this fall at the United Media Resource Center include DVD studies of the books of Acts and Mark and books on youth ministry and finding calm. Discover more here.
Ever heard of the Bedbug Bible Gang? It’s animated interactive lessons for preschoolers and early elementary that include a Bible story told in rhyme, a song, and an on-screen puzzle. There are two dozen different titles available through the resource center.
To Top
Advent-themed online game available
from new startup Checkpoint Church
This Advent, why read a devotional when you can play one? Checkpoint Church, an online United Methodist congregation, has developed a choose-your-own-adventure game that can be played on desktop or mobile browsers. In “Not Another Advent Story,” players will control the journey of “MC” as they try to make their way to church on Christmas Eve.
See announcement here.
To Top
Across the Connection
In other news
Newsletters
Because of technical difficulties, our Newsletters selection is not available this week. We hope to return it next week.
To Top
Classifieds
Classifieds are posted for 30 days unless otherwise requested. Please allow three business days for your classified to appear on the website. Email jmcfarland@greatplainsumc.org to update or renew your classified.
|
