God's Mission Our Gifts: Your May Mission & Service Stories and more!

Your May Mission & Service Stories   MAY 7 Protecting Love around the World: Michael Blair’s Work   [Video still credit: The United Church of Canada]   “When we hear these stories, we can see that this is a life and death matter.” Michael Blair, the church’s first openly gay General Secretary, is now helping to advocate for sexual and gender minorities in countries where they are not free. And Mission & Service plays a critical role in Blair’s efforts.   MAY 14 Moving Forward, Together: United Against Hate   [Photo credit: The United Church of Canada/CHURCHx] On February 15, Mission & Service partners United in Learning, Affirming Connections, and Affirm United/S'Affirmer Ensemble collaborated to host a webinar called United Against Hate. MAY 21 Rainbow Camp® Welcomes 2SLGBTQIA+ Young People and Allies   [Image credit: Taryn Elliott/Pexels] Since 2012, Rainbow Camp® in northern Ontario, a Mission & Service partner, has welcomed young people of all sexual identities, providing campers with a safe space to be who they are without judgment. MAY 28 Your Gifts Nurture Safe Spaces for Sharing     [Video still credit: The United Church of Canada]   The United Church of Canada welcomes into full membership and ministry people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. A recent consultation with Mission & Service partners in Asia provided a safe space for gender and sexual minorities to share their personal and collective struggles and gains. Goal-Setting Made Easy! When communities of faith set goals for giving, our partners know they can count on our support. To make setting your goals a little easier, we have made the Mission & Service goal-setting form for 2023 available online. It’s wonderful to know that we can count on your gifts. Thank you! Congregational Stewardship/Generosity This is your resource to help you grow generous disciples and gather the resources you need to respond to God’s calling. Please modify and use these ideas in your context.   Ideas You Can Try! Earth Day is Saturday, April 23  What a perfect time to promote and support a local Outdoor Ministry. Find your local United Church Camp using the Locator. Type in your regional council’s name to narrow down the list.    Prayer for Environmental Stewardship  Creator of the fruitful earth, you made us stewards of all things. Give us grateful hearts for all your goodness, and steadfast wills to use your bounty well, that the whole human family, today and in generations to come, may with us give thanks for the riches of your creation. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord. (Anglican Book of Alternative Services, p. 396)   I Intend Program – Creation and the Environment  Session 1 of this great resource helps participants make some intentions about how they will help care for the environment as an act of stewardship. For use in small groups, large groups, or individually. Download the Program Handbook and Workbook for I Intend in the downloads section at the bottom of the United Church Stewardship page.  Called to Be the Church: The Journey Called to Be the Church: The Journey modules really make a difference. In each cohort, community of faith leaders rediscover how inspiring their church really is and get excited about telling their stories as they invite people to share their resources to grow in faith and make a difference in people’s lives. Come and join the movement!     Getting Started in Stewardship: May 2, 6:30 p.m. EDT. Join United Church people across the country to learn some stewardship first principles. Register for Getting Started in Stewardship.    Stewardship Best Practices: Next offered in fall 2023.  Newly updated! Four two-hour sessions interspersed with practical exercises and discussions to examine Stewardship Best Practices in order for you to set goals, create an annual stewardship plan, and get energized!     Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program:  May 16, and 30, 6:30–8:30 p.m. EDT, or May 17, and 31, 1:00–3:00 p.m. EDT.  Learn how best to utilize the Called to Be the Church Giving Program materials and develop a plan that will work for your church with two 2-hour online sessions and coaching. Register for Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program.    Bequests & Planned Giving for Your Community of Faith: next offered October 2023  Explore how to set up and maintain a Planned Giving Program at your church, with two one-hour online sessions.    For more information on these and other stewardship supports, contact called@united-church.ca.  Check Out the Most Recent Stewardship Blog Here’s our April blog at Round the Table where Vicki Nelson shares a story about parenting, capitalism, and Church in “A Revolution of Generosity and Simplicity.” Stewardship Seconds (revised for 2023)   Short, pithy sayings that pack a punch, to help infiltrate stewardship thinking into your community of faith. Add them to newsletters, worship, announcements, webpages, wherever people gather!  Find them at the Stewardship in Worship webpage.  Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers (revised for 2023)   The offering time in worship is NOT about collecting money! It is about growing generous disciples and stewards. These Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers, for each Sunday of the year, will help. Find them at the Stewardship in Worship webpage. If You Read Just ONE Book This Month Growing a Generous Church: A Year in The Life of Peach Blossom Church by Lori Guenther Reesor. Narrative style and lifting up best practices that work! Get the Stewardship Support You Need The people and resources to help you succeed are here. Call us. Email us. Book a meeting with us. Whatever works for you!  Our Call and Vision The United Church of Canada is a community of hope, a vibrant and vital church with both purpose and vision. We live in a time of rapid change in religious life, great inequities between peoples, and collective harm to our earth community. As church, we have been complicit in injustice. And yet we have this hope. We believe we continue to be called to witness in love and justice to the liberating, healing Christ risen in this place and time. Together, we strive towards repentance, repair, and right relations with all peoples and the planet. The General Council Office has adopted a Call and Vision statement that speaks to how we boldly embody the Christian story in this time, filled with the certainty of resurrection and hope for new life, and which informs the 2022‒2025 Strategic Plan of the General Council Office.   Living purposefully into this call and vision anticipates becoming what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others called the Beloved Community—the ever inbreaking, ever transforming, ever reconciling realm of God, realized in our time. In future issues of God’s Mission, Our Gifts, we will share stories, prayers, and worship resources that your community of faith can use to engage with the Call and Vision: to live into deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring justice. GOD’S MISSION, OUR GIFTS is your newsletter. We want to provide news and information that you can use in your community of faith, whether you’re a minister, a board member, an administrator, a treasurer, or anyone else who wants to make a difference.   What else would you like to see? What can we do to help your community of faith get where it needs to go? Send us your thoughts! Fill out your Mission & Service goal-setting form online! Donate Facebook Twitter Website Email Instagram YouTube LinkedIn   Your generosity enables the United Church to love, serve, and minister in the world. Make an online donation or learn more about your options to support the work of the church.

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