wfn.org | Re: United Methodist Daily News note 481

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (482
notes).

Note 480 by UMNS on Nov. 26, 1997 at 16:05 Eastern (8449 characters).

TITLE:	Urban ministries movement gains power

Contact:  Joretta Purdue  	668(10-71B){480}
		Washington (202) 546-8722  	Nov. 26, 1997

EDITORS NOTE:  This is the primary article on the Holy Boldness Urban
Convocation held Nov. 22-25. It has two sidebars.

Urban ministries movement gains
momentum at Holy Boldness convocation

	SAN FRANCISCO (UMNS) -- United Methodists are in the midst of an urban
ministries movement if the Nov. 22-25 Holy Boldness Urban Convocation here was
any measure.
	From the opening with a mini Chinese parade to the closing  drumbeat, the
meeting hall rocked with spirited singing and rhythmic hand clapping. The
fervor and intensity led the Rev. German Acevedo-Delgado, assistant general
secretary of the churchwide Board of Global Ministries, to liken the gathering
to a camp meeting or revival.
	The conference was sponsored by the United Methodist National Urban Strategy
Council and Board of Global Ministries.
	Holy Boldness is more than a program; it's an attitude. And John Wesley,
Methodism's founder, "used the h.b. words at least three times," said
convocation keynoter Bishop Felton May of the Baltimore-Washington Area.
	Holy Boldness, he declared, uses Scripture as a blueprint for a holy and
productive life. United Methodists need to move beyond do-goodism and address
the systemic problems, he said.
	"We have a trained constituency who does not seem to know where to go and how
to address systemic issues," he said. "Holy Boldness is a call for the joining
of vocational, technical and service skills with the missional imperatives of
Jesus Christ." 
	In the year he has been there, May has led the Baltimore-Washington
Conference in launching a program of professional guilds to help members live
out their faith and use their skills for mission.
	May said he had been doing urban work for 40 years, but for the first 35 the
things he did were almost all being done by social workers. He assumed
incorrectly, he noted, that people knew why he was doing those activities.
	"Whatever we do, we must do it in the name of Jesus Christ," he said. "We
must challenge our contradictions or face chaos."
	May challenged his episcopal colleagues to call for a special session of
General Conference to focus on the dynamics of Holy Boldness. If a special
session is not possible, he said, a Holy Boldness convocation should be held
in Cleveland the week prior to the 2000 General Conference there.
	Bishop Dan E. Solomon, president of the churchwide Board of Global
Ministries, said of May, "He has struck a nerve within us, and we have winced"
when the call to holy boldness was heard.
	Willie Brown, mayor of San Francisco and a United Methodist, said, "We live
diversity in San Francisco" with more than 100 languages spoken and with all
that a great city offers in a multitude of cultures, museums and other
amenities.
	"The city is in a state [California] that is basically hostile to the needs
of ethnic people and the needs of poor people," he said. 
	San Franciscans want realistic, practical answers to such problems, he said.
With a housing vacancy rate of less than 1 percent, affordable housing is not
available, he explained. 
	In an effort to address homelessness, which is being compounded by expiration
of a program of rent subsidies, the mayor went to the voters with a $100
million bond issue for affordable housing. He said he wants to get people into
the mainstream.
	"Most folks would get off welfare in five minutes if there is an avenue to
get off," he said, but they need child care, transportation money, job
readiness and other assistance.
	Brown distinguished between job readiness -- "for people who have not worked
for years" and job training. Training, he insisted, must be for jobs that
exist and are obtainable. He also spoke about negotiating for a new stadium to
be built without public money but with guarantees for a number of jobs.
	Saying he knew churches were being asked to use their meager resources to
shoulder more of these public problems, he urged congregations to help "find
new ways, productive ways, measurable ways" to meet the problems of the poor.
	Bishop Kenneth L. Carder of Nashville, Tenn., one of several major speakers,
opened his message by declaring, "God is a city planner."  God is calling
people toward an eternal city, he said.
	"We are called to live now in the light of that city," he said. The church is
to be a fore-taste of that city, in which citizenship is a gift from God, he
declared. 
	According to Carder, the nature of God's city is defined by God's nature. He
said, "the cities in which we barely survive" have been shaped by greed and
human sins. Too many churches have assumed that God's primary concern is how
many people are in the church.
	"God deliver us," he prayed, from churches that do not pay attention to the
nature of God as champion of the poor, the immigrants, the downtrodden, the
marginalized, the outcasts and the despised.
	Jesus, Carder pointed out, was born to a teen-age mother who was not yet
married and spent his first two years of life as an undocumented alien in
Egypt.
	"When we lose our focus on God, ... we lose our power and we lose our reason
for being," he declared. "We've got to have new models of congregations that
measure success not by size ... but by how closely it represents God's idea of
a new city."
	The Rev. Cecil Williams, longtime pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist
Church in downtown San Francisco, announced that it has raised $12 million
toward -- and will break ground Thanksgiving week for -- construction of a
nine-story housing complex to be located on land adjacent to the church
building.
	Williams credits his wife, Janice, with being the organizer of the church's
programs, which now number 41. Dec. 7, the church plans to open a clinic to
serve the health needs of the poor.
	Glide Church has 7,200 members, Williams said, and he expects to have added
1,000 members during the current year. Last year, the church used 25,000
volunteers and expects this year to have used 30,000, he said.
	For many of the convocation participants who worshipped at Glide, this was
the only time in their lives they stood in long lines with other people for a
half hour or more to attend worship services on Sunday morning.
	Williams, who as a black child growing up in Texas had to enter white
churches by the back door when he went there to sing, works at making everyone
feel welcome and the resulting diversity is self-evident. He said he founded
Glide because he could not stand segregation in the United Methodist Church.
	The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los
Angeles, in the closing worship, urged working for a just society.
	He declared, "Jesus was not executed because of his spiritual teaching -- not
because he was a good man. He was executed because he was challenging the
stability of the status quo."
	Lawson said Holman Church has many feeding programs and emergency service,
but he takes no pride in it.
	"The system by which people are homeless and jobless continues," he
exclaimed. "We are not called to be almsgivers but a subversive people who
turn the systems of destruction upside down."
	Just as Holy Boldness is an attitude, the Holy Boldness Urban Convocation was
an experience. 
	The music was at times unusual and at all times uplifting. Besides lots of
enthusiastic congregational singing, the music included Andean music; African
drums; a convocation choir; Korean, Filipino and Tongan choirs; music on
ancient Japanese instruments; and the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band.
	The Rev. Kay Dillard, district superintendent for Chicago's South Side and
areas south of the city, said she had learned how important it is to take
risks, but "whenever you step out, the way has been prepared."
	One of the 1,550 convocation participants, she said she believes that pastors
struggling with Holy Boldness need the affirmation and support of their
district superintendents. People want logical, reasonable resources to
accomplish things, not bureaucratic ways, she added.
	Instrumental in shaping and executing the convocation program was the Rev.
John R. Schol, who began with the planning team when he was executive
secretary for urban ministries with the United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries. After he left that position to pastor a local church earlier this
year, he continued as a consultant to the convocation.
	#  #  #

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