wfn.org | Communications agency offers help following attacks

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Sept. 12, 2001   News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.     10-21-71B{386}

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - United Methodist Communications is using the
Internet, television and radio to help Americans deal with the aftermath of
the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

"What we've tried to do is two things," said the Rev. Larry Hollon, UMCom's
top staff executive. "We've tried to provide information that is of a
pastoral concern to express the concern of the church for the victims, the
family members and their loved ones. And we've also tried to provide
messages through interviews of key church leaders that call for restraint in
the rush to judgment and the rush to retribution.

"We have written overnight a series of radio spots that are message that say
we are a people who believe God is still in control, ... God is still the
power in whom we place our faith, and that the power of love overcomes evil.
These spots are being made available today to radio stations around the
country," he said Sept. 12. People also will be able to hear the new radio
spots on a Web page that is being set up on the UMCom site, at
http://umcom.org/.

He said the agency has also changed the narration of one of its television
ads, used in the nationwide "Igniting Ministry" campaign, "to suggest that
people at this time of grief and of sorrow should consider the strength of
gathering in a community and encourage them to hold prayer vigils with
United Methodists in local churches around the world."

A Sept. 13 Web cast is being planned to help people deal with some of the
issues raised by the attacks. It "is an attempt to provide more
comprehensive points of view about the tragedy, about how to work with
people who are affected by the traumatic events that have so disrupted their
lives, to discuss the whole area of Middle Eastern affairs and our
relationships with people in the Middle East, and to discuss restorative
justice," Hollon said.

The Web cast, "Reconciliation in the Midst of Tragedy: How Do We Respond?",
will be 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, said Steve Downey, UMCom
staff executive. People can access it by going to www.umc.org on the World
Wide Web and clicking on the appropriate link. Those who want to interact
with the panelists will be able to do so by e-mail.

UMCom has tentative confirmations from Harmon Wray, executive director, and
Peggy Hutchinson, staff member, with Restorative Justice Ministries for the
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries; and the Rev. Sandra Olewine, a
United Methodist missionary who works in the Middle East. Other speakers
will include pastors or counselors from Oklahoma City who responded to the
1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

"The point that I think most important in this is that we as a nation are at
a kind of boundary situation," Hollon said. "We are at the limits of our
emotional ability" to tolerate grief, pain and the sense of helplessness, he
said. The church is trying to step into that boundary area, to provide a
message of comfort and a source of strength, and to stand with people in a
way that is encouraging and strengthening to them, he said.

InfoServ, the denomination's hotline service, also has updated its Web site,
http://infoserv.umc.org/, with information under the heading "National
Tragedy." 

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United Methodist News Service
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