wfn.org | May 1, 2000 GC-001

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Urban ministers call for General Conference to be holy, bold

CLEVELAND (UMNS) -- A United Methodist bishop told a group of urban
ministers that a Holy Boldness Encampment the weekend before General
Conference would "likely be the highlight of my trip to Cleveland."

"There will not be any more, or perhaps even as, important things happening
during the next two weeks as what happened this weekend," Bishop Kenneth L.
Carder said at a gathering of about 100 lay and clergy urban ministers who
spent the weekend before General Conference holding tent meetings and doing
hands-on ministry in Cleveland.

General Conference, the lawmaking assembly of the United Methodist Church,
is meeting May 2-12 in Cleveland. The meeting is held every four years.

The three-day Holy Boldness Encampment, which started April 28, was
sponsored by the National Urban Strategy Council of the United Methodist
Board of Global Ministries and local Ohio urban ministry networks. The event
featured worship under a tent pitched on a vacant lot in an urban Cleveland
neighborhood, immersions in urban missions such as soup kitchens and health
clinics, hands-on work building Habitat for Humanity homes, and discussions
about urban church issues such as strengthening multicultural relationships
and economic development.

Carder, bishop of the church's Nashville (Tenn.) Area, urged the urban
ministers to persist. 
"Urban ministry itself is marginalized in this denomination," he said. "But
we are not discouraged by that because we don't judge the effectiveness of
what we do by the size of the crowds we gather.

"God is not preoccupied with the work of the church," he added. "God is
preoccupied with transforming the world."

The Holy Boldness Encampment was inspired by a comment made by Bishop Felton
E. May of the Washington (D.C.) Area during a 1997 meeting of United
Methodist urban ministers in San Francisco, according to the Rev. Carey
Simonton, one of the organizers.

"If we can't change General Conference, then maybe we could have an
encampment the week prior to General Conference and set the tone of what it
truly means to be holy and bold in the name of Jesus Christ," May said in
his 1997 address.

The planning committee reviewed May's remarks and then set out to organize a
gathering that would provide General Conference a positive example of doing
ministry in "new ways and holy and bold ways," said Simonton, director of
United Methodist Urban Ministries in Cincinnati.

During the encampment's opening service, under the tent pitched near St.
Matthews United Methodist Church in the Wade Park section of Cleveland, May
said that Holy Boldness is not a program but an attitude. It is an attitude
that forges the church's evangelical witness into a "laser beam to address
the hurting and suffering of humankind," he said. 

"We as a church have co-opted the gospel and have made it a business; that
is, we're feeding an institution rather than feeding the people of God the
word of God," he said.

He called on General Conference to address the "real issues affecting the
hurting and suffering people in communities like this one ... the issues of
where will we eat and where will we sleep and whom can we trust and who will
help us to survive."

On the morning of April 29, as participants prepared for urban immersion
experiences, the Rev. John Schol, former executive secretary for United
Methodist urban ministries and founding director of the Communities of
Shalom movement, described Holy Boldness as a coupling of spirituality and
social action. "There's a need for centering oneself in God through Jesus
Christ and being bold out on the streets," he said.

Schol said that 330 Communities of Shalom have been established in the
United States, Ghana and Zimbabwe to work for spiritual and economic renewal
"because people decided it is time to make a difference."

"Most of us are just ordinary people who have decided we're going to follow
Jesus," said Schol, who is now pastor of West Chester United Methodist
Church in West Chester, Pa.

Simonton said that he and other organizers hoped the encampment would draw
increased attention to the Board of Global Ministries' Holy Boldness Urban
Ministry Plan developed at an urban convocation held in Birmingham, Ala., in
1995. Workshops and immersion experiences were designed to highlight the
plan's seven components: urban evangelism and congregational development;
leadership development; wholeness, health and healing; community economic
development; eradication of racism; strengthening multicultural
relationship; and urban theology.

"There's a lot in the Holy Boldness plan our urban churches have yet to
embody," Simonton said. "One of the main things I hope comes out of this
encampment and General Conference approving Holy Boldness for another four
years is the use of the material."

The encampment included a candlelight prayer vigil outside the Cleveland
Convention Center where General Conference will be held.
# # # 
	--Dean Snyder

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org/gc2000news

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org