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    Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness: Value and Empower All Persons for Full Participation in Church and Community
    Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness: Value and Empower All Persons for Full Participation in Church and Community
    Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness: Value and Empower All Persons for Full Participation in Church and Community
    Ebook69 pages39 minutes

    Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness: Value and Empower All Persons for Full Participation in Church and Community

    By General Commission on Religion and Race

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Your task as an advocate for inclusiveness – and as coordinator of your ministry group – is to help every ministry, committee, and aspect of your church to be intentional about the full and equal participation of women and racial and ethnic persons in the life of the church. As you advocate for an inclusive church, you are helping the church to reflect the fullness of the ministry of Christ. This Guideline is designed to help equip you in leading this ministry group in your congregation.

    This is one of the twenty-six Guidelines for Leading Your Congregation 2017-2020 that cover church leadership areas including Church Council and Small Membership Church; the administrative areas of Finance and Trustees; and ministry areas focused on nurture, outreach, and witness including Worship, Evangelism, Stewardship, Christian Education, age-level ministries, Communications, and more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCokesbury
    Release dateNov 15, 2016
    ISBN9781501830198
    Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness: Value and Empower All Persons for Full Participation in Church and Community

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      Book preview

      Guidelines Advocates for Inclusiveness - General Commission on Religion and Race

      Blessed to Be a Blessing

      If you are reading this Guideline, you have said yes to servant leadership in your church. You are blessed to be a blessing. What does that mean?

      By virtue of our baptism by water and the Spirit, God calls all Christians to faithful discipleship, to grow to maturity in faith (see Ephesians 4). The United Methodist Church expresses that call in our shared mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world (The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, or the Discipline, ¶120). Each local congregation and community of faith lives out that call in response to its own context—the wonderful and unique combination of God-given human and material resources with the needs of the community, within and beyond the congregation.

      The work of servant leaders—your work—is to open a way for God to work through you and the resources available to you in a particular ministry area, for you are about God’s work. As stewards of the mysteries of God (see 1 Corinthians 4:1), servant leaders are entrusted with the precious and vital task of managing and using God’s gifts in the ongoing work of transformation.

      In The United Methodist Church, we envision transformation occurring through a cycle of discipleship (see the Discipline, ¶122). With God’s help and guidance, we

      •reach out and receive people into the body of Christ,

      •help people relate to Christ through their unique gifts and circumstances,

      •nurture and strengthen people in their relationships with God and with others,

      •send transformed people out into the world to lead transformed and transforming lives,

      •continue to reach out, relate, nurture, and send disciples . . .

      Every ministry area and group, from finance to missions, engages in all aspects of this cycle. This Guideline will help you see how that is true for the ministry area or group you now lead. When you begin to consider all of the work you do as ministry to fulfill God’s mission through your congregation, each task, report, and conversation becomes a step toward transforming the world into the kingdom of God.

      Invite Christ into the process to guide your ministry. You are doing powerful and wonderful work. Allow missteps to become learning opportunities; rejoice in success. Fill your work with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

      God blesses you with gifts, skills, and experience. You are a blessing when you allow God to work through you to make disciples and transform the world. Thank you.

      (Find additional help in the Resources section at the end of this Guideline, in The Book of Discipline, and through http://www.umc.org.)

      What Is This Ministry?

      Who Says She Can’t Be a Pastor?

      First United Methodist Church in Vermillion, South Dakota, works diligently to be a woman-friendly church. The Reverend Brook McBride, pastor of this 200-member congregation, looks for any opening he can find to discuss and promote women in leadership positions.

      "Sometimes the children in Sunday school will play church and a girl will say she wants to be the pastor. If someone says ‘you can’t do that,’ it brings up an opportunity for discussion," he says.

      There have been a lot of women in leadership roles, McBride says, "and not just the traditional roles; it’s the administrative

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