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

Philanthropy News - December 21, 2023 View this email in your browser

As communities of faith move into the busy season of Advent and Christmas, it’s sometimes all too easy to postpone items on your to-do list, like sending in your Mission and Service givings. We’re asking you instead to make Mission and Service a priority and help us be as prepared as possible. Please send in all donations for Mission and Service right away. Don’t wait until the end of the year or early January, or you may run out of time. All Mission and Service givings must be postmarked before January 15, 2024 to be counted in 2023. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Mission and Service Team! In this time of waiting and preparation for the season of Christ’s light, we want to thank you for all you have done this year to turn compassion into action and build a better world through Mission and Service. We wish you all the blessings of the season.   Glenn Waterman, Annual Giving Lead Lindsay Vautour, Donor Engagement Stewardship Associate Jared Millican, Donor Database Integrity and Reporting Associate Kathie Murphy, Annual Giving Associate Amanda Tam, Direct Giving Administrator Amy Chan, Data Entry Clerk

Your January Mission and Service Stories For January, we asked four staff members to choose a Mission and Service story that is meaningful to them and tell us a bit about why. Click on the link in each description to get the full story to share with your community of faith.   JANUARY 7 Learning the Gospel at Camp   [Image credit: Lindsay Vatour]   United Church camps are one of the longest lived and most successful training grounds for leaders, and for sharing gospel living, that the church has. JANUARY 14 Making a Home for Refugees   [Video still credit: The United Church of Canada] The story Making a Home for Refugees: ChrisAnn Alvarez's Work is accompanied by a video in which ChrisAnn talks about how people don’t necessarily want to come to Canada—they are forced to leave their home and seek safety elsewhere.     JANUARY 21 Providing Tuition Assistance   [Image credit: © Rawpixelimages | Dreamstime.com]   Providing tuition assistance to young people in Lebanon is life-changing and will have lasting impacts on the whole community!   JANUARY 28 Your Generosity Revitalizes Languages   [Image credit: Haida Gwaii Skidegate] The efforts of Mission and Service partners to preserve languages unite people in a common passion while rediscovering history.   Congregational Stewardship/Generosity This is your resource to help you grow generous disciples and do God’s mission. Please modify and use these ideas in your context. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from the Community of Faith Stewardship Support Team. Get Ready for Your SPRING Giving Program    Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program:    January 16 & 30, 2024—1:00-3:00 p.m. (ET) or January 17 and 31, 2024—7:00-9:00 p.m. (ET).  If you are planning to do a Giving Program in your community of faith in the spring, sign up now! 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.   This course is FREE.  All course and registration information can be found here.  Make 2024 a Year for Improved Stewardship with These Modules Getting Started in Stewardship    February 22, 2024 – either 4:00–5:30 p.m. OR 6:30–8:00 p.m. (ET) Join United Church people across the country to learn some stewardship first principles, then continue your learning in three practical projects. Communities of faith that complete this course first have better results as they continue to other courses on the journey.  This course is FREE.    Stewardship Best Practices  February 6 through April 18 (with a three-week Easter Break to apply your learning) Best done after Getting Started in Stewardship. Four two-week cycles of Learning Sessions and Cohort Discussion Groups interspersed with practical exercises to examine Stewardship Best Practices in order for you to set goals, create an annual stewardship plan, and get energized!  Course fee: Pay what you can. Recommended fee $100/team Bequests and Planned Giving for Your Community of Faith  April 24, and May 8, 2024 – 2:30-3:30 p.m. (ET) Explore how to set up and maintain a Planned Giving Program at your church, with two one-hour online sessions.  Course fee: $29.99/person Register and find all course information on CHURCHx.ca. Epiphany Worship Resources Here’s a sermon video for New Year’s Eve! And worship resources for Epiphany, including Discover Your Gifts - Share Your Gifts (full liturgy and sermons), sermon videos, and the Lectionary Worship Starters 2024 file, are available at https://united-church.ca/worship-theme/stewardship-worship. Check Out the Most Recent Stewardship Blog   Dave Jagger shares a Christmas lesson from Bluey in our December stewardship blog, “A Fitting Christmas Gift,” at Round the Table. Stewardship Seconds (revised for 2024) 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!  Coming soon to the Stewardship in Worship webpage. Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers (revised for 2024)  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. Coming soon to the Stewardship in Worship webpage. Get the Stewardship Support You Need The people and resources to help you succeed are here.  Your Gifts with Vision Help Build Support Networks for Women Each year, when they send us their Gifts with Vision reports, our Mission and Service partners include wonderful stories about how your generosity has made a difference. This is a story we received recently from Mary Saulnier-Taylor, Executive Director at Coverdale Centre for Women in Saint John, New Brunswick.   ***** Thank you for adding our Whatever They Need Most campaign funding request to the Gifts with Vision brochure.   An amazing example of the good these funds do is that we were able to help a woman change her life by paying for her birth certificate and helping with some travel expenses. This woman was quite isolated; she had no family nearby. She was struggling with her mental health, and it was hard for her to remember specific information that we needed to help her move forward. With help from a Western province’s Vital Statistics Department, Service NB, and Horizon Health, we were able to fill in the gaps, and she was reconnected with family who had been missing her for a long time. It took many days of phone calls, inter-agency cooperation, and perseverance to make it happen, but when she left New Brunswick for a new and improved life with her family, it was all worth it and really did come down to what she needed most—her ID.   We’re grateful for the funds that provide opportunities that seem far out of reach for women who live in poverty or are struggling in other ways. When they hear “We can help with that,” it relieves so much stress.   Sometimes all women need is a way to get back to their support network in another city or town. Funds for a bus ticket make all the difference.   You can make a big difference in people’s lives through Gifts with Vision. Give gifts from the comfort of home, with no packaging or wrapping needed. To order by phone or to get a paper catalogue, call us at 1-844-715-7969. 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! 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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A Christmas Message from the Presbyterian Foundation

As 2023 comes to a close, I want to thank you for the ways in which you share the love of God by supporting our church, the ministries and missions you love, your communities, and the many causes that are instrumental in making the world a better place. Please, take a few moments to join me for this video message where I focus on a few specific places that especially need our prayers for peace. And may the joyous spirit of Christmas guide us towards unity, understanding, and compassion. I pray that we let our light so shine before people so that we illuminate the dark places in the world with the radiant light of God’s peace. Tom Taylor President and Chief Executive Officer

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The PC(USA)’s advocacy director: ‘We have had church tonight!’

The Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett’s inspiring sermon and a rendition of Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ highlight day one of the Young Adult Advocacy Conference

December 20, 2023

The Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett preaches during the Young 

Adult Advocacy Conference. (Photo by Jimmie Hawkins)

“Jesus and Justice,” the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s first-ever Young Adult Advocacy Conference, got underway on an October Friday at the Presbyterian Center and online. Eighty young people registered for the free three-day conference, including an online cadre of about 30 young adults.

“I’m so inspired for your witness,” the Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, told both those online and the group gathered in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center. Moffett put in a plug for young adults — those who are college-age or seminarians — to also consider attending the Matthew 25 Summit, set for Jan. 16-18, 2024. New Life Presbyterian Church in College Park, Georgia, about 10 miles south of Atlanta, is hosting that much-anticipated event. “I hope there will be some young people at the summit,” Moffett said. “It’s open to [Matthew 25] inquirers and those who are seasoned.”

“We are excited to do this work, focusing on advocacy and social justice and what that looks like for young adults,” said Ivy Lopedito, one of the conference organizers and a mission specialist at the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, which alongside the Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C., does advocacy work on behalf of the nation’s 1.1 million Presbyterians. “We [young adults] are passionate about this work, and the church sees that. Sometimes we just don’t know the church is doing this work, too, and we’re doing the work together.”

Listening, learning and doing were the themes for each respective day of the conference, said the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, advocacy director for the PC(USA). “We want to listen to what God’s spirit is saying to you tonight,” he said.

Hawkins defined advocacy as both “a call to change and a call for justice.”

“Something is out of whack. We are the richest country in the world. People are living on the streets, and we are numb to it. We walk right by them, but God is waking us up. Advocacy is speaking up and standing with others,” Hawkins said.

Because advocacy is also a spiritual discipline, “there is no disparity between advocacy and evangelism,” the longtime pastor said. “Jesus was a preacher, teacher and healer.”

Lawrence Robertson Jr. delivers an a cappella version of Sam Cooke’s “

Change is Gonna Come.” (Photo by Mike Ferguson)

“The church does advocacy. Young adults do advocacy — just not together,” Hawkins said. “The tragedy for the church is that when young adults plan advocacy events, they don’t even think of the church as an ally. We have to do a much better job of investing in the lives of young people. We want to join what you are engaged in.”

Many churches proclaim two messages that are in conflict, according to Hawkins: We want more young people, and we find topics around social justice to be among our most controversial. “The thing we are most afraid of,” he said, “is the one thing that will attract young people to our churches.”

Why hold an advocacy conference for young adults? “Because justice matters,” Hawkins said. “In the Reformed tradition, we know two things about God: God is a god of love, and God is a god of justice. God has called us to make a difference in this world.”

“This country can do better. Justice matters,” Hawkins said. “That’s why we’re having this conference.”

“God is doing a new thing, and we need to celebrate that new thing,” said Moffett, herself a pastor of 33 years before being approved as the PMA’s leader by the 223rd General Assembly in 2018 and then again by the 225th General Assembly in 2022. “We don’t do this work alone. We are the church together.

“‘When did we see you, Lord?’ ‘When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me,’” Moffett said.

Before helping to preside at the communion table, Hawkins paused to offer a word of appreciation for the sermon he’d just witnessed.

“We have had church tonight!” he said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett’s preaches at the Young Adult Advocacy Conference

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Ralph Su, Associate, Asian Intercultural Congregational Support, Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Carla Sutton, Operations Admin, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

God, in your mercy, give us eyes to see beyond the smiles of those who serve us. Open our hearts to love those so easy to treat simply as tools, for you said that whenever we care for the least, we serve you Amen.