Urban academy sessions to help UMs aid cities

By Rachel L. Toalson
Staff Writer
Workshops on how churches can missionally engage their communities highlight the third Holy Boldness Urban Ministry Academy session this month in San Antonio.
The gathering for clergy and laity teams from city congregations across Southwest Texas runs from March 28 to 30 at Travis Park UMC, San Antonio.
The Rev. Jeannie Whitehurst, pastor of Bethany UMC, San Antonio, is to lead a session about the “church as a social provider.” That workshop is to explore how the church can minister to communities in need, she said.
“Ninety-five percent of the people who walk through our doors in the urban areas have social needs,” she said. “We are right in the heart of poverty, where people are one paycheck away from having nothing or where one major illness will put a family into crisis, such that they will have to leave their place of living or give up their healthcare.
“They are our members as well as the constituents around us we serve. Our heritage is that we meet the needs of people where they are, provide for their health and welfare, and teach them how to move out of that place of poverty.”
Whitehurst said she would talk to pastors about how people come to the church with needs, what the church’s response could be, and how the pastor could provide focused care and practical help without enabling people.
Simple educational tools, like offering a class on managing money or providing resources to help people find work, could make a huge difference, she said.
The Holy Boldness Urban Ministry Academy is a two-year training effort sponsored by the Office of New Church Development and Transformation. Training sessions are designed to show clergy and laity leaders ways to transform congregational life in cities.
The academy covers seven Holy Boldness themes. Themes are offered in three sessions per year. The first session was Sept. 28-30, and the second was Jan. 18-20.
The Rev. George Joehnk of Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas is to speak about wholeness, healing and health.
He said he plans to give workshop participants a beginning holistic Christian guide to wholeness in faith and healing. Further, he wants to help them explore their understanding of health in relation to their spiritual journey.
Health is an important topic for churches to consider, he said.
“As we look at trying to expand our community of faith and how we are going to serve the communities where we are built, we’re looking out to a community that has a whole variety of issues with their own personal health,” Joehnk said.
“How do we, as a community of believers, relate to those people, bring them into the wholeness of what makes them more effective in the church? It’s not just so they can sing hymns and pray. It’s so they can be advocates for their own health and their community’s health.”
Joehnk said all workshops raise important issues for the future of the church. Martin Luther King Jr. once observed in a book where the country was and raised the question about where it should go.
“His answer is we can go to the chaos or the community,” Joehnk said. “I think we’re at the same place. If we don’t do anything, we’re going to see chaos. If we know to develop community, then we will have a community of Jesus Christ.
“But if the church doesn’t know the needs of the area where it’s planted, it won’t be able to minister to those needs.”
Other workshops at the event include:
> Wesley Nurse program.
> Grant writing/Grantmanship.
> Advocacy for social justice.
> Pathfinders: Alcohol and drug ministry.
> Partnering with neighborhood organizations.
> Hispanic ministry.
Registration fee for Holy Boldness is $30 per session for individuals. For congregations sending four or more, the cost is $25 per person.
Childcare is available for a fee.
For more information about the academy, visit www.thetransformedchurch.org/holyboldness.html, or contact the Office of New Church Development and Transformation.