Bishops call members to ‘live the UM way’ in public

United Methodist News Service
MAPUTO, Mozambique—Bishops have called church members to “live the United Methodist way” in their daily lives and public witness.
The church leaders want United Methodists to be seen as a community of believers who offer hope to the world.
Nearly 80 bishops affirmed the call to action Nov. 6 during their first meeting outside the United States. Bishops accepted the concept but are seeking to clarify what living the United Methodist way really means.
The council also introduced an action plan that includes starting new congregations across the globe, reaching and caring for children throughout the world, and leading the effort to stamp out the killer diseases of poverty: malaria and HIV/AIDS.
West Ohio Bishop Bruce Ough, chair of the bishop’s plan team, said that the call to action was an attempt to compel United Methodists to action.
The action plan is rooted in the denomination’s mission to make disciples of Christ, in the church’s Wesleyan traditions “while spoken in ways that resonate with members of the 21st century United Methodist Church” and the commitment to be a global church, “grounded in our fervent belief that through Christ, there is hope for a fractured world full of hurting people,” Ough said.
North Georgia Bishop Lindsey Davis said the council seeks to put hope into action by creating new congregations that serve all people.
Bishops not only envision planting at least one new church every day outside the United States, where there is significant membership growth, but also starting a new church every day in the United States, where the membership has declined for 40 years, he said.
Currently 75 new United Methodist congregations are begun in the United States each year, he said.
“Our team is discovering what it will take for us to ramp up from 75 new church starts per year to 365 a year,” Davis added.
Since the church in the United States “is at a crucial tipping point,” Davis said a way must be found to challenge United Methodist congregations in the country to “rekindle our Wesleyan passion for souls with the same kind of enthusiasm and spirit that we see lived out ... throughout Africa.”
New congregations are started, the bishops’ plan says, so that disciples can be formed and the world can be changed. Those churches must pay attention to new immigrant and refugee communities, to expanding racial/ethnic populations, to new generations of children, and to “those places that have not yet received the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
Ough told the council that 30,000 children from across the globe die each day of hunger, preventable diseases and violence. Another 13 million children live in poverty.
The call to action encourages bishops to focus on transforming children’s lives while working to eliminate poverty.
“If The United Methodist Church is to be the witness to Jesus Christ and be the hope for the world, we must be engaged in those places where hope is most absent” and extreme poverty is the norm, the plan says.
Bishops Eben Nhiwatiwa of Zimbabwe and Jose Quipungo of East Angola spoke on the pandemic of malaria and AIDS, its impact on the church and the world.
The United Methodist Church is engaged in a malaria-prevention campaign called “Nothing But Nets.” Partners include the United Nations Foundation, Sports Illustrated, the National Basketball Association, Millennium Promise and the Measles Initiative.
The General Board of Global Ministries and United Methodist Communications are coordinating the church’s participation in the campaign to raise funds to eradicate malaria in Africa. The mosquito-borne disease causes the death of one-fifth of all children under 5 years old.