Hospitality

Donna Haley, Hospitality Committee Chair | dmhaley_99@yahoo.com

Welcoming the Stranger

So many people in this world feel like they are strangers. From time to time each one of us may experience this feeling when faced with situations where we have no genuine connection to other people. This sense of disconnect can happen almost anywhere - at home, at work, visiting a foreign country, or even when one comes to church.

Jesus and writers of the New Testament emphasized welcoming the stranger. The writer of Hebrews points out that when we show hospitality to strangers, we may be entertaining angels unaware. Not only are we encouraged to make the strangers around us feel at home, we are also reminded that Christ comes close to us when we do!

Welcoming strangers is a basic component of discipleship. Acknowledging this makes us more aware of the stranger in our midst. It could be a new employee who joins your workgroup, a person you’ve never spoken to at church, a stranger standing in front of you at the grocery store, or a new neighbor who moved in down the street.

God wants to use each one of us to make disciples. There are strangers all around us who need to see the love of God. We need to be intentional and reach out. Perhaps there is an opportunity for you to be creative in reaching out to strangers. Have you ever considered these options:

• Serve the homeless in some way provide meals to Room in the Inn, or donate clothing.

• Pray for and listen to those struggling with grief, loss, illness or disappointment.

• Honor older members of our church with a visit during the week, or send a card.

• Put on your name tag and introduce yourself to someone in our church you’ve never spoken with, particularly those who are alone.

• Consider volunteering to be a greeter one Sunday a month.

The love and welcome of God is revealed in everyday actions just like these. Together, let’s get involved, let’s live out our GUMC mission.

We are a welcoming faith community committed to: Loving God and loving others; Serving Christ and sharing him; Transforming lives and making disciples.

Yolanda Toney | ytoney@germantownumc.org | 901-754-7216

Supporting Someone Going Through Divorce

When a Christian friend is going through a divorce, it’s uncomfortable for most of us to face. The divorce may take us by surprise. We may struggle with the right words to say. Yet, we see our friend hurting and we know we need to do something to help. Divorce is one of the most stressful events in life. Your friend will need your support. Many people have described divorce as being like a death but without a funeral to celebrate a life or mourn an unexpected loss. There will be shifts in relationships and there will be loss.

Divorce can be painful and lonely. As much as you will be tempted to give advice, don’t. Your friend doesn’t need advice, they need support. They need to know they are not alone. Pray constantly for your friend and be sensitive to your friend feeling uncomfortable among church friends. Many people leave their church due to divorce or are driven away. Your friend could be the reason there is going to be a divorce, because so often we don’t see the potential costs of some decisions. So, even if your friend is the reason, you don’t get to judge, and it doesn’t mean they won’t need support.

Allow your friend to grieve in whatever way they need to grieve without judgment or platitudes. The comments, “When God closes a door, He opens a window” or “Everything happens for a reason” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle” while well intended they rarely help. Offer instead Isaiah 41:10 “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous hand.”

So how do you best support a friend going through divorce? Just be accessible. Don’t try to fix his or her broken heart. Don’t tell your friend how he or she should think or feel. Instead, make your goal to care with love and compassion.

Congregational Care

Yolanda Toney | ytoney@germantownumc.org | 901-754-7216

Are you being called from the pews into the mission field?

Contact Rev. Tom Davis, 901-754-7216, or tdavis@germantownumc.org.

• Flower Ministry - After worship, altar flowers are separated into small vases and delivered to homebound. Your time commitment is up to you.

• Visits to Homebound - Occasionally you may be asked to visit those who are homebound or persons who may be ill.

• Home Communion Ministry- On Communion Sunday, you will take Communion to assigned homebound.

Contact Ruth King, 901-233-7495 or ruthmking@bellsouth.net.

• Prayer Ministry - Join a team of volunteers who arrive 30-45 minutes before worship to pray throughout the church for all who enter the sanctuary before worship begins. The team also prays with the pastors. New members are welcome.

Contact Sue Myers, 901-756-7919 or joelmyers1@comcast.net.

• Monday Night Visits to First Time Visitors - Armed with fresh cookies, you will visit first time visitors. You may bake cookies, go on visits, or both.

Contact Yolanda Toney, 901-754-216, ytoney@germantownumc.org.

• Grief Ministry - Commit to stay in touch with a person who has suffered a close familial loss for a year. Regularity of contact would be determined by the person affected by the loss and you. Contact might include calls, notes, or visits.

• Note/Card Writing Ministry - Once a month or less you will write notes to assigned persons. Adults, youth, and children may contribute to this ministry.

• Calling Ministry -Monthly or bi-monthly (determined by you) you will call assigned persons to check in with them. These people may be ill, shut-ins, or may be absent from church for several Sundays.

• Meal Ministry - Occasionally persons or families may appreciate a meal during a difficult time. You would make the meal or purchase a meal and deliver it.

• Career Transition Team - An established group who aids those seeking employment or those who are underemployed. https://sites.google.com/a/ thectgroups.org/the-ct-groups/home/Groups/Memphis-CT.

Children’s Choirs Concert and Musical – Once Upon a Parable by Allen Pote

Year end activities help us mark critical events as we celebrate progress and growth. This presentation by our children’s choirs is a great example. The groups have been hard at work and play all semester, and the culmination of that work is to share the efforts with others.

To start off the concert, the Cherub Choir (Preschoolers) will make a joyful noise to the Lord by singing several songs about God's world and our place in it.

The musical features songs and narrations about some of the most well known parables in the Bible Teaching Bible stories through song is one of the best ways to equip our young people with biblical knowledge, and Once Upon a Parable provides this equipping splendidly.

Another musical tool that teaches scripture is our Hymnal. A special hymnal presentation will be made to our 5th graders. To those 5th graders we can say, “may the tunes and stories within the Hymnal continue to educate and fulfill you for years to come.”

Leaders Mary Groh, Peggy Warner and Libby Schielke have been working with our children for years. Their consistent excellence is a great gift to the church and the children they work with. Let us give thanks for their leadership, as well as assistants Callie Beaver, Melissa Hayes, Kim Marsh, Carla McCrary, Julia Hunter and Lisa Thurner.

Join us for worship on May 21, 2023 as we celebrate upcoming Pentecost Sunday. In all three worship services (8:30am & 11:00am Traditional; 11:00am Prism) we will honor and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church.

And what’s a birthday without a party?!

After worship, we will join in the Owings Life Enrichment Center (OLEC) parking lot for a Pentecost Celebration!

Church & Society Dismantling the Poverty Trap

According to a March 30 article by David Waters of the Institute for Public Service Reporting, a child who grows up in a low-income home in Memphis has about a 4% chance of becoming a high-income adult, compared to 6% for a child in Tennessee and 12% for a child in America. The article notes that entrenched generational poverty creates and sustains living and working conditions that generate and exacerbate trauma, blight, violence, and other factors that impair social and economic mobility.

So what can we do to help? Here are a few suggestions from the UMC General Board of Church & Society:

• Learn about the economic realities of poverty

 The Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet is updated annually by Professor Elena Delavega of The University of Memphis School of Social Work and Dr. Gregory M. Blumenthal. The 2022 report can be found here (or scan QR code.)

 The Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis, the United Way of the Mid-South, and Seeding Success have programs and initiatives to reduce generational poverty; more information can be found on their websites.

 Slingshot Memphis has created a methodology to measure the impact of various poverty-fighting initiatives. You can access their impact profile summaries here (or scan QR code.)

 To get a broader look at poverty in America, check out these books and podcasts:

 Evicted! Poverty & Profit in the American City (2016) and Poverty, by America (2023), both by Matthew Desmond

 A Framework for Understanding Poverty (2001), by Ruby Payne

 Poverty in America: A Handbook (2013) by John Iceland

 Nomadland: Surviving in America in the Twenty-First Century (2017), by Jessica Bruder

 $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2016), by H. Luke Shaefer & Kathryn J. Edin

 Podcasts: Off-Kilter with Rebecca Vallas; Poverty Research & Policy (University of Wisconsin); Business Fights Poverty; Build Relationships: Break Poverty; Poverty Unpacked

• Connect with others engaged in anti-poverty efforts

GUMC supports several ministries and nonprofits that seek to alleviate the effects of poverty, including Church Health, Jacob’s Ladder, MIFA, Project Transformation, Reelfoot Rural Ministries, Room in the Inn, United Methodist Neighborhood Centers, Mid-South Food Bank, and Youth Leadership of Memphis. Contributions are always welcome and can be made through GUMC’s website. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Anne Fritz, chair of the Missions Committee, at (901) 409-3477 or annefritz214@gmail.com

• Keep abreast of new initiatives in Memphis to address generational poverty

The aforementioned article by David Waters discusses a three-year effort by representatives of local government, business, nonprofits, philanthropy, education, neighborhoods, and faith and arts communities to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. The initiative, called Made for Memphis, will make its initial recommendations to city and county public officials this month. Mark Sturgis, executive director of Seeding Success, notes that Memphis has a lot of programs to help the poor, but the systems are designed to keep people in poverty. He argues that we need to build a new civic structure that is better coordinated, more efficient and equitable, and more connected to the people who are living in poverty. This new structure, if implemented, would establish a long-term public-private governance/management structure similar to the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy.

• Contact your elected officials and ask them to put the needs of those living on the economic margins at the center of an agenda for a just economy.