3-day workshop to help church find voice on immigration, Conway, Arkansas, September 11-13

Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference of The United Methodist Church will be a featured speaker at “Welcoming the Sojourner — Finding the Church’s Voice on Immigration.” The event will be Thursday to Saturday, Sept. 11-13, at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark.

Carcaño is chair of the United Methodist Council of Bishops committee on immigration. She also heads an interagency task force of the denomination that targets reform of U.S. immigration laws.

“Welcoming the Sojourner” is co-sponsored by the Arkansas Conference and the United Methodist Board of Church & Society.

Other featured speakers include Bishop Charles Crutchfield of the Arkansas Conference; the Rev. Mark Sills, executive director of FaithAction International House, Greensboro, N.C., an interfaith, interracial non-profit organization working to form a united community of many cultures; and Bill Mefford, director of the Civil and Human Rights program at the Board of Church & Society

Workshops at “Welcoming the Sojourner” will include:

.The Bible and Immigration
.Root Causes of Immigration
.Organizing United Methodists for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
.The Local Church as a Place of Outreach and Ministry, and
.Immigration and Racism.

A Continuing Education Credit will be awarded for the event. Registration fee is $50. To register online, go to www.umc-gbcs.org/scjimmigration.

For more information, contact the Rev. Steve Copley, Arkansas Justice for Our Neighbors, at (501) 374-3811.

Another “Welcoming the Sojourner” event will be Oct. 16-18 in Naperville, Ill. That event is co-sponsored by the Board of Church & Society and the North Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church. Besides Bishop Carcaño and Sills, featured speakers will include Bishop Hee-Soo Jung of Northern Illinois Conference and Jose Oliva of Interfaith Worker Justice, Chicago.
Registration fee for the NCJ event is $95. To register online, go to www.umc-gbcs.org/ncjimmigration. For more information, contact the Rev. Clayton Childers, director of Annual Conference Relations at the Board of Church & Society, (202) 488-5642 or cchilders@umc-gbcs.org.

The United Methodist Board of Church & Society is one of four international general program boards of the denomination, which has more than 11 million members worldwide. The board’s primary areas of ministry are Advocacy, Education and Leadership Formation, United Nations and International Affairs, and resourcing these areas for denomination. It has offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and at the Church Center at the United Nations. Its Web site is www.umc-gbcs.org.

The Arkansas Conference is one of 14 conferences, including two missionary conferences, that make up the United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdiction. Its Web site is www.arumc.org.

Justice For Our Neighbors (JFON) provides church-based legal clinics and safe havens for immigrants across the United States. JFON is a program of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) of the Board of Global Ministries. More information about JFON is available at http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umcor/work/immigration/jfon/.