United Methodist Board of Church & Society organizes work areas

Bishop Kiesey elected president, Winkler to serve 4 more years
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The new directors of The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) were called to be “prophets of faith, justice and hope” as they prepared to organize themselves into work areas for the next four years.

Bishop Forrest Stith, representing the United Methodist Council of Bishops, issued the call to the 63-member board during a worship service that began the organizational meeting here Oct. 23-26.

GBCS “carries the mantel of faith, peace and justice in behalf of our denomination and perhaps all of Christendom,” Bishop Stith declared, adding that he was honored to be asked to chair the organizing meeting.

Kiesey elected president
Bishop Deborah Kiesey of the Dakotas Conference was elected president of the board. Kiesey, a director the past four years, succeeds Bishop Beverly Shamana. Bishop Robert Hoshibata of Oregon-Idaho Conference was elected vice chair.

“As an agency of The United Methodist Church,” Bishop Stith emphasized to the newly formed board, “you stand at a propitious moment in history, for our nation and for our world. Your calling must be clear, to assure the love of the people called United Methodists is not just vertical, but horizontal, transforming the world, not conforming to the world.”

Chairs of work areas were also elected at the organizational meeting. They are: the Rev. Dr. Tamara Brown (Kentucky Conference), Alcohol, Other Addictions and Healthcare; the Rev. Mike McKee (Central Texas), Environmental and Economic Justice; Bishop Jane Middleton (Central Pennsylvania), Human Welfare; and the Rev. Tracy Smith Malone (Northern Illinois), Peace with Justice/United Nations and International Affairs.

Winkler unanimously reelected
The annual meeting’s opening worship and organizational meeting opened in the Simpson Memorial Chapel in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill here. The directors then moved to the M Street Renaissance Hotel downtown for a weekend of more worship, work area deliberations and other organizational issues.

The directors unanimously reelected James Winkler to be General Secretary for another four years. He has served as General Secretary, the agency’s chief executive officer, since 2000.
In addition to elections, the directors also awarded nearly $150,000 in 15 ethnic local church grants and $12,000 in a Human Relations Day grant.

A special $20,000 Peace with Justice grant was approved to support the work of the Council on Bishops’ task force to update its statement on “In Defense of Creation.” The original statement, issued in 1986 after two years of study, addressed the nuclear crisis, a just peace and their impact on the planet.

Directors approved $30,000 to continue the 30-year-old Ethnic Young Adult Summer Intern Program. Under it, persons from across the world come to work as interns in social justice placements in Washington, D.C., including at GBCS. In 2008, interns came from the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia and the Philippines.

A guest during the directors’ meeting was actor David Keith, who has more than 100 movie and television roles to his credit, including “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “The Lords of Discipline.” Keith, who is a member of First United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., and Grier Weeks, executive director of Promise to Protect, made a presentation soliciting support of their work against child pornography and sexual abuse of children. The directors voted to endorse their efforts.

Directors also decorated a tent that will be set up Nov. 7 to 9 on the National Mall as part of the “Tents of Hope.” Communities across the United States and abroad have been invited to transform refugee tents into unique works of art that express compassion and desire for peace for the people of Darfur, Sudan.

3 streams of social concerns
In reporting to the board after his reelection, Winkler said that the agency embodies three important streams of United Methodist social concerns. He said one stream is represented by what was once known as the Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals. The second is insistence on a better life for working people stated in the 1908 Social Creed of the denomination, and the third is world peace.

“Over time, our consciousness has been raised on many other important matters including health care, civil and human rights, and economic and environmental justice,” Winkler said. “In fact, over the past half century, the world has been transformed by great moral and spiritual movements for equal rights for women, for environmental and economic justice, for an end to the nuclear arms race, apartheid and the Vietnam War, for civil and human rights for all people.

“Often, the church has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table, but today we are one of the pillars of these movements, as we should be.”

Winkler emphasized that GBCS’s ministries are biblically based. He also said that the agency is committed to the four focus areas recently approved by the United Methodist General Conference, the denomination’s highest policy-making body. “We offer expertise in the areas of global health, ministry with the poor, and leadership development,” he stated. “And, we stand ready to assist the agencies and annual conferences involved in new church starts to ensure United Methodist faith communities are scripturally grounded and committed to the Social Principles.”

Winkler said he believes that “at its best” GBCS serves to help the church understand the interconnectedness of God’s creation.

“We work hard to help our people join justice and mercy together in their own lives, congregations, and communities,” Winkler said. “United Methodists are excellent at feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked. Freeing the oppressed, confronting the systems that perpetuate hunger, racism, violence and poverty is always the hard part. In many ways, that’s where GBCS comes in.”

The least and the lost
At the closing commissioning service, Bishop Kiesey declared that she is proud “The United Methodist Church has a board such as GBCS to speak for those who have no voice, to always keep before us the needs of the least and the lost.” The Christian mandate to care for these people is “absolutely clear, without a doubt,” she said in describing the directors’ and the board’s call.

“The challenge to our church is to accept the least and the lost of the world,” Bishop Kiesey said at the commissioning service, “not only accept but seek them out and embrace them and welcome them in.

“Our commission on this board is to broaden that circle and offer the Good News to the entire world, but especially to the weak, so no one has to ask again, ‘What prevents me from following Christ?’”

GBCS is one of four international general program boards of The United Methodist Church. The board’s primary areas of ministry are Advocacy, Education and Leadership Formation, United Nations and International Affairs, and resourcing these areas for the denomination. It has offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and at the Church Center at the United Nations in New York City.