The following letter from PyungAhn “Peace” Kim, the Peace with Justice Coordinator for the Wisconsin Conference, encourages your congregation to celebrate Peace with Justice Sunday and offers several resources about this offering. The official date for Peace with Justice is June 16, 2019. Please note that the official date is during Annual Conference, but you are welcome to select a different date for your congregation to support this offering.
Pastor, while you are gone…
The Church Council voted to send you a get-well card as you were ill. However, the bad news is that it passed by a vote of 10 to 9 with one abstention. ;)
I meant it to make you laugh. I know no church council in our beloved Wisconsin Annual Conference would be like that.
One more simple church joke? Here it goes.
Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last two weeks.
Bad News: You were on vacation.
While you are gone for the 2019 Annual Conference on Sunday, June 16, your congregation is encouraged to celebrate Peace with Justice Sunday, one of the six churchwide Special Sundays with offerings.
I personally thank those of you who already observed or scheduled to observe Peace with Justice Sunday this year. I wanted to provide all of you with information about this special sunday offering and invite you to share in the joy of building a more just and peaceful world.
Because of the Peace with Justice Sunday offering, the people of The United Methodist Church are able to make a difference together by sowing seeds—and yielding fruit!—of peace.
“Those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts. (James 3:18)”
Peace with justice is what God desires and works for human life and history. I agree with Perry B. Yoder, a mennonite biblical scholar, that it is “an expression of things being as they should be,” so it is “the vision of how things would be when God’s sovereign rule was realized.”
Through our works for peace with justice, we, The United Methodist Church, live up to the mission of our church, “Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” People come to Jesus and find his presence in their midst when we, his Church, moved by his love for all, honoring the dignity of every individual made in God’s image, work to build a culture that welcomes economic equality, seeks peaceful resolutions, fights oppression and doesn’t pit one culture against another - nor places one above another.
When you give on Peace with Justice (PWJ) Sunday, your gift makes possible our critical kingdom work in the world. Because you give, methodists spearhead a peace ministry uniting Arizona border communities; Pennsylvania students are educating their community about sex-trafficking at home and abroad; College students in the Democratic Republic of the Congo received trainings for peace-building and conflict-prevention during election season, and rural entrepreneurship and community development projects continued to serve people in Zimbabwe.
Your Giving Makes Possible the Proclamation of Christ’s Peace
While half of your PWJ offering goes to the General Board of Church and Society for grants to U.S. and international programs such as above, the rest half supports local programs here in Wisconsin. The 2018 PWJ offering funded the Rising Sun Camp to provide summer camp and after-school program to Wisconsin children of an incarcerated parent. For more information on their summer camp program, click here. The PWJ offering also supported the youth mercy and justice seminar/mission trip to NYC and D.C. called Outside My Windows in the summer 2018. Find more stories on the trip here which was offered for the first time in the last several decades in the Wisconsin conference.
Will you continue to support Peace with Justice Sunday? Will you empower local Christians—in Wisconsin and Arizona and Zimbabwe—to build the kingdom of peace that Jesus ushered in?
“Learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)”
Again, thank you very much for your leadership and commitment for God’s kindom and glory through your works for peace-with-justice. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or requests for resources.
With all that I am,
PyungAhn “Peace” Kim
Clergy, Wisconsin Annual Conference
Peace with Justice Coordinator for the Wisconsin Conference
This article is written with resources that are found at http://www.umcgiving.org/resource-articles/peace-with-justice-sunday-pastors-leaders-kit