Mission u Studies This Weekend!

Mission U event is this week, and you're invited to join in! The theme this year is “Beloved Community.” This Friday and Saturday, September 22-23, at UMCC.

Study leaders are Linda Haynes, presenting Living as a Covenant Community: Spiritual Growth and Fran Lynch, presenting Missionary Conferences of the United Methodist Church in the United States. Alaska Conference is highlighted as one of the three conferences in the study. For more info, visit aumwmissionu.blogspot.com.

Living as a Covenant Community: Spiritual Growth Study

Covenants are found in the Bible from the moment God created man and woman until the last page of Revelation. The 2017 Spiritual Growth Study examines major covenants throughout the Bible and what they reveal about God's character and eternal love for us. This study will enhance your understanding of how God works with us, in us, and through us.

As we explore these covenants, we will discover that covenantal living calls us to acts of mercy and justice, not only with those in our community, but with all—regardless of their social, political, financial, or religious standing. Through covenantal living, we are connected to God, others, and the whole creation.

As we grow to understand the divine covenants made by God with our ancestors, and thus with us, our faith and our lives will transform. Our responses to God's covenants will guide our lives towards greater compassion and openness.

Through this study, we come to marvel at our covenant God, grow in our love for God, for each other, and for our neighbors near and far.

Missionary Conferences of The United Methodist Church in the United States

The aim of the study is to give an overview of the three missionary conferences in The United Methodist Church, the contexts out of which they grew and their current engagements: The Alaska United Methodist Conference, Red Bird Missionary Conference, and the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference are a hybrid of home and international missionary work.

What does the future look like for these conferences? Broad-ranging conversations are taking place around this question. The General Board of Global Ministries and the missionary conferences are exploring best operational and structural options for maximizing mission and ministry going forward in these unique locations. These dialogues, different in each case, have begun and will take place across the 2017– 2020 quadrennium. The objective is mutuality in mission partnership and collaboration, which provides the heartbeat of all productive mission within the United Methodist connection.