Get Your Spirit in Shape - United Methodist Podcast

We continue our Advent 2020 missionary conversations with Temba Nkomozepi, a United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries missionary serving as an agriculturalist for the Mujila Falls Agriculture Center in Kanyama, Zambia. Temba helps provide healthy, nutritious food, and teaches others how to best grow crops and maintain livestock. It’s important work that helps improve the health of the people of Zambia. Hear the rest of our 2020 Give Love missionary episodes.

Our second missionary conversation for Advent 2020 is with Lily Maijama’a, a Global Missions Fellow with the General Board of Global Ministries serving the West Africa Initiative of Liberia where he serves as a project manager. But Lily’s service goes far beyond his office job. He trains young people in the dangers of the internet and might organize a football match (what we in the U.S. call soccer) just to meet people and invite them into a small group. A passion for connecting people to one another and to Jesus Christ, drives him. Hear how he began to understand his skills for church leadership and how he uses them to reach out to those who are not yet part of the church.

We begin our missionary conversations for Advent 2020 by meeting Ben Lasley, a Global Missions Fellow with the General Board of Global Ministries serving Arch Street United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Growing up in North Carolina, Ben was active in his United Methodist church where he developed his relationship with Jesus Christ. In Philadelphia, he serves as a community organizer, coordinating a meal service for those experiencing homelessness and overseeing a community garden. Ben’s enthusiasm for his work is contagious. He says it helped “activate my faith.” It isn’t always easy. There are many challenges, but when we are willing, God works in and through us.

Bryce Hillhouse knows the value of education. He worked hard and made his own path. Today, he serves as Development Coordinator at the Lydia Patterson Institute a United Methodist-related and church-supported middle and high school in El Paso, Texas. Through their robust scholarship program, Lydia Patterson provides a quality education to impoverished children in Texas and Mexico. In this conversation, Bryce shares the value of education, the importance of spiritual formation, and the challenges Lydia Patterson has overcome at the U.S. – Mexico border and through the coronavirus pandemic.

Energy is one of those things many of us can take for granted. We flip a switch and bring light to a darkened room. Outlets are plentiful where we charge our phones or power a tool. We have refrigerators that keep our food fresh and water heaters to make our showers comfortable. In some places where The United Methodist Church is in mission, however, that is not the case. Hospitals rely on cellphone flashlights. Students struggle to study at night. Vaccines are unable to be stored due to a lack of refrigeration. So when energy is unreliable or unavailable, our missionaries and disaster relief teams turn to innovative technologies to get the job done. The Rev. Jenny Phillips, Senior Technical Advisor for Environmental Sustainability at United Methodist Global Ministries, introduces us to some those cool technological advances and shares about the importance of care for creation as we care for others.

“The length and width of our table determines the depth and breadth of our compassion,” teaches the Rev. Mark Feldmeir. “If we can get folks to the table and stay there, even in the difficult conversations, that compassion grows deeper and wider and allows us to be agents of compassion.” As the U.S. presidential election nears, we appear to be a divided nation—not only in politics but also in the church. In his new book, A House Divided: Engaging the Issues through the Politics of Compassion, United Methodist pastor, Feldmeir writes, “Americans are not nearly as polarized in their actual convictions as the current political rhetoric suggests.” In his book, and in this conversation, he encourages and equips us to have constructive conversations on challenging topics like climate change, immigration, and racism. By starting from where we already agree, we can become more comfortable with welcoming differing opinions to the table.

“Maybe the big things in your eyes are actually really small things,” the Rev. Adam Weber wonders aloud, “and the small things in your eyes are actually huge.” Instead of searching for the big things we want to do for God, Adam encourages us instead to look for the places where we can love our neighbors, even the ones who are difficult to love. He’s learned that lives can be powerfully impacted by simple things like free cookies and basketball hoops. Adam Weber is the founding pastor of Embrace Church, a multi-site United Methodist congregation in and around Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Dr. Leah Gunning Francis describes herself as a seminary dean, mother and author. As a seminary dean and scholar, she shares a theology of anti-racism and racial justice that begins with the imago dei, the recognition that all human beings are created in the image of God. As an author, Dr. Gunning Francis wrote Ferguson and Faith after interviewing more than two dozen faith leaders who participated in the protests following the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. She shares how people of faith joined the work for racial justice, and how we are called to join as well. As the parent of two sons, she also shares some insights on how we can raise children to be anti-racist. This is an important and inspiring conversation.

In her new book The Way Up is Down, author Marlena Graves shares the example of Jesus, who, “Though he was in the form of God… emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6-7). In this conversation, Marlena and Joe talk about how all too often we do the opposite—trying to fill ourselves with power, money, comfort and more. Often, despite all our striving, we find that we can never be satisfied. When we surrender those desires and instead allow God to fill us, we can find the peace and satisfaction we desire.

“Issues don’t move people,” shares United Methodist missionary Eric Soard. “People move people. And we need to be better at getting close to the people that are affected by the issues we are supposedly passionate about.” Soard learned about the importance of ‘proximity’—what John Wesley called “watching over one another in love”—while serving as an educator and the founder of Wesley College in Mwanza, Tanzania. After weeks of quarantine and stay-at-home orders, we all have a renewed appreciation of the value of proximity.

Todd Seifert, Great Plains Conference Communicator, describes himself as a media mutt. He’s worked for print publications, digital media companies, produced videos and recently won the United Methodist Association of Communicators’ 2020 Best in Class award for his podcast In Layman’s Terms. Todd’s been a Sunday School teacher for years and loves sharing about scripture. He uses that knowledge in his podcast as he shares stories about the body of Christ while reflecting on God’s Word. In this conversation, we talk about how we can use media to help us grow as disciples of Jesus Christ.

On Friday, June 5, 2020, we spoke with 2 bishops about racism, the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police, and the protests happening across the United States. They express their anger, how they approach the world and are treated differently because of race and gender, and some steps United Methodists can take to be part of the solution of dismantling racism. Bishop LaTrelle Easterling of the Baltimore-Washington Episcopal Area participated in a vigil at St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House earlier in the week. Bishop Robert Farr serves the Missouri Episcopal Area and wrote a powerful statement about the killing of George Floyd.

Meet Bishop Thomas Bickerton of the New York Episcopal Area. He was raised in West Virginia where his family worked in the glass industry and raised him in the church from day one. At West Virginia Wesleyan College, he developed an appreciation for the stories each person has to tell, which later deepened as he had opportunity to travel the world. When asked about the best part of being a bishop, he responded, “Being a bishop.” Bickerton is clearly enthusiastic about his ministry. Although a self-described driven personality, he talks about the importance of stillness, encouraging us to “just breathe” as an act of spiritual discipline. Please note: We recorded this conversation before the global pandemic.

While serving as a hospice chaplain, United Methodist pastor the Rev. Gary Shockley, noticed parents, grandparents and other caretakers struggling to help children in times of grief. Because he is also a children’s author and illustrator, Gary created My Heart Sings a Sad Song, a wonderful new resource to help kids and their families as they experience the complicated emotions of grief. In this conversation, Gary shares some tips for helping children—and all of us—face our emotions during difficult times, including the grief we may be feeling during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We also talk about how Gary learned to use his gifts for art in his ministry.

In the stillness of the night during a youth retreat, his pastor asked a simple question. “Bruce,” Bishop Ough recalls him saying, “have you ever thought about ministry?” Several years later, in another quiet moment at night, this time looking up at the stars, he was struck with a sense of his place in the universe and with God. As Bishop Ough shares his journey of faith and ministry, we get a glimpse into our own spiritual lives and the ways God speaks to us in the stillness. What a great reminder for these days of stay-at-home recommendations and quarantines.