Florida United Methodist Review Online -October 25, 2002

Conference table starts recasting vision, mission

     Participants at the second gathering of the Conference Table Oct. 3 at Grapevine United Methodist Church in Port St. Lucie worked at creating new vision and mission statements for the Florida Conference, while talking about the present reality of the connection in the conference.
     Whitaker began the session by presenting proposed vision and mission statements, calling them "starting points for reflecting." Participants were asked to discuss the contents of the two statements and offer suggestions for making them clearer and stronger. Full Story

Parish nurses care for body and spirit

     The more than 150 parish nurses in the Florida Conference take seriously Jesus' teaching that the body is a temple. "The bottom line is the spiritual dimension," Ginny Pearcy said. "Our bodies are where the Holy Spirit lives, and if we're not healthy, we can't get around and be in ministry."
     Pearcy said parish nursing can trace its roots back to the apostolic church of the New Testament. "At the time of the early church, the apostles were so busy preaching the gospel of Jesus they ran out of time to care for the sick," she said. "The deacons and deaconesses were the ones who took care of the whole person…and were involved in healing ministries."
     Now, the conference's team of parish nurses is visioning ways to further expand its ministry within the conference, especially to help clergy stay healthy.
Full Story

Children's despair changes missionary

     When Shelby Reams asked a group of school children in Zambia, Africa, what they wanted to be when they grow up, most of them said they wanted to be teachers. These are the same children who talked about the war and famine all around them, the HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics that killed many of their parents, and repeated the phrase, "I will not live."
      Reams is a member of St. Andrew's United Methodist Church in Brandon. She and nine other members spent 15 days in Kitwe, Zambia, on a medical mission that provided general health screenings to 650 children there. Full Story

Ministry helps clergy, churches help gay teens

     "If God doesn't love you, who can?" a teenage boy said, explaining to Martha Fugate why he had tried to commit suicide. "Life's not worth living if nobody will love you."
     "That was so internalized for him, that God couldn't love him because he was gay," said Fugate, co-founder and director of Project YES, a Miami-based organization that has embraced the mission of reducing the suicide rate among teenage gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals.
     YES strives to achieve that goal by initiating dialogue, providing information and creating support systems within traditional support networks, such as families, schools, communities of faith and service agencies. Since its inception more than five years ago, YES has trained more than 350 ministers and rabbis in its communications course, and approximately 140 clergy and 17 congregations have signed commitments to spiritually support and nurture all children, regardless of sexual preference. Full Story

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