news article

How ministry shares support youth at the jurisdictional level: The example of Mission of Peace

October 19, 2016 / By Tasha Gottschalk-Fielding

Editor’s Note: The next issue of the Advocate will highlight the importance of the United Methodist Connection and the impact that Ministry Shares can have on various ministries from the local church to the global level. This article provides a glimpse of how Ministry Shares work at the jurisdictional level.

Through the giving of its ministry shares, the Upper New York Conference provides approximately 10 percent of the Jurisdictional budget for the Northeast Jurisdiction. One of the groups that receives funding from this quadrennial budget is the NEJ Council on Youth Ministries. This council is responsible for the organization of multiple youth events across the Northeast and sponsors the Mission of Peace program.

Since its founding by the Council on Youth Ministries in 1984, the Mission of Peace program has allowed hundreds of United Methodist Youth to travel to countries all across the globe from Eastern Europe to India to Cuba, with a trip to Nicaragua planned for next year. On these yearly trips, participants unite in fellowship with the local residents by visiting local churches and civic organizations and promoting a dialogue of peace between cultures.

How Mission of Peace bridges cultures through shared faith

This past winter, ministry shares at work in the Northeast Jurisdiction helped send youth across the UNY Conference on a Mission of Peace to The People’s Republic of China that would powerfully change their understanding of other cultures and their own faith.

For Elyse Muder, an 11th-grader from the Mohawk District, the most memorable moment of her trip was visiting a seminary in Nanjing where the students spoke only a little English and she had to learn to communicate through the shared language of drawings and praise songs.

“The woman who was standing next to me while we were singing picked up my hand and smiled as we continued to praise the Lord in song. It was truly the breaking down of cultural differences that I will never forget.”

Maya Smith, a 12th grader from the Mohawk District, experienced a very similar bridging of cultures at a church service in Shanghai

“While singing Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone), they had both the English words and Chinese words projected. At some point the two languages blended into one unified voice of God. Such a beautiful moment displaying how powerful the love of God can be.”

During his 27 years of experience with the Mission of Peace program, the program’s coordinator, the Rev. Ted Anderson, has witnessed many other youth across the Northeast Jurisdiction experience truly life-changing moments throughout their travels and deepen their faith through the worship of a familiar God in unfamiliar environments.

“The places we go are places most people in the USA do not know well or places where we are mis-informed,” Rev. Anderson explained. “When we meet people of faith in these places it challenges our faith to see how they live with so much less than we have.”

How Mission of Peace connects UMC youth across the NEJ

In addition to the expanded worldview that participants receive from their travels abroad, Rev. Anderson highlighted this jurisdictional scope of the program as another source of its “diversity and community,” providing connections between United Methodist Youth from across 12 states in the Northeast.

For both Elyse and Maya, these connections with other people their age played an integral role in their experiences in the Mission of Peace. Elyse noted that she has recommended the program to all youth she has encountered since her return because of these relationships that it fosters. “This trip deepens your connections with other UMC youth in the jurisdiction and youth/people around the world...It's the kind of trip that teaches that the love of God is inclusive, not exclusive.” Maya echoed this idea adding, “As a youth who is very active in the church, it is sometimes hard to connect to our peers who aren’t as active in the church. When I was able to meet youth from all across the Northeast part of the United States, it strengthened my faith to be able to express it freely with others my own age who are experiencing the same things I was. It strengthened my love for the larger church that the UMC offers to me.”