Building Upon a Year of Accomplishments: Being the Church
by Jan Nelson, WMJM President
WMJM recently reflected on the our past year of work, and we were surprised by all we have accomplished. While there is a sense that the United Methodist Church is in a holding pattern – General Conference postponed and likely to be postponed again, and no decisions on what is to become of this denomination – WMJM continued to be the church – supporting the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed amid this long drawn global pandemic.
Our support of Christmas Covenant work is on-going. We have raised funds to help pay for communication needs for the Christmas Covenant organizing team as they work within the challenges of internet access in our central conferences. We also assisted the team with a webinar to educate US general conference delegates about the Christmas Covenant. We will continue to be supportive as our central conference siblings take the lead on this initiative for regionalization in the UMC.
In the past year, we have supported and endorsed Investigate PH, a major international investigation that spread widely the human rights crisis happening in the Philippines. Alongside the investigation, we supported the Philippine Human Rights Act, a bill in Congress calling for the protection of human rights defenders in the Philippines via the suspension of U.S. military aid to the country.
We have continued to work with various groups supporting Palestinians. We signed on to HR 2590 demanding US Congress to support of Palestinian Rights, and we hosted two webinars with Friends of Wadi Foquin. We continue to look for ways to amplify the messages of the groups who are working for justice in Palestine as with the Philippines.
We have continued to meet monthly by Zoom; with our leadership spread across the jurisdiction, that’s just what we do. We are improving our communications – we sent 21 communications to our listserve of 700 during 2021. Some of those communications were announcements about other events that we have amplified and supported. Other communications were newsletters sharing about various projects and programs and needs. We also launched ouru new and improved website at www.wmjm.org
This next year, we invite you to be a part of the work we are doing at WMJM. If you would like to work on any of the projects described above, you can contact us at wmjm@wmjm.org. If you would like to donate to support our work, use this link to donate online.