| MCC Officially Launches 2012's Easter Offering for Global Justice Campaign! A Message from The Rev. Nancy L. Wilson Office of the Moderator Metropolitan Community Churches Easter@MCCchurch.net MCC Birth Announcement On behalf of Metropolitan Community Churches and The Fellowship we are pleased to announce the birth of The Global Justice Institute ~ Easter Sunday 2012 ~ Dear MCC Friend: I've heard it for more than 40 years, wherever I have traveled around the world. Some folks say it so passionately. Others say it almost reverently. They always say it so earnestly. "I wish I could have been present at the birth of MCC." Maybe you've even thought it... What joy to have been a part of the original 12 worshipers who launched the global MCC movement! What if I told you that you've been given a God-given opportunity to help birth a new international organization -- an opportunity to be present and participate in the birth of an institute that will extend MCC's ministry in our world and promote God's justice in places where it is urgently, desperately needed? What if you knew that 20 years or 40 years from today, people would still be talking about your church, your ministry, your role in helping birth MCC's Global Justice Institute in 2012? Today marks the official launch of a vitally important MCC tradition: our annual MCC Easter Offering for Global Justice. Each year at this holy season, local congregations throughout MCC join hearts and hands to receive a special, designated Easter offering to strategically advance MCC's global justice ministry. Together, we have accomplished so much through MCC's past Easter Offering for Global Justice campaigns. Yet I've never been so excited and enthused by the possibilities as I am about this year's Easter project! (And what we've accomplished together is nothing short of miraculous! Together, we've supported our brothers and sisters across Eastern Europe as they made historic advances for religious freedom and human rights. We've joined hands with MCCers across Central and Latin America as they trained a new generation of spiritual leaders. You have helped plant indigenous ministries in Southeast Asia that are challenging injustice and intolerance, and your gifts continue to provide support for lesbian and transgender communities in Pakistan. You helped underwrite the first LGBT conference in Russia and publish the first book about LGBT spiritual rights in the Russian language. You helped create safe space for Ugandans, who face daily threats to freedom and life. And you made it possible for MCC to boldly march in the first-ever gay rights marches in such places as Jamaica and Romania. The list of firsts is extensive and amazing!) This Easter -- during this holy season of new life -- you can participate in the birth of MCC's Global Justice Institute, which for generations to come will serve as the umbrella organization for our movement's justice ministries around the world. Just as there are major expenses when a baby is born into the world, there are also extra expenses in the birthing of MCC's new Global Justice Institute. (By the way, the spiritual perspective reminds us that, in both cases, the required funds are not really expenses -- they are investments in a new life!) Accordingly, I am announcing today that our 2012 denominational goal is to raise a minimum of $40,000 USD through special, designated local church Easter offerings, to be invested in birthing MCC's Global Justice Institute. The Global Justice Institute is a joint project of MCC and The Fellowship, and I'm so pleased that the churches of The Fellowship are also receiving an Easter Offering for Global Justice this year! I loved Bishop Yvette Flunder's recent comment, "We're partnering in the Easter Offering Campaign because justice work is Jesus' work. Whenever we stand with the oppressed, the marginalized, the rejected, the persecuted, we stand with Jesus and we minister to Jesus." Here's my invitation to your church: ____________________________________________ I'm inviting your church to participate in this wonderful MCC tradition by receiving a special offering for MCC's Global Justice Institute on Easter Sunday! ____________________________________________ When your church notifies me that you will participate in the 2012 Easter Offering for Global Justice, we'll add your church, along with the name of your pastor, to this year's list of MCC Pacesetter Churches -- churches that are "setting the pace" for MCC's vital international justice ministries. (If for any reason your church cannot participate on Easter Sunday, why not participate another way? Some churches are designating offerings from Good Friday services, Sunrise services or Easter concerts, or funds from yard sales, bake sales, and the sale of Easter lilies, and through the use of special collection jars. Why not participate through one of these creative, alternative ways?) Here's how your church can sign-up...to participate in the 2012 Easter Offering for Global Justice and be listed as a 2012 Pacesetter Church: - Write to me at Easter@MCCchurch.net and let me know that your church will receive a special, designated 2012 Easter offering or receive funds in one of the alternative ways.
- When you write to me, be sure to include the following information: church name, city, province or state, country, pastor's name, and the date your church will receive its Easter offering.
- Share this news with your congregation - and especially remember MCC's justice ministries in prayer during worship services leading up to Easter Sunday.
- Look for more news and details -- along with resources, photos, promotional materials, congregational prayers and bulletin inserts -- coming soon!
This Easter season, you and your church can make a profound difference in our world through MCC's 2012 Easter Offering for Global Justice. And this is the reality: For many people on this earth whose faces we have not yet seen and whose names we do not yet know, your congregation's response will be an answer to their heart's deepest prayer, "the substance of things deeply longed for; the evidence of things that have not yet appeared." May I look for your response this week? Grace and peace, + Nancy Rev. Dr. Nancy L. Wilson Moderator Metropolitan Community Churches Easter@MCCchurch.net P.S. As I've thought about this year's MCC Easter Offering for Global Justice Campaign and prayed for the needs of MCCers around the world, I've been inspired by this verse from God's Word: "Do not despise the day of small beginnings...for the eyes of God that range over the whole earth will rejoice!" (Zechariah 4:10). In 1968, so many people missed the opportunity to attend MCC's very first worship service in the home of Rev. Troy Perry -- a "day of small beginnings." But each of us has the opportunity to participate in the birth of MCC's Global Justice Institute during this 2012 Easter season --"and the eyes of God that range over the whole earth will rejoice!" P.P.S. When you write to me at Easter@MCCchurch.net and let me know of your church's participation in MCC's denominational Easter Offering, we'll promptly add you to the list of 2012 Pacesetter Churches that are leading the way in support of MCC's global ministries.  | | This meeting to address the persecution of LGBT Ugandans took place on 28 February 2012 with (L to R) The Honorable Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom; Rev. Pat Bumgardner, Executive Director, Global Justice Institute (GJI); Rev. Joseph Tolton, GJI Director for African Affairs; and Deputy Assistant Secretary Dr. Daniel Baer, U.S. State Department. |
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