Advocate: Lift up your voice!

The need to not only sustain but increase global funding for malaria control efforts is tremendous. The United Methodist Church will raise $75 million by 2015, a major undertaking for our denomination. But the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that a total of $5.1 billion is needed each year in order to continue making progress against the disease. Read more about the need in this WHO report.

As Katie Dawson, Iowa Field Coordinator for Imagine No Malaria, explains,

While the money we raise with Imagine No Malaria makes a huge impact, one of the things you can DO to help our effort is to advocate for global health funds from our U.S. government.

The budgets from the President, House and Senate for 2014 all include $1.65 billion for the Global Fund and between $650-670 million for the President's Malaria Initiative.

Those funds are available for our United Methodist conferences in Africa, our health boards, our hospitals and clinics to receive through grants. Because of our work raising funds and our incredible distribution and connection on the ground, we are a voice at the table with the Global Fund.

Talk to YOUR legislator in support of funding for global health in the budget to help save lives.

Some 100 anti-malaria advocates visited Capitol Hill in
December 2012 to speak to legislators about global health
funding.

While phone calls and hand-written letters still have the greatest impact in conveying how important the topic is to you, you can also sign an online petition in about a minute at the General Board of Church and Society's "Take Action" site.

Proverbs 31:8-9 offers this instruction (from The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson):

“Speak up for the people who have no voice,
    for the rights of all the down-and-outers.
Speak out for justice!
    Stand up for the poor and destitute!”

How will you lift up your voice on behalf of those who have no voice? Join us in advocating for global health funding to fight malaria!

Do Something to Keep Children Alive!

Annual Conference begins Thursday - are you ready?

This week the Rocky  Mountain Annual Conference will include a brief presentation Thursday afternoon to introduce the Steering Committee for Imagine No Malaria, and on Friday evening we'll enjoy a Missions Banquet with updates from Rev. Gary Henderson, Executive Director of the Global Health Initiative, on the overall scope of this ministry at the global level. If you're at annual conference, you won't want to miss this powerful presentation!

In preparation for our festivities, here's an inspiring message from one of our Steering Committee members. Kunle Taiwo is Co-Lay Leader of the Rocky Mountain Conference. He shares his personal experiences with malaria growing up in Nigeria, and why it's important to take action now to save lives from this preventable and treatable disease:


Kunle emphasizes our faith calling to take action, from a perspective of justice:

"The mortality rate due to malaria is very atrocious in Africa. If we've eradicated that in the western world, particularly in the United States, I think it's incumbent upon us as Christians to pursue this in the best way we can, to at least make sure that these little kids would live."

and

"Having grown up in a place where there is resources... where you know that children can live and be fruitful, and enough is not being done to bring that to life, is something that is a challenge for all of us, and should motivate us to do something to keep children alive."

Children born in the U.S. no longer have to worry that a mosquito bite could turn out to be fatal, but globally, that's not true. A child dies from malaria every 60 seconds, and in Africa, one in five children will not live to see their fifth birthday because of this preventable, treatable, and beatable disease. But we can change that, through a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, treatment, education, and communication. As Kunle says, 

"We have the capability to do this; we have the will to do this; we ought to do it."

If you want to be part of the movement to save lives and end deaths from malaria in Africa, please consider making a donation through the Rocky Mountain Conference or at ImagineNoMalaria.org (make sure to check the box at the bottom for your United Methodist affiliation so your church/district/conference gets credit!), or contact Field Coordinator Rev. Kerry Greenhill, 303-733-3736 x152 or kerry (at) rmcumc.com to find out how you can get involved.

Compassion AND justice

Back: Jennifer Long, Charissa Shawcross, Adlene Kufarimai,
Linda Caldwell, Bonnie Marden, Kerry Greenhill
Front: Jill Wondel, Tami Coleman, Kristen Cates

I recently spent a week in Nashville with a dozen passionate and thoughtful church leaders from across the U.S. to be trained in how to go about organizing our campaigns for Imagine No Malaria. There was a lot of joking that since I'd been on the job for three months already, I could lead the training rather than receive it, but I gained a great deal from the stories people shared, the best practices recommended by the more experienced Field Coordinators, and above all from the connections built among those of us setting out on this journey at about the same time in our respective annual (regional) conferences.

As we talked with some of the communications staff connected with Imagine No Malaria, we were asked why we are passionate about the cause. Staff writer/editor Barbara Dunlap-Berg quoted part of my response in an article posted today to the Imagine No Malaria website:

“What excites me about the campaign is that this is a ministry of health and healing that is about both compassion and justice. Not only are we relieving suffering for thousands of families across Africa; we are also empowering local leaders through training, support and accountability to develop the infrastructure that will support future public health efforts in a sustainable way.
“Children in the United States don’t have to worry that they might die from a mosquito bite, but children in Africa still do. I believe that just as Jesus made healing a central part of his ministry, we as the body of Christ today have a calling to offer healing, wholeness and abundant life in Jesus’ name.”

The difference, to me, between ministries of compassion and justice, is that compassion means we are responding to an immediate need to alleviate suffering, but justice requires working for a world where needless suffering doesn't happen in the first place. I believe that Jesus calls his followers to both justice and compassion, even when it is inconvenient or means we have to give up some privilege or comfort for the sake of others. 

Bishop Elaine and others are greeted by children in Angola

Through Imagine No Malaria, followers of Jesus in the United States (and plenty of non-Christians who are invited to take part in our work) have an opportunity to give of the resources God has entrusted to them (us) for the sake of the well-being of our sisters and brothers in Africa. And the way we are working together, donors and recipients, fundraisers and health care providers, advocates and administrators, provides a foundation of just and mutual relationships that could bring us a few steps closer to realizing the kin'dom of God here on earth.  

When we recognize our interconnectedness in these networks and communities built on mutual respect and love for neighbor, we are all beneficiaries of the act of sharing and giving, both "rich" and "poor" alike, wherever our home, however safe or vulnerable we currently feel. Living in a world of gross inequity impoverishes us all, though clearly some suffer greater physical consequences than others. 

This is at least part of the meaning of abundant life, that “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little” (2 Cor 8:15). And this is why I agree with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who declared, “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'”  

I hope you will consider joining us as we seek to offer healing, wholeness, and abundant life through Imagine No Malaria in the Rocky Mountain Conference and around the world.

Holy Week, Holy Work

This is Holy Week.

Christians around the world are journeying together in a variety of ways, recalling the final days of Jesus' life, from his "triumphal entry" (or anti-empire protest march) into Jerusalem, through the celebration of the Passover meal with his disciples, through his arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

It is a week that many experience as heavy with meaning and remembrance, overshadowed by the betrayal, violence, fear, and grief that Jesus and his followers experienced. In my five years in pastoral leadership in the local church, and twelve years of worship design and leadership, it was always one of the hardest and most sacred times to be a leader of the Christian community. The darkness becomes almost palpable, even two thousand years later, even for those of us living in comfort and affluence, even when the weather is sunny and warm, even when we know how the story ends.

It is the week that changes everything.

Artwork is mixed media collage, created by
Jessica Miller Kelley in 2006, photographs ©2013.
Downloaded from MinistryMatters.com.

Because on Sunday, after all that darkness and sorrow, we rise to the Good News that Christ is alive and goes before us. We remember those long-ago disciples and their experience of Resurrection, and we celebrate the truth that hate and fear do not have the final word; love does. Evil may seem to be all around, but ultimately, good triumphs. Death is still and always a reality in our world, but it is not the deepest reality: Life is what God desires, life abundant and eternal, life transformed by love, life made in the image of our Creator, life expressed by following in the footsteps of our Redeemer, life sustained by the nourishment and guidance of the Holy Spirit, that blows where it will and cannot be stopped or restrained.

This is a Holy Week, and it is right to make time for prayer and worship with the gathered community to recall and proclaim these stories, these experiences, together.

But even in the midst of this holy time, there is work to be done: reports to write, children to pick up from school, data to analyze, buildings to construct, food to prepare, seeds to plant, burst pipes to repair... bed nets to hang, rapid diagnostic kits to distribute, community health workers to train, school children to educate, medications to administer, radio programs to broadcast, funds to raise, communities to engage, voices to lift up on behalf of the voiceless, to speak out for those who are poor and vulnerable, to cry out for justice and proclaim the good news of God's love, of God's desire for abundant life for all people.

In the midst of this Holy Week, may your work - paid or volunteer, professional or personal - become part of the ongoing ministry of Jesus, to proclaim the good news and to build the kin'dom of heaven, the reign of God's love and justice in our midst, here and now, making Resurrection and abundant life possible for all people and all creation.

And if you'd like to join us in partnering with the people of Africa to make abundant life more accessible for millions of God's children by eliminating preventable deaths from malaria, call 303-733-3736 x152 or email kerry [at] rmcumc [dot] com. Death will not have the final word, this week or for generations to come.

Ripples in the water

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Do you know how much power you have to affect the lives of others? 

Depending on how your day is going, you may see yourself as powerless, or too easily affected by the words, attitudes, or actions of other people. Or you may be all too aware that the decisions you make - in parenting, in friendship or a romantic relationship, in the workplace - can make a dramatic difference for those around you.

Image courtesy of zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In recent years, the recognition of interdependence and connectedness among all people and all living things has become regarded as more than just a feel-good statement of philosophy or spirituality; it is affirmed in arenas as diverse as physics, biology, politics, and psychology. From the "butterfly effect" (a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world sets off a chain reaction that leads to a tsunami around the globe) to the ripples created by a small stone being thrown into a pond, the natural world is full of images that demonstrate the far-reaching effects of small, simple actions. The truth is that all of us have more influence than we realize, both on the people who are physically close by and on those we may never meet.

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 

- 1 John 3:18

 One of the blessings of a movement like Imagine No Malaria is that it offers a concrete and meaningful way to harness the energy of interdependence, to turn good intentions into actions that can literally heal people and save lives. If you spend $10 on lunch or a movie ticket, you may or may  not remember how you spent the money a year from now. But if you give that same $10 to pay for the cost of an insecticide-treated bed net, you're helping keep a family of four safe from malaria-spreading mosquito bites for up to five years.

That's five years when children are in school regularly and parents don't have to miss work, when there are no unexpected and arduous trips on foot to a clinic ten or twenty miles away to seek treatment. And of course, bed nets are only one part of the story; your $10 (or $25, or $100, or...?) could help provide rapid diagnostic kits or life-saving medication for a clinic or hospital; larger gifts can help train and support community health workers who visit villages to build relationships, assess the need, and explain the importance of bed nets and prompt treatment of symptoms; initiate radio programs that raise public awareness of malaria prevention and treatment; or much more.

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a [person] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he [or she] sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

- Robert F. Kennedy

What kind of ripples are you sending out into the world this week? Would you consider some small action - telling a friend or church group about Imagine No Malaria, making a donation, calling your Congressperson to support continued global health funding - to help save the lives of children and pregnant women who are most vulnerable to malaria? If you're not sure where to start, the Lenten devotional booklet compiled by INM staff has some great suggestions for simple actions you can take, each Friday during Lent. Together, we can make a difference.


P. S. You can donate now (or at any time) at the Rocky Mountain Conference website - enter the amount you wish to give in the Imagine No Malaria box, and at the bottom of the screen, choose whether you want to give once, weekly, or monthly. Or you can give directly through Imagine No Malaria; just make sure to indicate which church, district, or conference you want to receive credit.