BySept. 3, 2003
TechShop adds new computer products for church
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) – New additions to United Methodist Communications’ online computer store are bringing TechShop closer to being a one-stop technology solution for the denomination.
With the additions of Adobe, Macromedia and MediaShout products, TechShop is moving beyond being known only as a "Microsoft store for the United Methodist Church," said Sean McAtee, TechShop director.
Since its launch two years ago, UMCom’s online computer store has saved the denomination more than $8 million in Microsoft software alone, McAtee said.
UMCom introduced TechShop, a 24-hour-a-day online store, as a service to enable United Methodist churches and organizations to buy computer technology at below-retail prices. The biggest share of the savings has come through sales of Microsoft products, the store’s flagship product line, McAtee said. In most cases, those products are offered for 50 percent or less of retail cost.
The communications agency is working on securing new contracts with computer vendors that will provide discounted desktop systems, laptops, personal digital assistants, server solutions, storage, printers and networking solutions to United Methodist organizations. Two vendors will be selected from candidates such as Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard/Compaq.
"Hopefully, TechShop will be able to include lay members as qualified buyers under this program," McAtee said.
The United Methodist Book of Discipline charges UMCom with developing, implementing and maintaining the denomination’s "presence on and use of the Internet, the World Wide Web, or other computer services that can connect United Methodist conferences, agencies and local churches with one another and with the larger world."
With the new product lines, customers can buy Adobe Systems Inc. products, which are used by graphic and media professionals all over the world.
"The Adobe software line includes several applications well suited for page design and layout, making church bulletins, brochures, handouts and calendars both clean and professional," McAtee said.
Adobe products are offered through TechShop at a discount ranging from 20 to 40 percent off retail price. Version upgrade licenses are also available at a discount.
Macromedia provides software solutions for Web development. TechShop carries the full line of Macromedia products, including Web server solutions, development tools, Web application tools and Web graphic tools. TechShop will offer a 70 to 80 percent discount on all Macromedia products.
MediaShout is a media presentation software package designed for church worship services.
"If you are thinking about or currently using overhead projection during your worship service, this is definitely the best software for the job," McAtee said. "It is designed to work with Microsoft PowerPoint, providing instant audio, video, lyric and image integration into any worship service.
TechShop offers MediaShout to any United Methodist organization or member at a 40 percent discount off retail.
More information about TechShop is available by writing to techshop@umcom.org , calling toll-free (888) 346-3862 or visiting https://secure.umcom.org/techshop .
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Sept. 3, 2003
New index offers centuries’ worth of data on clergy
By United Methodist News Service
People doing research on church history have a new tool at their fingertips: an index to information about clergy and spouses of the United Methodist Church’s predecessor denominations stretching back to the 1700s.
The 2003 CD version of the Conference Journal Memoirs Index contains about 97,000 entries drawn from pre-1968 conference journals held by the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History at its offices at Drew University in Madison, N.J. The indexed material extends from about 1786 to 1967, according to L. Dale Patterson, archivist. This database was designed as an index to resources, not as a resource itself, he adds.
Entries include references to memoirs – obituaries – from the Methodist Episcopal Church; Methodist Protestant Church; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; the Evangelical Association/Church; the United Brethren in Church; the United Evangelical Church; the Methodist Church; and the Evangelical United Brethren Church.
The CD includes its own search engine. The database requires Windows 98/NT/W2K or XP, a Pentium PC or higher, and a CD with a 4x CD drive. The entire search engine and database must be installed on the computer’s local hard drive and require 54 MB of disk space.
The CD may be ordered for $10, including shipping and handling, from the Commission on Archives and History, P.O. Box 127, Madison, NJ 07940. An order form is posted at http://www.gcah.org/list.htm , and more details are available at research@gcah.org .
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Aug. 29, 2003
Commentary: We must keep King’s dream alive
A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Chester Jones*
This year, Americans are marking the 40th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. At the same time, United Methodists are observing the lesser-known but vitally important 35th anniversary of the church’s Commission on Religion and Race.
We should celebrate these milestones and the progress they represent. However, both anniversaries also remind us that achieving the dream of justice and equality that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth still requires much work.
Recently, I attended a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where thousands of Americans from all walks of life gathered to celebrate King’s legacy. It was at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, that he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Soon the Commission on Religion and Race will meet in Minneapolis to celebrate and reflect on the dreams and dreamers of the United Methodist Church who, like King, envisioned a world where racial equality would be achieved through nonviolent social change.
In 1963, people came to the Lincoln Memorial for the purpose of "cashing a check at the bank of racial equality," as King put it. The nation’s founders wrote this check to obtain social, economic and educational opportunities for all people.
Four decades later, listening to some of the same speakers who were at the March on Washington, I was reminded that in many ways the check has bounced due to insufficient funds. Deposits of justice, compassion, integrity, and love had not been made, while an overabundance of greed, intolerance, hatred and dishonesty have filled the account, rendering us incapable of caring for the "least of these" among us.
Certainly, during the past 40 years, legal, political and social advances have lifted disenfranchised groups of all kinds. We are seeing an unprecedented number of racial ethnic persons in national and international leadership. Women are shattering glass ceilings. But while things have changed, they remain the same. Racial, economic and gender disparities abound. Racially motivated brutality toward people of color continues. Women on average are still paid less than their male counterparts. The U.S. poverty gap widens yearly.
The Commission on Religion and Race, established five years after the March on Washington, was a product, in part, of an outcry for peace and justice. The agency’s goal is to help the church ensure that when the check of justice and equality is cashed, there are adequate reserves from which to draw. The commission does this by monitoring church practices and advocating for the full participation of racial ethnic people in the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church.
The church’s journey has paralleled in many ways the American struggle for racial and social justice. Despite advances, we continue to face the same methods of personal and systemic oppression employed throughout the history of our denomination.
While we can count people of all races in our leadership, roadblocks remain for lay and clergy persons of color. Many annual conferences are nurturing congregations and ministries for all ethnic groups, but getting the resources and support to develop ministries for Asian, black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander people is difficult. While we celebrate the possibilities of open itinerancy, we are still feeling the wounds that are inflicted when congregations are unwilling to accept pastoral leadership from a person of another race or from a woman.
At the past few General Conferences, some have questioned whether the Commission on Religion and Race is still needed. Many United Methodists believe King’s dream has been fulfilled and that racism is no longer a problem facing the church. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Racism is still an ugly reality among us – not only in society but in our own faith family and church.
Blatant and subtle racism persists in unexpected places. Almost daily, the commission deals with complaints of discrimination from lay people, pastors, district superintendents and agency staff. Funding for annual conference chairs on religion and race is minimal or nonexistent. The prophetic voice of our chairpersons is often misunderstood and not supported.
As I reflect on the lessons of King’s life and death, coupled with the current realities of the United Methodist Church, I can’t help but wonder, "Why is it that we kill our dreamers with the hope of killing the dream?" Those who conspired against King and many of our other leaders believed they could kill the dream along with the dreamer, but the dream lives. The dream is in all of us and will take all of us working together to bring it to fulfillment.
The last words in King’s sermon still ring true: "I may not get there with you, but one day we as a people will get to the promised land." By our collective effort and prayer, the dreamers of the United Methodist Church are keeping the dream alive. That same collective effort and prayer are needed to realize the dream for justice.
*Jones is top staff executive of the United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race in Washington.
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Aug. 28, 2003
Former White House aide enjoys ‘different’ church role
By Erik Alsgaard*
WASHINGTON (UMNS) – By age 40, Mike McCurry already held his dream job: spokesman for the president of the United States, Bill Clinton. Four years later, in 1998, McCurry had left the White House to do, as he says, "something different."
That something turned out to be, in part, serving as church school superintendent for his home congregation, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Kensington, Md.
"I had always been active at St. Paul’s, even throughout my time at the White House," McCurry says. "Shortly after I left the White House, Chet Kirk, who was then the senior pastor, came to me and said, ‘We’d like you to take a job that we’ve not been able to fill here at St. Paul’s for a long time.’"
McCurry had led a very public professional life for years, facing lights, cameras and reporters on a daily basis and enduring the media vortex of the Monica Lewinsky-President Clinton scandal. Today, life is different.
"A lot of my career was devoted to public service," he says, "but I’ve become more convinced that in the small, quiet places of the faith community, you can have a bigger impact" on people’s lives.
"I feel more satisfaction and sense that I am impacting more lives running a Sunday school program in Kensington, Md., than I felt was accomplished as president of the United States’ press secretary," he says.
He will experience politics of another sort when the 2004 General Conference meets in Pittsburgh. He is one of nine lay people elected to represent the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference at the church’s top lawmaking assembly.
"For me, it’s going to be fascinating to learn a lot," says McCurry, who will be a first-time delegate. "I know there are a lot of issues that are very important and that we’ll have to wrestle with, but I’m going to try and keep my eye on the ball, which is a broader set of issues, I think."
As a lifelong United Methodist, McCurry is aware of issues facing the assembly.
"Look," he says, "we can get all caught up in issues related to Bishop (Joseph) Sprague (Chicago Area) or to homosexual ordination or the things that have traditionally captivated General Conference, or we can get on with this very serious business of how we go out there and reach new people with the Gospel."
McCurry also has words of wisdom as a veteran of the political process.
"It goes without saying that I’ve been in places where I see how political conflict can gum up the system, and I know how desperately important it is to break through those political conflicts and try and reach consensus. I think we need to be a sort-of consensus-driven church and magnanimous in our openness to each other, so that we can get on with the business of making disciples, because that’s what we need to be concentrated on, I think."
For McCurry, politics and faith can mix well. On his journey of faith, he has recognized that "a high-spirited group of people who are driven by faith in God can do an awful lot of good work that many would consider political, even though it’s not partisan political."
Now a consultant for corporations and nonprofits that vary from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Anheuser-Busch, McCurry works on improving communication with what he calls a "skeptical public in the age of nonstop information."
McCurry has served on the board of governors at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington since 2000, and is involved in a startup Internet company, Grassroots Enterprises Inc.
"They (Wesley Seminary) are trying to develop some capacity for distance learning and for networking their partner churches through a thing called the Wesley Seminary Network," McCurry says. He has co-chaired that project with fellow United Methodist Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Colin Powell’s son, he says.
While at the White House, McCurry grew increasingly concerned about the amount of information bombarding Americans on a daily basis, and how people would – or would not – be able to sort out what matters most.
"In the 21st century, groups are going to have to think more clearly about how to communicate effectively and, in the church, they’re going to have to think about how to evangelize in a virtual way," he says. The denomination’s mass-communications campaign, "Igniting Ministry," is good, he says, but "if you rely on … primarily television, you miss many opportunities to connect with people."
That’s especially true of young people, whose primary communications mode is "skipping back and forth between instant messaging and cell phones and e-mails," he says. "I think that’s where we have to locate the church’s outreach efforts – right there where people are encountering information."
McCurry says the United Methodist Church has been reluctant to communicate its message to the world. "We somehow or another have not expressed ourselves well when it comes to making disciples, and I really am excited about seeing in the church the idea that we, too, can be just as evangelical as more fundamentalist denominations."
For McCurry, faith and career are intertwined. "The expression of my faith is almost seamlessly interwoven with my professional experiences. It’s all kind of come together nicely for me."
*Alsgaard is managing editor of the UMConnection newspaper and co-director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. This story originally appeared in that paper.
