This translation is not completely accurate as it was automatically generated by a computer.
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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
7:00 A.M. ET September 11, 2012
Mzuzu Shalom Zone cares for more than 100 orphaned and vulnerable
children in northern Malawi, hosted by the Mzuzu United Methodist
Church. Photos courtesy of Communities of Shalom.
View in Photo Gallery
The days of rioting that followed the April 29, 1992, verdict in a
trial against four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating a man
named Rodney King was not the kind of disaster to which the Rev. Joe
Hyun-Seung Yang normally responded.
But Yang, a United Methodist pastor and experienced American Red Cross volunteer, knew he had to do something. So, he organized a relief center for community residents
in the parking lot of Oriental Mission Church, in Koreatown. What
eventually became known as the Shalom Community Center still operates
today.
His denomination realized it had to respond as well. The Rev. Joseph Sprague
and a small group of church leaders at the 1992 United Methodist
General Conference, meeting in Louisville, Ky., created the Shalom
Initiative, adopted as a denomination-wide program of “shalom zones”
designed to address the justice issues and root causes of the anger and
destruction triggered by the verdict.
The concept has spread beyond the United States to countries like
Malawi, where the shalom zone has a successful poultry project and a
goal to assist households headed by children.
What grew into Communities of Shalom now provides an “assets-based approach to community services,” said the Rev. Michael Christensen,
director. “We don’t choose the issues, the needs or the context,” he
explained. “What is the same for all is this particular approach to
ministry.”
It remains an initiative of The United Methodist Church, but as a
strategy, not an institutionalized church program. “From the very
beginning, it’s always been intended as a neighborhood-focused
initiative,” he explained. “We mobilized congregations, but the focus
is on the community.”
October summit in L.A.
Duncan and Pulaski Heights United Methodist churches co-sponsor a shalom
ministry in Little Rock, Ark., including this rehabilitation community
development project in an economically depressed area of the city.
View in Photo Gallery
Communities of Shalom will return to its roots in Los Angeles for the Oct. 3-6 Shalom Summit 2012, a time of sharing, networking and training.
The summit marking the 20th anniversary is both local — highlighting
ongoing work in the Los Angeles area — and global, with international
shalom trainers participating from Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ghana,
Haiti and Northern Ireland. A grant from the United Methodist Committee
on Relief and the Board of Global Ministries is supporting the
international participation.
In 1992, the initial response in Los Angeles focused on immediate
needs: housing, food, clothing, even water. Then, over time, church
leaders began to think strategically about what it meant to create a
shalom zone in a specific community, focusing on needs and assets.
On a denominational level, the secondary goal was to spread this
effort across the connection, said Bishop John Schol, who was involved
from the start as a staff executive with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and now serves as chair of the National Shalom Committee.
Healing was needed for neighborhoods, like those in Los Angeles,
broken by poverty and neglect. “What we knew was that what happened in
Los Angeles was a symptom of what really was happening in communities
across the United States,” he explained.
Because Communities of Shalom is not a prescribed program but a
strategy for doing ministry that “builds on the community and what it’s
facing,” the concept has been adapted by communities in large and small
cities and rural and suburban areas, both inside and outside the
United States, Schol said.
All follow the core values of spiritual growth, multicultural harmony, economic prosperity and health, healing and wholeness.
A shalom zone, Christensen pointed out, is defined as a manageable
geographic area – not the world or even a city, but small areas of
demonstration “where we can embody shalom, even if it’s one square
block.”
They start with a faith presence within the zone. A local United
Methodist congregation might serve as host, inviting others to the
table, but the question of how to raise the quality of life for all who
live in the community is a multifaith question, he noted.
Training and expansion
More than 100 Christians and Muslims completed shalom training in 2011
in Jinja, Uganda, and now are working together to produce Shalom Coffee
from the Source of the Nile.
View in Photo Gallery
Training, a key component of the Communities of Shalom Initiative, provides the skills required to weave the six threads of shalom that offer strategies “that seem to capture people’s imaginations,” Christensen said.
The Rev. Dennis Singini of Malawi and Dr. Baamu Moses of Uganda were
among those participating in a June Shalom Training Certification
course in Ocean Grove, N.J.
The Malawi Shalom Zone in Mzuzu, northern Malawi, had a fitful start
two years ago, said Singini, who serves as the zone’s chairman. “Some
of the people thought we were trying to pull them from their
denominations to become United Methodists,” he explained.
But with representation from 10 different church traditions and a
successful poultry project that just resulted in the sale of 150 chicks,
that fear has evaporated. “When you see people catching the vision …
you see there is power, there is something to push us to accomplish
something greater than what we are accomplishing now,” said Singini, a
former program coordinator with Citihope International.
The Malawi Shalom Zone also is establishing a scholarship program
for children unable to afford school fees and tuition. “Our community
is full of child-headed families,” he noted, pointing to the need for
assistance. “This is a big problem, because what type of generation is
this going to be?”
Citing Martin Luther King Jr., Singini said that he, too, has a dream: to expand Communities of Shalom in Malawi.
In Uganda, Moses oversees three shalom zones that include
participation by Baptists, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians
and Lutherans as well as United Methodists.
The work started after Christensen offered training in Uganda in
early 2010. The training led to the realization that “we, the people,
within the community, need to identify our problems, need to identify
our weaknesses and strengths and move on,” Moses said.
One of the problems being addressed is HIV/AIDS. Other projects
include education for young girls and microenterprise work for widows,
such as making jewelry. Providing clean water, particularly in rural
areas, is a future goal.
Moses wants Communities of Shalom to “transform” the areas where it
operates. “This is a golden opportunity for The United Methodist
Church,” he said.
Observing the 20th
That continuing opportunity was recognized during the 2012 General
Conference in Tampa, Fla., which marked the 20th anniversary of the
denomination’s response to the King verdict.
Soon after, on June 17, Rodney King died in an accidental drowning
at the age of 47 and Communities of Shalom has mourned the death of a
man who, despite having to deal with his own problems, “called attention
to the need to work together,” Christensen said.
“Without Rodney King, Communities of Shalom would not exist,” he
said. “He showed that communities were frazzled and conflicted and in
need of wholeness and peace.”
Yang, part of the summit planning committee, has wholeheartedly
embraced that message and one of his guiding principles in shalom
ministry is “respect each other, for we are connected.”
In 1997, he formed the Korean-American Religious Council for Peace
with other religious leaders. “I believed and learned that conversation
and understanding other religions were the first steps to Shalom
between religions,” Yang writes in a book he hopes to have available at
the summit.
The council is sponsoring a summit workshop, “Multifaith Dialogue in
Koreatown: Buddist-Catholic-Protestant Shalom,” and Yang’s church has
provided $9,000 in scholarships for summit participants as a gesture of
thanks for undergirding the work of the Shalom Community Center. “We
have been supported by a lot of people, even some children broke into
their piggy banks and sent (money) to us,” Yang said.
Schol views the summit as an opportunity to offer thanksgiving to
God for the work already accomplished; celebrate church and community
leaders and consider “where God is leading us” in the future.
“It’s very important that we are in Los Angeles,” he said. “The people in Los Angeles were the pioneers.”
Part of the initiative’s future, the bishop added, will be shaped by
its connection to United Methodist-related Drew University in New
Jersey, the primary institution that now oversees Communities of Shalom.
The university’s development department can help them think about
how to cultivate donors, the faculty can assist with research and
students can take on internships in shalom communities. “Being
associated with Drew really strengthens the initiative,” Schol said.
United Methodists can support this continuing effort through financial gifts to the Communities of Shalom Advance No. 742566.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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