‘Focus ‘05’ opening celebrates children, workers, Sunday school
August 1, 2005
By Kathy Noble*
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
(UMNS)--Participants celebrated children and the Sunday school program
as they gathered on the opening night of Focus ’05, a biennial gathering
for workers with children sponsored by the United Methodist General
Board of Discipleship.
Seven hundred Christian
educators, Sunday school teachers, Vacation Bible School leaders,
nursery workers and others who staff and volunteer in children’s
ministries attended the July 26-29 event at Brentwood (Tenn.) United
Methodist Church.
The Rev. Karen
Greenwaldt, chief staff executive of the discipleship agency, opened the
event with a story of little boys in Uganda who leave their villages at
3 p.m. and run to safe houses, carrying a mat and whatever they have to
eat or drink, and, in the morning, run home to their villages. “They
run to escape being recruited as soldiers,” she said.
“Focus,” she continued,
“is about paying attention to children who run for their lives every
day, and it is about paying attention to children who are right among
us; it is about paying attention to the spiritual formation needs and
concerns of children here and around the world.”
She described the
participants – including children’s workers from Africa and Philippines –
as people who “love children, who teach children, who know what it is
to be taught by children … (who work toward a) sustainable future in
which God’s reign, God’s future is made real in the lives of all of
God’s children.”
Children were
liturgists, greeters and ushers as worship opened the festive evening.
It ended with a party celebrating the Sunday school. Louise Stohl,
Nashville, Tenn., who has taught children for 50 years, led the prayer
before the offering.
Retired Bishop Sharon
Zimmerman Rader, Chicago, drew on stories about how Missouri became
known as the “Show-Me State” as she emphasized, “Whether we are 65 or
6-and-a-half, we long for, we pray for touchable moments when we see
hope. Make it real, make it workable, show us, show us, we cry.”
“We need someone to
show us the way, to teach us the method, to give us an example,” she
said as she applied her sermon title, “We’re All from Missouri,” to her
text, Psalm 85:7, in which the Israelites ask God to show salvation.
U.S. Rep. Willard
Duncan Van Diver, a Missouri congressman from 1897 to 1903 to whom the
phrase is sometimes attributed, once told Congress, “Frothy elegance
neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to
show me.”
“Truth be told, frothy elegance never convinces or satisfies,” Bishop Rader said. “We’ve got to be shown.”
Using a statement from
the Council of Bishops’ document, “The Beloved Community,” the bishop
said, “Our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as
instruments of service for the rest of humanity. … ‘The Beloved
Community’ reaches the entire world, all of God’s children.”
During the party
celebrating Sunday school, Focus ’05 participants visited a “Wall of
Fame” featuring pictures and stories of Sunday school teachers. They
also hung bells on banners to honor teachers and other Christian
educators.
The reminiscing
continued around refreshment-laden tables where participants also
considered the theme, “Sunday School – It’s for Life,” a year-old
emphasis of the Board of Discipleship and the United Methodist
Publishing House to revitalize Sunday school.
Sunday school began for
Rita Smith from Resurrection United Methodist Church, Chicago, when she
was a teenager at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Harlem, N.Y.
“Sunday school was my beginning of my formal understanding that led into
adulthood and commitment.”
|