TENNESSEE CONFERENCE REVIEW June 27, 2008
Stories in the June 27 edition of THE REVIEW
1. Vasna Sakarapanee Presented with Denman Clergy Award,
Front: Bishop Richard J. Wills, Jr.; left to right Loyd Mabry, Conference Council on Connectional Ministries; Susan Padgett, Office of Ministerial Concerns; John H. Collett, Jr., Nashville District Superintendent; Ronald Lowery, Cumberland District Superintendent; James Allen, Conference Treasurer; Jay Archer, Cookeville District Superintendent; James R. Beaty, Pulaski District Superintendent; Cathie Leimenstoll, Murfreesboro District Superintendent; John Casey, Clarksville District Superintendent; Willie Burchfield, Columbia District Superintendent, Lenoir Culbertson, Chairperson of the Board of Ordained Ministry; Vin Walkup, Nashville Area Foundation; Roger Hobson, Assistant to the Bishop. Missing when the picture was made: Tim Moss, Tennessee Conference Lay Leader. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
Bill Barnes Receives the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award
Written by Pat Smith with assistance from Rev. Paul Slentz and Mike Hodge
This award was established by the 2001 Session of the Tennessee Annual Conference to recognize persons whose lives and ministries are focused on ministries of love and justice. Each year one layperson and one clergy person is selected. Sadly, we had no layperson recommended this year. This award remembers the persons who have answered the call of Christ to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked, visit the sick and to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth. J. Richard Allison, for whom the award is named, was a pastor in the TN Conference, and a missionary, and a social activist in Nashville. Dick Allison was described by one of his peers as “a man of God with a mission of doing what he did best--building bridges between the needs of the community and the resources of the church.”
Bill, wife Brenda, and daughter Elizabeth Holden after presentation of the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award.
This year, we celebrate the choice of Rev. Bill Barnes as the clergy recipient of this award. The ministry of Bill Barnes has personified love and justice ministry from the 1960s to the present day. In fact, Bill has just recently written a book entitled To Love a City: A Congregation’s Long Love Affair with Nashville’s Inner City. The book describes Edgehill UMC, founded by Bill and 15 others in 1966. However, it most clearly describes Bill’s own years of love and justice work and his own “love affair” with God as seen in “the poor, the marginalized, widows and orphans, slaves, the hungry, the sick, children, strangers, aliens, the excluded” (To Love a City, p X).
Bill served as pastor at Edgehill UMC from 1966-1996—thirty years of service in cultivation of a church community that has linked spiritual growth and concrete ministries of love and justice. During these years, over 20 church members have gone forth into ordained ministry in addition to many lay people engaging in related ministries. In the midst of forming this unique congregation, Bill also provided leadership in the broader Civil Rights Movement and in minimizing the destructive impact to neighborhoods from the Urban Renewal programs of the 1960s. This included providing low-income housing in the Edgehill neighborhood that allowed a path to homeownership for the public housing residents.
Just as John Wesley advocated for prison reform, abolition of slavery, education of children and issues of poverty; Bill Barnes has spoken out on prison concerns, quality integrated education, racial reconciliation, affordable housing, poverty and hunger, and stood along side the marginalized in the decisions affecting them. Throughout the years, Bill has also been a strong advocate for world peace. He has been a key player in the birth of many ministries of love and justice. He has served on many boards of non-profit and government agencies, including Metro Social Services, Organization for Affordable Rental to name just two. Even in his retirement in 1996 he continues to be in active ministries that have filled his remarkable life. As Bill says: “I continue to love my city…I am renewed by the example of Jonah and Nineveh, and God’s insistence that Jonah be the wayward city’s reluctant instrument of Healing. I am held to the task by Jesus’ love of Jerusalem, his tears over its idolatries, and his hope for the fulfillment of its God given vocation of shalom. And I remember the Bible’s beginnings in a garden, but picturing the fulfillment of creation in a holy city.” (To Love a City, p 222)
Highest Increase in Church’s Advance Giving participation
Bishop Richard Wills receives a plaque from Board of Global Ministries staff person Rachael Barnett. The plaque honors the Tennessee Conference’s increased participation in Advance giving. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
The TN Annual Conference was honored for the highest increase in church participation in Advance giving in the southeast jurisdiction for 2007. The number of churches that gave to a project or missionary increased by 14 percent in this Conference last year. An award plaque for the increase in participation was presented to Bishop Richard Wills by Rachael E. Barnett, a mission specialist with the General Board of Global Ministries.
This year we celebrate 60 years of United Methodists giving through The Advance. In 1948, Methodists launched an initiative to advance God’s love visibly and concretely. Much of the world was still in the process of recovering from the devastation of World War II. People's lives and livelihoods had been devastated and their communities destroyed. There was a critical need for the church to step up and step out in faith. Those initial steps have turned into a journey of generosity and grace. This journey has allowed generations of United Methodists to give more than 1 billion dollars over the last six decades through The Advance.
When you give through The Advance, 100% of each gift goes to the ministry that you choose. There are very few organizations that can boast that 100 percent of each dollar received is sent to the designated project.
Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Shoots Hoops for Nothing But Nets
By Melisa Derseweh*
“TWO HUNDRED,” we shouted in unison at the two hundredth basketball shot made. Youth and children had designated “shooting zones” using four basketballs, taking turns shooting, for fifteen minutes in a fundraiser for Nothing But Nets.
Nothing But Nets is a campaign to eliminate deaths from malaria by providing protective mosquito netting to persons in Africa. Each net costs $10, including the cost of moving the net to where it is needed. Every thirty seconds someone a child dies in Africa from malaria. One of the nets will cover four person and last for several years with a treatment to kill mosquitoes, which reduces the risk of infection for persons outside the net as well.
Our group shot baskets for only fifteen minutes Wednesday evening, May 28, after a cookout together. In those minutes we raised almost three hundred dollars and raised awareness of a need in the world that we can address. Some people gave a flat dollar offering at the event; others pledged a certain amount per basket made.
Now, Charlotte-Fagan does have some really good basketball players obviously, but what about your church? Is there a game with a net that you can utilize for fun and fundraising as we work together to eliminate unnecessary illness and death for some more of God’s children?
Have fun with your own event, then forward proceeds to the Conference Treasurer marked for Nothing But Nets, an Advance Special of The United Methodist Church.
*The Rev. Melisa Derseweh is pastor of Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Church, Clarksville District.
Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant Set Between Conferencia Anual Oriental and The Tennessee Annual Conference
Murfreesboro District Superintendent Cathie Leimenstoll explains the Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant being established for the Tennessee Annual Conference and an Annual Conference in Mexico. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
A Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant is being established between the Conferencia Anual Oriental of the Methodist Church of Mexico and the Tennessee Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, United States of America.
In 1998 the first team from the Murfreesboro District came to Rio Bravo to work with Pastor Efrain Escorza. In 2000, the first evangelism-construction teams from the Tennessee Conference began coming to Matamoros.
In 2004, a program called “Bless the Children” began in order to provide uniforms and school supplies for children in Matamoros. In 2006, the Conferencia Anual Oriental (of the Methodist Church of Mexico) sent the first Hispanic Missionary to the Tennessee Conference. We, the Tennessee Annual Conference, celebrate that, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, we have been given the opportunity to grow in love and friendships as brothers and sisters in Christ.
The following goals have been set for the Cooperation Covenant between the Conferencia Anual Oriental, one of six Mexican Annual Conferences, and the Tennessee Annual Conference.
1. Collaboration on the support and development of Hispanic Ministries on both sides of the border.
2. Support for short-term missionaries in ministry that could include: pastoral exchanges, student exchange programs, exchange of potential missionaries for short and long-term mission.
3. The two conferences will work together to develop joint mission projects.
4. Where possible there will be a linking of mission teams from the sending conference with a partner team from the receiving conference.
5. The exchange of fraternal delegates from Conferencia Anual Oriental and the Tennessee Conference to their respective annual conferences.
6. Developing an understanding and sensitivity of the culture being visited and to do so in the context of Christian experience.
This Covenant was approved by the 2008 session of the Tennessee Annual Conference and will be in effect as soon as both conferences approve it. The duration of the covenant is not determined. However, the two Covenant Committees will review the Covenant document annually, and it will remain in effect as long as mutually agreed upon by the two Annual Conferences.
Three Siblings attend 2008 Annual Conference – from Different Churches
Three siblings attended the 2008 Annual Conference representing three different Conference Churches. From left to right: Barry Elliott, Standing Rock Circuit; Carolyn Elliott Gannaway, Southside Circuit; and Garry Elliott, McEwen First UMC
Emily Booker elected as a director of the Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries
By Yvette Moore
Emily Booker
Emily Booker, a member of Gordon Memorial United Methodist Church, is one of fifty United Methodist Women who will begin their four-year terms as directors of the Women’s Division of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries with an orientation and organizational meeting at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 4-7.
United Methodist Women members elected 45 of the new directors at meetings convened in the denomination’s five jurisdictional regions this spring. Five of those women also serve as United Methodist Women jurisdictional presidents. This includes Emily Booker who is jurisdiction president for the Southeastern Jurisdiction. Women’s Division officers and Committee on Nominations elected five women as well.
In May a special nominations committee comprised of six current Women’s Division directors, five newly elected directors and two Women’s Division staff resource persons without vote presented a slate for new corporate officers for the division and chairs for its committees on national and international ministries with women children and youth. The newly elected directors will vote on the slate during the September organizational meeting in Nashville.
Sherry Cothran Woolsey Awarded Georgia Harkness Scholarship
Sherry Cothran Woolsey was one of eleven women awarded a 2008-09 Georgia Harkness Scholarship by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. The seminary scholarships are awarded to women over 35 who are preparing for ordination as United Methodist elders as a second career.
Sherry Cothran Woolsey wins prestigious seminary scholarship.
Woolsey, whose scholarship will be used at the Vanderbilt Divinity School, is Director of Community Ministries, West Nashville United Methodist Church. She along with the ten other scholarship winners will visit Honduras in December as part of a continued program of global women’s leadership development begun in 2007. She was one of 23 persons approved by the 2008 Tennessee Annual Conference as a First Time Local Pastor. She is the wife of United Methodist pastor Patrick Woolsey.
The Georgia Harkness Scholarship program is named after the first woman theologian to teach in a Protestant seminary in the United States. Harkness dedicated her life to dismantling racial and sexual discrimination in The United Methodist Church and the World.
Eight Persons Ordained & Twelve Commissioned at 2008 Annual Conference
The eight persons ordained at the 2008 Annual Conference (left to right, first row) Lee Stevenson, Miriam Seyler, Laura Kirkpatrick (Deacon), Andrew Stowell; (second row, left to right) Stephen Handy, Donna Parramore, John Purdue, and Jacob Armstrong. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
Commissioned Ministers and Probationary Members for Service (left to right, first row) Randy Goodman, Libby Baxter, Vona Wilson, Gwen Brown-Felder, Rob Dunbar; (second row, left to right) Cynthia Talley, Marilyn Thornton, John Hester, De Hennessey, Holley Pots. Missing when the photo was made were John McFatridge Feldhacker and Erin Racine. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
1. Vasna Sakarapanee Presented with Denman Clergy Award,
2. Dick Estes, Lay Winner, Denman Evangelism Award
3. The Harry Denman Evangelism Award, explanatory article
4. Bettye Lewis named Associate Director of Connectional Ministries
5. Photo of the Extended Cabinet of the Tennessee Conference 2008-2009
6. Bill Barnes Receives the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award
7. Highest Increase in Church’s Advance Giving participation.
8. Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Shoots Hoops for Nothing But Nets, article by the Rev. Melisa Derseweh.
9. Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant Set Between Conferencia Anual Oriental and The Tennessee Annual Conference.
10. Three Siblings attend 2008 Annual Conference – from Different Churches.
11. Emily Booker elected as a director of the Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries.
12. Sherry Cothran Woolsey wins Georgia Harkness Scholarship.
13. Eight Persons Ordained & Twelve Commissioned at 2008 Annual Conference—see their photos.
14. John Carney delivers first Annual Conference Sermon by a Layspeaker.
15. Photo of Six Women Honored for a total of nearly Four centuries of service to the United Methodist Women
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Vasna Sakarapanee Presented with Denman Clergy Award
From material supplied by Linda H. Fields, a Volunteer with Golden Triangle Ministry
Rev. Vasna (Sandy) Sakarapanee was born into a strong Christian family in Thailand. She was active in church work from her childhood. In high school she was elected president of the Student Christian Movement of Thailand. She received a scholarship to McGilvary Bible College in Chingmai, but refused the award. “I escaped from God and His design when I went to study accounting at Bangkok University,” Sakarapanee says, “just to stay close to my boyfriend (now my husband of 39 years). After graduating from college we found jobs and married two years later.”
Vasna (Sandy) Sakarapanee addresses the 2008 Annual Conference. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
“One day in 1989, the Lord called me back to be his servant. I felt the need to go back to church,” notes Sandy Sakarapanee. For the next ten years she helped Laotians adjust to American life, find jobs, and learn about the Christian faith During this time, her engineer husband, who was Buddhist, accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. She had prayed every day for 31 years for this.
In February 2004, Pastor Sandy began her Golden Triangle* ministry at Belmont United Methodist Church with five Laotians, two of whom were children. In the months that followed she became immersed in the lives of Burmese refugees who began pouring into the United States. These persons had fled for their lives into the jungles and refugee camps when their homes and villages were being burned by agents of the oppressive military regime. She has worked diligently to train church leaders to assist in children’s Sunday school classes and to serve as shepherds in each of the five apartment complexes in which they live. Triangle U.M.W. circle was organized last year and has grown from 13 to 43 this year. A Methodist Men’s group with 40 enrolled was organized recently. A youth group has just had its first meeting. All this led by Golden Triangle members.
Golden Triangle volunteer Linda Fields, who nominated Sandy Sakarapanee for the Denman award, says: “I have been active in the church both as a lay volunteer and as a professional, in this country and abroad, for many years. Never have I had the privilege of working with a more holistic ministry as that of the Golden Triangle Ministry of Belmont United Methodist Church and Pastor Sandy Sakarapanee. Belmont has long been a church in mission locally, nationally and globally, but this time mission has come to us through these persons of such strong faith who are beginning life anew in what for them is a strange land. May God bless them and us as we seek ways to be in ministry together.”
Editor’s note: Sandy is married to Nick Sakarapanee and the couple has three sons—Steve, Tony and Kenneth.
*The name for “The Golden Triangle” ministry was taken from a designation for a geographic area of Southeast Asia embracing Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Dick Estes, Lay Winner, Denman Evangelism Award
From material supplied by the Rev. Dr. J. Perry Parker
Dick Estes, lay winner of the Denman Evangelism award, is a life long Methodist and has been a model member of Cook’s United Methodist Church since becoming a member in 1978. He grew up in Atlanta, and worked in the insurance business most of his adult life. His leadership and servanthood is evident both formally and informally.
Dick Estes responds to the winning of the Denman Award. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
He has arranged to be notified by utilities personnel of new residents moving into the neighborhoods surrounding Cook’s UMC. He then visits them with information about the church, inviting them to visit. As chairperson of the Evangelism Committee, Dick watches for new faces in the congregation each Sunday, and for visitors on the registration slips. On Sunday afternoons, he either calls, or arranges for another church member to pay a call on each visitor – with a gift of home baked cookies or a pie.
While Dick Estes is not the oldest member of the church, nor the longest standing member, he is the person to whom most of the members turn for advice concerning matters of the church. In all areas concerning the church he is a wise and thoughtful judge whose word has been found to be trustworthy.
Cook’s UMC pastor Dr. Craig Goff says of Dick Estes, “As the chair of the Evangelism committee Dick coordinates visits to first time visitors and often personally visits those who are first time guests of the church himself. He also arranges for material containing information about the congregation’s ministry and programs to be distributed in new housing developments in the area. He personally purchases advertising space at the local community baseball field and works with Welcome Wagon in sending new residents invitations to visit Cook’s for worship.”
“Dick develops disciples through personal interaction with people of all ages: co-teaching an adult Sunday School class; and through his example of serving. He is known as the ‘egg man’ for his dedication to cooking eggs and pitching in at United Methodist Men’s breakfasts. He is also known for distributing clothes and shoes to a nearby Men’s shelter, and often arrives to visit people in the hospital before the staff, and occasionally even before the ambulance!”
“Dick embodies the balance between acts of justice and acts of compassion, participating in corporate worship and a commitment to personal piety that represents the best of the United Methodist tradition.”
What is The Harry Denman Evangelism Award?
The award is named for the late Dr. Harry Denman, distinguished lay evangelist, whom Dr. Billy Graham called “my mentor in evangelism.” The awards are made possible by The Foundation for Evangelism, which was founded in 1949 by Dr. Denman, who felt it was the business of every Christian to be an evangelist. It is most fitting that annual conferences today honor persons who carry on the spirit of Harry Denman.
The Harry Denman Evangelism Awards honor a United Methodist lay and clergy person in each annual conference who has exhibited unusual and outstanding efforts in Christian evangelism by faithfully carrying out the mission of “making disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Bettye Lewis named Associate Director of Connectional Ministries
The Rev. Bettye Lewis
The Rev. Bettye Pearson Lewis has been appointed to the position of Associate Director of the Tennessee Conference Council on Connectional Ministries.
Rev. Lewis comes to this post after serving for eight years as the District Superintendent of the Pulaski District. She was the first African American woman to be appointed District Superintendent in the Tennessee Conference, and her office was located in Pulaski, the birthplace of the Klu Klux Klan.
She received her M. Div. degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Theology, pastored churches in Nashville and Lawrenceburg and worked as a chaplain at Meharry-Hubbard Hospital. Prior to becoming D.S. she served as Director of the Wesley Foundation at Austin-Peay State University.
As a pastor, Wesley Foundation Director, and D.S. she has been active on a number of conference committees. Besides serving on the Board of Directors of the Office of Pastoral Formation, she is active in the Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the Board of Ordained Ministry, the Task Force for the Poor and Marginalized, and the Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry.
Lewis also brings to her new post a gift of music. She is an accomplished pianist, organist and vocalist. She has two grown daughters Tamara Elisabeth Lewis and Kristine Allison Lewis. One of the daughters has said of her mother: “My mother is the one who encouraged me to speak my first words and helped me take my first steps. She sang African American Spirituals to me in one breath and Handel’s Messiah to me in the next. She taught me how to read, answered my unfathomable first-grade question of why did Jesus need to pray is He was God, and explained the history of slavery and racism to me when they didn’t teach it adequately in school. She introduced me to the world.”
Loyd Mabry, Director of the Conference Council on Connectional Ministries, served with Bettye Lewis on the cabinet before assuming his CCOCM position. He says, “We welcome Bettye Lewis to the CCOCM staff as the Associate Director. Bettye brings a wealth of experience with her. Bettye’s appointments include small membership churches, ministry on staff of a local church, campus ministry, and Pulaski District Superintendent. One of Bettye’s passions is strengthening the local church, particularly the African-American church. During her appointment as DS of the Pulaski District, she worked to empower and challenge both clergy and laity. Her commitment to the local church, her experience, and her work ethic will help strengthen and expand ministry of the Tennessee Conference.”
Extended Cabinet of the Tennessee Conference 2008-2009
5. Photo of the Extended Cabinet of the Tennessee Conference 2008-2009
6. Bill Barnes Receives the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award
7. Highest Increase in Church’s Advance Giving participation.
8. Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Shoots Hoops for Nothing But Nets, article by the Rev. Melisa Derseweh.
9. Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant Set Between Conferencia Anual Oriental and The Tennessee Annual Conference.
10. Three Siblings attend 2008 Annual Conference – from Different Churches.
11. Emily Booker elected as a director of the Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries.
12. Sherry Cothran Woolsey wins Georgia Harkness Scholarship.
13. Eight Persons Ordained & Twelve Commissioned at 2008 Annual Conference—see their photos.
14. John Carney delivers first Annual Conference Sermon by a Layspeaker.
15. Photo of Six Women Honored for a total of nearly Four centuries of service to the United Methodist Women
______________________________
Vasna Sakarapanee Presented with Denman Clergy Award
From material supplied by Linda H. Fields, a Volunteer with Golden Triangle Ministry
Rev. Vasna (Sandy) Sakarapanee was born into a strong Christian family in Thailand. She was active in church work from her childhood. In high school she was elected president of the Student Christian Movement of Thailand. She received a scholarship to McGilvary Bible College in Chingmai, but refused the award. “I escaped from God and His design when I went to study accounting at Bangkok University,” Sakarapanee says, “just to stay close to my boyfriend (now my husband of 39 years). After graduating from college we found jobs and married two years later.”
Vasna (Sandy) Sakarapanee addresses the 2008 Annual Conference. A Horace Wilkinson photo.“One day in 1989, the Lord called me back to be his servant. I felt the need to go back to church,” notes Sandy Sakarapanee. For the next ten years she helped Laotians adjust to American life, find jobs, and learn about the Christian faith During this time, her engineer husband, who was Buddhist, accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. She had prayed every day for 31 years for this.
In February 2004, Pastor Sandy began her Golden Triangle* ministry at Belmont United Methodist Church with five Laotians, two of whom were children. In the months that followed she became immersed in the lives of Burmese refugees who began pouring into the United States. These persons had fled for their lives into the jungles and refugee camps when their homes and villages were being burned by agents of the oppressive military regime. She has worked diligently to train church leaders to assist in children’s Sunday school classes and to serve as shepherds in each of the five apartment complexes in which they live. Triangle U.M.W. circle was organized last year and has grown from 13 to 43 this year. A Methodist Men’s group with 40 enrolled was organized recently. A youth group has just had its first meeting. All this led by Golden Triangle members.
Golden Triangle volunteer Linda Fields, who nominated Sandy Sakarapanee for the Denman award, says: “I have been active in the church both as a lay volunteer and as a professional, in this country and abroad, for many years. Never have I had the privilege of working with a more holistic ministry as that of the Golden Triangle Ministry of Belmont United Methodist Church and Pastor Sandy Sakarapanee. Belmont has long been a church in mission locally, nationally and globally, but this time mission has come to us through these persons of such strong faith who are beginning life anew in what for them is a strange land. May God bless them and us as we seek ways to be in ministry together.”
Editor’s note: Sandy is married to Nick Sakarapanee and the couple has three sons—Steve, Tony and Kenneth.
*The name for “The Golden Triangle” ministry was taken from a designation for a geographic area of Southeast Asia embracing Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Dick Estes, Lay Winner, Denman Evangelism Award
From material supplied by the Rev. Dr. J. Perry Parker
Dick Estes, lay winner of the Denman Evangelism award, is a life long Methodist and has been a model member of Cook’s United Methodist Church since becoming a member in 1978. He grew up in Atlanta, and worked in the insurance business most of his adult life. His leadership and servanthood is evident both formally and informally.
Dick Estes responds to the winning of the Denman Award. A Horace Wilkinson photo.He has arranged to be notified by utilities personnel of new residents moving into the neighborhoods surrounding Cook’s UMC. He then visits them with information about the church, inviting them to visit. As chairperson of the Evangelism Committee, Dick watches for new faces in the congregation each Sunday, and for visitors on the registration slips. On Sunday afternoons, he either calls, or arranges for another church member to pay a call on each visitor – with a gift of home baked cookies or a pie.
While Dick Estes is not the oldest member of the church, nor the longest standing member, he is the person to whom most of the members turn for advice concerning matters of the church. In all areas concerning the church he is a wise and thoughtful judge whose word has been found to be trustworthy.
Cook’s UMC pastor Dr. Craig Goff says of Dick Estes, “As the chair of the Evangelism committee Dick coordinates visits to first time visitors and often personally visits those who are first time guests of the church himself. He also arranges for material containing information about the congregation’s ministry and programs to be distributed in new housing developments in the area. He personally purchases advertising space at the local community baseball field and works with Welcome Wagon in sending new residents invitations to visit Cook’s for worship.”
“Dick develops disciples through personal interaction with people of all ages: co-teaching an adult Sunday School class; and through his example of serving. He is known as the ‘egg man’ for his dedication to cooking eggs and pitching in at United Methodist Men’s breakfasts. He is also known for distributing clothes and shoes to a nearby Men’s shelter, and often arrives to visit people in the hospital before the staff, and occasionally even before the ambulance!”
“Dick embodies the balance between acts of justice and acts of compassion, participating in corporate worship and a commitment to personal piety that represents the best of the United Methodist tradition.”
What is The Harry Denman Evangelism Award?
The award is named for the late Dr. Harry Denman, distinguished lay evangelist, whom Dr. Billy Graham called “my mentor in evangelism.” The awards are made possible by The Foundation for Evangelism, which was founded in 1949 by Dr. Denman, who felt it was the business of every Christian to be an evangelist. It is most fitting that annual conferences today honor persons who carry on the spirit of Harry Denman.
The Harry Denman Evangelism Awards honor a United Methodist lay and clergy person in each annual conference who has exhibited unusual and outstanding efforts in Christian evangelism by faithfully carrying out the mission of “making disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Bettye Lewis named Associate Director of Connectional Ministries
The Rev. Bettye LewisThe Rev. Bettye Pearson Lewis has been appointed to the position of Associate Director of the Tennessee Conference Council on Connectional Ministries.
Rev. Lewis comes to this post after serving for eight years as the District Superintendent of the Pulaski District. She was the first African American woman to be appointed District Superintendent in the Tennessee Conference, and her office was located in Pulaski, the birthplace of the Klu Klux Klan.
She received her M. Div. degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Theology, pastored churches in Nashville and Lawrenceburg and worked as a chaplain at Meharry-Hubbard Hospital. Prior to becoming D.S. she served as Director of the Wesley Foundation at Austin-Peay State University.
As a pastor, Wesley Foundation Director, and D.S. she has been active on a number of conference committees. Besides serving on the Board of Directors of the Office of Pastoral Formation, she is active in the Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the Board of Ordained Ministry, the Task Force for the Poor and Marginalized, and the Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry.
Lewis also brings to her new post a gift of music. She is an accomplished pianist, organist and vocalist. She has two grown daughters Tamara Elisabeth Lewis and Kristine Allison Lewis. One of the daughters has said of her mother: “My mother is the one who encouraged me to speak my first words and helped me take my first steps. She sang African American Spirituals to me in one breath and Handel’s Messiah to me in the next. She taught me how to read, answered my unfathomable first-grade question of why did Jesus need to pray is He was God, and explained the history of slavery and racism to me when they didn’t teach it adequately in school. She introduced me to the world.”
Loyd Mabry, Director of the Conference Council on Connectional Ministries, served with Bettye Lewis on the cabinet before assuming his CCOCM position. He says, “We welcome Bettye Lewis to the CCOCM staff as the Associate Director. Bettye brings a wealth of experience with her. Bettye’s appointments include small membership churches, ministry on staff of a local church, campus ministry, and Pulaski District Superintendent. One of Bettye’s passions is strengthening the local church, particularly the African-American church. During her appointment as DS of the Pulaski District, she worked to empower and challenge both clergy and laity. Her commitment to the local church, her experience, and her work ethic will help strengthen and expand ministry of the Tennessee Conference.”
Extended Cabinet of the Tennessee Conference 2008-2009
Front: Bishop Richard J. Wills, Jr.; left to right Loyd Mabry, Conference Council on Connectional Ministries; Susan Padgett, Office of Ministerial Concerns; John H. Collett, Jr., Nashville District Superintendent; Ronald Lowery, Cumberland District Superintendent; James Allen, Conference Treasurer; Jay Archer, Cookeville District Superintendent; James R. Beaty, Pulaski District Superintendent; Cathie Leimenstoll, Murfreesboro District Superintendent; John Casey, Clarksville District Superintendent; Willie Burchfield, Columbia District Superintendent, Lenoir Culbertson, Chairperson of the Board of Ordained Ministry; Vin Walkup, Nashville Area Foundation; Roger Hobson, Assistant to the Bishop. Missing when the picture was made: Tim Moss, Tennessee Conference Lay Leader. A Horace Wilkinson photo.Bill Barnes Receives the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award
Written by Pat Smith with assistance from Rev. Paul Slentz and Mike Hodge
This award was established by the 2001 Session of the Tennessee Annual Conference to recognize persons whose lives and ministries are focused on ministries of love and justice. Each year one layperson and one clergy person is selected. Sadly, we had no layperson recommended this year. This award remembers the persons who have answered the call of Christ to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked, visit the sick and to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth. J. Richard Allison, for whom the award is named, was a pastor in the TN Conference, and a missionary, and a social activist in Nashville. Dick Allison was described by one of his peers as “a man of God with a mission of doing what he did best--building bridges between the needs of the community and the resources of the church.”
Bill, wife Brenda, and daughter Elizabeth Holden after presentation of the J. Richard Allison Social Holiness Award.This year, we celebrate the choice of Rev. Bill Barnes as the clergy recipient of this award. The ministry of Bill Barnes has personified love and justice ministry from the 1960s to the present day. In fact, Bill has just recently written a book entitled To Love a City: A Congregation’s Long Love Affair with Nashville’s Inner City. The book describes Edgehill UMC, founded by Bill and 15 others in 1966. However, it most clearly describes Bill’s own years of love and justice work and his own “love affair” with God as seen in “the poor, the marginalized, widows and orphans, slaves, the hungry, the sick, children, strangers, aliens, the excluded” (To Love a City, p X).
Bill served as pastor at Edgehill UMC from 1966-1996—thirty years of service in cultivation of a church community that has linked spiritual growth and concrete ministries of love and justice. During these years, over 20 church members have gone forth into ordained ministry in addition to many lay people engaging in related ministries. In the midst of forming this unique congregation, Bill also provided leadership in the broader Civil Rights Movement and in minimizing the destructive impact to neighborhoods from the Urban Renewal programs of the 1960s. This included providing low-income housing in the Edgehill neighborhood that allowed a path to homeownership for the public housing residents.
Just as John Wesley advocated for prison reform, abolition of slavery, education of children and issues of poverty; Bill Barnes has spoken out on prison concerns, quality integrated education, racial reconciliation, affordable housing, poverty and hunger, and stood along side the marginalized in the decisions affecting them. Throughout the years, Bill has also been a strong advocate for world peace. He has been a key player in the birth of many ministries of love and justice. He has served on many boards of non-profit and government agencies, including Metro Social Services, Organization for Affordable Rental to name just two. Even in his retirement in 1996 he continues to be in active ministries that have filled his remarkable life. As Bill says: “I continue to love my city…I am renewed by the example of Jonah and Nineveh, and God’s insistence that Jonah be the wayward city’s reluctant instrument of Healing. I am held to the task by Jesus’ love of Jerusalem, his tears over its idolatries, and his hope for the fulfillment of its God given vocation of shalom. And I remember the Bible’s beginnings in a garden, but picturing the fulfillment of creation in a holy city.” (To Love a City, p 222)
Highest Increase in Church’s Advance Giving participation
Bishop Richard Wills receives a plaque from Board of Global Ministries staff person Rachael Barnett. The plaque honors the Tennessee Conference’s increased participation in Advance giving. A Horace Wilkinson photo.The TN Annual Conference was honored for the highest increase in church participation in Advance giving in the southeast jurisdiction for 2007. The number of churches that gave to a project or missionary increased by 14 percent in this Conference last year. An award plaque for the increase in participation was presented to Bishop Richard Wills by Rachael E. Barnett, a mission specialist with the General Board of Global Ministries.
This year we celebrate 60 years of United Methodists giving through The Advance. In 1948, Methodists launched an initiative to advance God’s love visibly and concretely. Much of the world was still in the process of recovering from the devastation of World War II. People's lives and livelihoods had been devastated and their communities destroyed. There was a critical need for the church to step up and step out in faith. Those initial steps have turned into a journey of generosity and grace. This journey has allowed generations of United Methodists to give more than 1 billion dollars over the last six decades through The Advance.
When you give through The Advance, 100% of each gift goes to the ministry that you choose. There are very few organizations that can boast that 100 percent of each dollar received is sent to the designated project.
Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Shoots Hoops for Nothing But Nets
By Melisa Derseweh*
“TWO HUNDRED,” we shouted in unison at the two hundredth basketball shot made. Youth and children had designated “shooting zones” using four basketballs, taking turns shooting, for fifteen minutes in a fundraiser for Nothing But Nets.
Nothing But Nets is a campaign to eliminate deaths from malaria by providing protective mosquito netting to persons in Africa. Each net costs $10, including the cost of moving the net to where it is needed. Every thirty seconds someone a child dies in Africa from malaria. One of the nets will cover four person and last for several years with a treatment to kill mosquitoes, which reduces the risk of infection for persons outside the net as well.
Our group shot baskets for only fifteen minutes Wednesday evening, May 28, after a cookout together. In those minutes we raised almost three hundred dollars and raised awareness of a need in the world that we can address. Some people gave a flat dollar offering at the event; others pledged a certain amount per basket made.
Now, Charlotte-Fagan does have some really good basketball players obviously, but what about your church? Is there a game with a net that you can utilize for fun and fundraising as we work together to eliminate unnecessary illness and death for some more of God’s children?
Have fun with your own event, then forward proceeds to the Conference Treasurer marked for Nothing But Nets, an Advance Special of The United Methodist Church.
*The Rev. Melisa Derseweh is pastor of Charlotte-Fagan United Methodist Church, Clarksville District.
Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant Set Between Conferencia Anual Oriental and The Tennessee Annual Conference
Murfreesboro District Superintendent Cathie Leimenstoll explains the Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant being established for the Tennessee Annual Conference and an Annual Conference in Mexico. A Horace Wilkinson photo.A Fellowship and Cooperation Covenant is being established between the Conferencia Anual Oriental of the Methodist Church of Mexico and the Tennessee Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, United States of America.
In 1998 the first team from the Murfreesboro District came to Rio Bravo to work with Pastor Efrain Escorza. In 2000, the first evangelism-construction teams from the Tennessee Conference began coming to Matamoros.
In 2004, a program called “Bless the Children” began in order to provide uniforms and school supplies for children in Matamoros. In 2006, the Conferencia Anual Oriental (of the Methodist Church of Mexico) sent the first Hispanic Missionary to the Tennessee Conference. We, the Tennessee Annual Conference, celebrate that, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, we have been given the opportunity to grow in love and friendships as brothers and sisters in Christ.
The following goals have been set for the Cooperation Covenant between the Conferencia Anual Oriental, one of six Mexican Annual Conferences, and the Tennessee Annual Conference.
1. Collaboration on the support and development of Hispanic Ministries on both sides of the border.
2. Support for short-term missionaries in ministry that could include: pastoral exchanges, student exchange programs, exchange of potential missionaries for short and long-term mission.
3. The two conferences will work together to develop joint mission projects.
4. Where possible there will be a linking of mission teams from the sending conference with a partner team from the receiving conference.
5. The exchange of fraternal delegates from Conferencia Anual Oriental and the Tennessee Conference to their respective annual conferences.
6. Developing an understanding and sensitivity of the culture being visited and to do so in the context of Christian experience.
This Covenant was approved by the 2008 session of the Tennessee Annual Conference and will be in effect as soon as both conferences approve it. The duration of the covenant is not determined. However, the two Covenant Committees will review the Covenant document annually, and it will remain in effect as long as mutually agreed upon by the two Annual Conferences.
Three Siblings attend 2008 Annual Conference – from Different Churches
Three siblings attended the 2008 Annual Conference representing three different Conference Churches. From left to right: Barry Elliott, Standing Rock Circuit; Carolyn Elliott Gannaway, Southside Circuit; and Garry Elliott, McEwen First UMC Emily Booker elected as a director of the Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries
By Yvette Moore
Emily Booker
Emily Booker, a member of Gordon Memorial United Methodist Church, is one of fifty United Methodist Women who will begin their four-year terms as directors of the Women’s Division of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries with an orientation and organizational meeting at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 4-7.
United Methodist Women members elected 45 of the new directors at meetings convened in the denomination’s five jurisdictional regions this spring. Five of those women also serve as United Methodist Women jurisdictional presidents. This includes Emily Booker who is jurisdiction president for the Southeastern Jurisdiction. Women’s Division officers and Committee on Nominations elected five women as well.
In May a special nominations committee comprised of six current Women’s Division directors, five newly elected directors and two Women’s Division staff resource persons without vote presented a slate for new corporate officers for the division and chairs for its committees on national and international ministries with women children and youth. The newly elected directors will vote on the slate during the September organizational meeting in Nashville.
Sherry Cothran Woolsey Awarded Georgia Harkness Scholarship
Sherry Cothran Woolsey was one of eleven women awarded a 2008-09 Georgia Harkness Scholarship by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. The seminary scholarships are awarded to women over 35 who are preparing for ordination as United Methodist elders as a second career.
Sherry Cothran Woolsey wins prestigious seminary scholarship.Woolsey, whose scholarship will be used at the Vanderbilt Divinity School, is Director of Community Ministries, West Nashville United Methodist Church. She along with the ten other scholarship winners will visit Honduras in December as part of a continued program of global women’s leadership development begun in 2007. She was one of 23 persons approved by the 2008 Tennessee Annual Conference as a First Time Local Pastor. She is the wife of United Methodist pastor Patrick Woolsey.
The Georgia Harkness Scholarship program is named after the first woman theologian to teach in a Protestant seminary in the United States. Harkness dedicated her life to dismantling racial and sexual discrimination in The United Methodist Church and the World.
Eight Persons Ordained & Twelve Commissioned at 2008 Annual Conference
The eight persons ordained at the 2008 Annual Conference (left to right, first row) Lee Stevenson, Miriam Seyler, Laura Kirkpatrick (Deacon), Andrew Stowell; (second row, left to right) Stephen Handy, Donna Parramore, John Purdue, and Jacob Armstrong. A Horace Wilkinson photo. Commissioned Ministers and Probationary Members for Service (left to right, first row) Randy Goodman, Libby Baxter, Vona Wilson, Gwen Brown-Felder, Rob Dunbar; (second row, left to right) Cynthia Talley, Marilyn Thornton, John Hester, De Hennessey, Holley Pots. Missing when the photo was made were John McFatridge Feldhacker and Erin Racine. A Horace Wilkinson photo.John Carney delivers first Annual Conference Sermon by a Layspeaker
John I. Carney, a Certified Layspeaker, and a member of Shelbyville First United Methodist Church, preached the final sermon at the 2008 Tennessee Annual Conference. As he stood before the assembly he became the first Layspeaker to preach at Annual Conference, and was selected for the honor after a long process that had Layspeakers submit sermons in writing or on a DVD. Through this process four persons were selected as finalists and asked to preach their sermons before a Task Force under the direction of the Conference Lay Speaking Coordinator, Gloria Watts.
In his sermon, entitled Beyond the Walls, John Carney explored the meaning of Jesus’ command from Matthew 28: “Go, make disciples of all nations.”
John Carney preaches at the 2008 Annual Conference. A Horace Wilkinson photo.
At times in history, Carney noted, “making disciples has meant trying to force people to dress like Westerners of sing a certain kind of music. At times, people acting in the name of Christianity have tried to force a discipleship of sorts on others—to ‘make disciples’ in the most literal, and least appropriate, sense of that term.”
Carney continued: “But today we’re often faced with just the opposite sense of the term—a situation where the ‘making’ part of ‘making disciples’ has been ignored, but so has the ‘discipleship.”
“We live in an age when people need to believe in something. The satirical Christian songwriter Terry Scott Taylor, who is part of a band called ‘The Swirling Eddies,’ once wrote a song called Outdoor Elvis, which cleverly combined elements of the Bigfoot legend with those rumors which used to crop up from time to time that Elives Presley was still alive. Outdoor Elvis, according to the song, lives in the woods. ‘You can pretty much tell that he’s lost weight by the depth of the footprints,’ says the song.
“For some people, the need to believe in something beyond reason—beyond our mundane existence—leads to Bigfoot, or aliens, or reincarnation, or some other phenomenon. But while people are hungry for meaning from the universe, many of them don’t want the universe to expect anything from them. If some aspect of religion gets in the way of possessions, or of popular culture, or of society’s changing mores and standards, it’s that religious belief which must be changed or discarded, rather than the other way around.”
“People are hungry to believe in something—but are they truly hungry to become disciples?,” Carney asked. “Discipleship—true discipleship—involves some loss of self, some inclination to focus on the will of Christ and subject our will to it. That’s not a popular concept in this age of individual, do-it-yourself religion.”
Speaking from his background as a newsman, Carney used the news business as an analogy for what the church could become.
“In the newspaper business, too many decisions come from the top down—from huge corporations that are as concerned with short-term profit as they are with the long-term mission of informing the public. In too many cases, newspapers have sacrificed their content and tried to appease the short-term concerns of stockholders by cutting staff, cutting costs, refusing to offend, in the belief that gimmicky new formats are the key to reaching out to a younger generation. That short-sighted approach may have hurt us in the newspaper business much more than we realized.”
“We, as United Methodists, cannot be drawn into that same false path. We cannot let our complacency blind us to the changes in our society. We have to go the extra mile and find creative ways to make ourselves accessible, and available, to people for whom religion is not a given, to people who may have serious misunderstandings about who we are and what we believe.”
“But we must make the right changes, for the right reasons,” Carney concluded. “We will not make disciples by changing the message of Christ. We will not make disciples by pretending to be contemporary. We will make disciples by recognizing that what we believe is eternal. We can express the Gospel in contemporary ways. But it is the content of our belief, not the form, which holds the key to making disciples in our society.”
Six Honored for a total of nearly Four centuries of service to the United Methodist Women
At a recent homecoming celebration at Cedar Grove United Methodist Church, Murfreesboro District, six women were recognized for their years of service to the United Methodist Women (UMW). From left at Dorothy Beasley, 62 years; Frances Beasley, 67 years; Jean Clay, 60 years; and Gladys Beasley, 60 years. Not present were Pauline Beasley, 69 years, and Bobbie Taylor, 60 years. UMW President Lila Beasley made the presentations. The accumulated total years of service for the six women is approaching four centuries.
John I. Carney, a Certified Layspeaker, and a member of Shelbyville First United Methodist Church, preached the final sermon at the 2008 Tennessee Annual Conference. As he stood before the assembly he became the first Layspeaker to preach at Annual Conference, and was selected for the honor after a long process that had Layspeakers submit sermons in writing or on a DVD. Through this process four persons were selected as finalists and asked to preach their sermons before a Task Force under the direction of the Conference Lay Speaking Coordinator, Gloria Watts.
In his sermon, entitled Beyond the Walls, John Carney explored the meaning of Jesus’ command from Matthew 28: “Go, make disciples of all nations.”
John Carney preaches at the 2008 Annual Conference. A Horace Wilkinson photo.At times in history, Carney noted, “making disciples has meant trying to force people to dress like Westerners of sing a certain kind of music. At times, people acting in the name of Christianity have tried to force a discipleship of sorts on others—to ‘make disciples’ in the most literal, and least appropriate, sense of that term.”
Carney continued: “But today we’re often faced with just the opposite sense of the term—a situation where the ‘making’ part of ‘making disciples’ has been ignored, but so has the ‘discipleship.”
“We live in an age when people need to believe in something. The satirical Christian songwriter Terry Scott Taylor, who is part of a band called ‘The Swirling Eddies,’ once wrote a song called Outdoor Elvis, which cleverly combined elements of the Bigfoot legend with those rumors which used to crop up from time to time that Elives Presley was still alive. Outdoor Elvis, according to the song, lives in the woods. ‘You can pretty much tell that he’s lost weight by the depth of the footprints,’ says the song.
“For some people, the need to believe in something beyond reason—beyond our mundane existence—leads to Bigfoot, or aliens, or reincarnation, or some other phenomenon. But while people are hungry for meaning from the universe, many of them don’t want the universe to expect anything from them. If some aspect of religion gets in the way of possessions, or of popular culture, or of society’s changing mores and standards, it’s that religious belief which must be changed or discarded, rather than the other way around.”
“People are hungry to believe in something—but are they truly hungry to become disciples?,” Carney asked. “Discipleship—true discipleship—involves some loss of self, some inclination to focus on the will of Christ and subject our will to it. That’s not a popular concept in this age of individual, do-it-yourself religion.”
Speaking from his background as a newsman, Carney used the news business as an analogy for what the church could become.
“In the newspaper business, too many decisions come from the top down—from huge corporations that are as concerned with short-term profit as they are with the long-term mission of informing the public. In too many cases, newspapers have sacrificed their content and tried to appease the short-term concerns of stockholders by cutting staff, cutting costs, refusing to offend, in the belief that gimmicky new formats are the key to reaching out to a younger generation. That short-sighted approach may have hurt us in the newspaper business much more than we realized.”
“We, as United Methodists, cannot be drawn into that same false path. We cannot let our complacency blind us to the changes in our society. We have to go the extra mile and find creative ways to make ourselves accessible, and available, to people for whom religion is not a given, to people who may have serious misunderstandings about who we are and what we believe.”
“But we must make the right changes, for the right reasons,” Carney concluded. “We will not make disciples by changing the message of Christ. We will not make disciples by pretending to be contemporary. We will make disciples by recognizing that what we believe is eternal. We can express the Gospel in contemporary ways. But it is the content of our belief, not the form, which holds the key to making disciples in our society.”
Six Honored for a total of nearly Four centuries of service to the United Methodist Women
At a recent homecoming celebration at Cedar Grove United Methodist Church, Murfreesboro District, six women were recognized for their years of service to the United Methodist Women (UMW). From left at Dorothy Beasley, 62 years; Frances Beasley, 67 years; Jean Clay, 60 years; and Gladys Beasley, 60 years. Not present were Pauline Beasley, 69 years, and Bobbie Taylor, 60 years. UMW President Lila Beasley made the presentations. The accumulated total years of service for the six women is approaching four centuries.
posted by TN Conference UMC @ 1:09 PM
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