Coronavirus Response

  • Home
  • A-Z List
  • About
    • About the NCC
    • Connectional Table
    • Staff
  • Calendar
    • Events
    • Google Calendar
    • Past Events
  • Churches
  • Contact
    • Find Us
  • Districts
    • District Office
    • Beacon
    • Capital
    • Corridor
    • Fairway
    • Gateway
    • Harbor
    • Heritage
    • Sound
  • Employment
  • Search
  • Courses
  • Log In

NC Conference

Healthy Congregations and Effective Leaders in Every Place Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World

  • Discipleship
    Developing Disciples
    • Christian Formation
      • Children
      • Church & Society
      • College
      • Creation Care
      • Differently Abled Persons
      • Older Adults
      • Spiritual Formation
      • Status & Role of Women
      • Young Adults
      • Youth
    • Church Revitalization
      • Coaching
      • Disciple Making Way
      • Evangelism
      • Grants
      • MissionInsite
      • Shift
    • From the Bishop
      • Church Transformation
      • Conflict Transformation
    • Multicultural
      • Anti-Racism
      • Asian
      • Hispanic-Latinx
      • Native American
      • Strengthening the Black Church
    • Stewardship
      • Apportionments
      • District Remittances
      • Financial Discipleship
      • Grants
      • Insurance
      • Mission & Service
      • Pension
      • Treasurer Training
  • Leadership
    Strengthening Leaders
    • Bishop’s Office
      • Appointment Book
      • Church Transformation
      • Conflict Transformation
    • Office of Clergy Life
      • Board of Ordained Ministry
      • Called to Ministry?
      • Extension Ministries
    • Board of Laity
      • Certified Lay Minister
      • Lay Servant Ministries
      • Local Church Lay Leaders
      • United Methodist Men
      • United Methodist Women
      • United Methodist Youth
    • New Faith Comm.
      • New Room Society
      • Our Communities
    • Conference Offices
      • Center for Leadership Excellence
      • Christian Formation
      • Communications
      • Conference Secretary
      • Connectional Ministries
      • Information Technology
      • Multicultural Ministries
      • Outreach Ministry
      • Treasurer’s Office
  • Service
    Ministering To The World
    • Local Outreach
      • Afghan Refugees
      • Church Construction
      • Church Loans
      • Congregations for Children (C4C)
      • Creation Care
      • Cross & Key Prision Ministries
      • Health Ministry
      • Restorative Justice and Mercy
      • Seed Funds
      • Mission Projects
    • Global Outreach
      • Love for Liberia
      • Missionaries
      • NCC UMVIM
      • Project AGAPE
      • Sierra Leone: Mission of Hope
      • ZOE
    • Disaster Ministries
      • Donate to Storm Response
      • MERCI
      • Response Plan
      • Response Team
      • Training
      • UMCOR Kits
    • Giving
      • 2021 District Christmas Offering
      • Advance/Rainbow Covenant
      • Apportionments
      • Give to Storm Response
      • Mission & Service
      • The Gary Wayne Locklear Mission Endowment
      • New Room Society
      • Special Sundays
    • Ministry Partners
      • Boy Scouts of America (BSA)
      • Camps & Retreats
      • NC Institute for Spiritual Direction and Formation
      • Partners In Ministry
      • Robeson Co. Church & CC
      • UMF
  • Resources
    Supporting Ministry
    • Conferences
      • Annual Conference 2021
      • Annual Conference 2022
      • Charge Conference 2021
      • General Conference
      • Pilgrimage
      • SEJ Conference 2016
    • Media Center
      • Catalog
      • Labyrinth
      • Ministry Tools
      • Online Resources
      • Weekly Newsletter
    • Online Resources
      • Anti-Racism
      • Archives & History
      • #BeUMC
      • Church Lookup
      • Disaffiliation Information
      • Green Church Initiative
      • Online Data Collection
      • Online Learning
      • Pastor Lookup
      • Ramus: Web Hosting
      • Video (Vimeo)
    • Publications
      • Appointment Book
      • Bible Study
      • Conference Directory
      • Conference Journal
      • Every Day Grace
      • Lenten Reflections
      • Mission & Service
      • Podcasts (NCCUMC.FM)
    • From UMC.org
      • Agencies
      • Communications
      • Discipleship
      • Finance & Administration
      • Global Ministries
      • Graphics Library
      • Relief
      • Status & Role of Women
  • Christian Formation
  • Church & Society
    • Peace with Justice Grant
  • Evangelism & Discipleship
    • Evangelism
      • Denman Award Nominations
      • Denman Award Recipients
    • Children’s Ministry
    • Youth Ministry
    • Young Adult Ministries
    • Older Adult Ministries
  • Financial Discipleship
  • Safe Sanctuaries
  • Grants & Awards
    • Denman Award Nominations
    • Peace with Justice Grant

Church & Society

The North Carolina Conference Board of Church and Society seeks to relate the gospel of Jesus Christ to the members of our churches and to the persons and structures of the communities and world in which they live. We seek to equip churches, their pastors, and their membership to bring the whole of human life, activities, possessions, use of resources, and community and world relationships into conformity with the will of God.

The work of the Board covers a variety of responsibilities, including providing social education,  service, witness, and action on issues confronting the Church consistent with the Social Principles and the policies adopted by the General Conference. The Board also promotes the Peace with Justice program and offers grants to local congregations for program development.

…for the transformation of the world!!!

Learn More about the Peace with Justice Grant Opportunity

This begs the question, why? The mission of The United Methodist Church is to “Create Disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the World.” The entire biblical narrative and the message of the gospels is focused on deploying the messages from God about peace, love, mercy, compassion, righteous living, and justice. It calls for the creation of a society that reflects these values and practices and Jesus described the features and characteristics of this new “Kingdom of God” here on earth. It starts with personal transformation and draws each Christian to a new relationship with others. These themes call for humanity to love each other and reject the evil intents of humankind to exploit, discriminate, and oppress others.

So what does that mean for Christians and the institution, the United Methodist Church, to embrace the message of this biblical narrative? It means we have to learn how to transform the institution of the church AND transform the world through the church and its members.

Advocacy Alley

(Click on each arrow in the numbered statements to open more information and valuable links.)

1. Create a new understanding of the relationship between your church and your neighborhood

Review this approach to building a new strategy for mission that empowers your congregation to have this new relationship with its neighborhood. It requires a new paradigm of thinking about the main purpose of the church, away from administration to encountering the world.

BCS 011 Parish based community organizing

2. Understand your congregation’s assets, resources, and shortcomings

You need to build the congregation’s capacity to deal with the world and its problems at a local, city, state, and national level. You need to be realistic about what you can deliver, so find out more about the members and their capacity to “be Jesus” in the world, both individually and collectively. This paper asks you to take an honest look at the profile of your congregation.

BCS 010 Understand congregational human assets

3. Listen to the needs of your congregation and your community

You need to “hear” the concerns, pain, and joys of both groups by actively engaging in serious conversation with people at every level. Here are several methods you can use to build honest relationships with these communities. These methods help to bring people together to discuss their community needs and empower them to take action.

BCS 004 Facilitating a community listening session

BCS 018 Issue Forums

BCS 016 House Meetings

4. Develop a strategy for societal engagement and advocacy to create that ‘Kingdom of God’

This means moving from simply learning about the needs of people toward actions that help alleviate suffering, promote a more loving and responsive community, create institutions to support communities, and build a just and fair society through the rule of law. This entails advocacy work at numerous levels within your community, city, state, nation, and beyond. The goal needs to go beyond just a charity response to a justice response, which means engaging with elected representative institutions and powers that are empowered to create the conditions under which all societies live.

BCS 017 Advocacy Strategies

BCS 014 Building an Advocacy Case

BCS 012 Mobilizing Your Congregation

5. Making your concerns known to the powers and the world

It is critical to expose injustice, oppression, and fear. Jesus did this repeatedly, so one major task is exposing institutional sin and corporate malfeasance in order to produce righteous anger and concern. Providing information requires research and digging. Collecting the data is critical as being accurate and honest will build community trust in your efforts. No approach to deal with injustice works without good data, and that includes stories, lots of them. You can collect stories through Community Listening Sessions, House Meetings, and Issue Forums (see #3 above). Using web resources to research data is the best way to get access to information and see the work of other organizations who do that research. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Now what do you do with this information? It is important to “condition the environment”, by making the public aware of the concerns raised by people. So use the following to expose the issues. Also use social media to spread the data.

BCS 006 Writing a Successful Letter to the Editor

6. Engage the powers

Typically this means changing some societal system that is created by some level of government to provide services to society. The problem is that no government structure can deal with every human need. Moreover, because of political ideologies, the systems that are created often lead to oppression, discrimination, prejudice, and economic inequity, so you have the “deal with those powers.” Making the issues public as mentioned in 5 above is critical, but you also need to engage those authorities, elected representatives and others, to get change. This is not done overnight as governments are slow to react and often react to favor corporate or ideological interests. So to get the basics about this in place, consider these approaches as a start.

BCS 002 Building a Relationship with Your Elected Representative

BCS 007 Lobby Meeting with Your Elected Representative

BCS 005 Advocating a UMC Elected Representative

BCS 009 City Hall and Legislative Hearings

7. Voting for people who represent your needs and views

Voting for those persons who reflect that Biblical narrative mentioned above, is the core advocacy action everyone can take. Not sure who to vote for? The UMC has created a set of principles that reflect that Biblical Narrative and the values and doctrine of The United Methodist Church. It’s called the Social Principles and we have a useful guide to using the Social Principles to inform your voting decisions.

Voter’s Guide for State and Federal Elections

8. Advocating for improved public education

This is an example of how to create a congregational strategy and resources to advocate for improved public education from within your congregation using ordinary members. This approach, along with using some of the resources mentioned above, is one way to get every congregation member, regardless of their ideological preferences, engaged in something that impacts every family. The North Carolina Conference collaborates with the Western North Carolina Conference in an organization called UMAPS, United Methodist Advocates for Public Education, and it helps congregations with advocating for better public schools.

BCS 003 Education Advocacy

UMAPS Education Advocacy Matrix

NC Conference of The United Methodist Church · 700 Waterfield Ridge Place · Garner, NC 27529
Phone: 919.779.6115 · Toll-free: 800.849.4433 · Fax: 919.773.2308

Copyright © 2022 · Privacy Policy · Powered by WordPress · Site Admin