Upcoming UMW District Mission study at Highland UMC:
Join us on April 6, 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM in the Conference Room for these great mission studies:
What About Our Money? A Faith Response by Susan K. Taylor
What About Our Money? A Faith Response explores how we relate to money within the context of our faith. Through this connection between our faith and our money, readers discover how to live closer to God and God’s people, even in our North American culture that is so deeply defined by money. She explores the biblical foundation of abundance (sufficiency), which stands in opposition to the scarcity narrative our culture tells us from the time we are very young.
The text’s seven chapters start with providing a biblical foundation for the discussion to come. Taylor then explores the systems in which we make our financial decisions, our modern-day understanding of what is available to us, and how we use/consume our resources in Chapters 2–4. Chapters 5–7 help readers take steps to implement this knowledge in their lives by looking at what belongs to God, how we can plan for the future as people of faith, and to make the connection between our faith and finances.
The focus of this study is both personal and communal. Readers will explore their own relationship with money, the money choices available to us, and how we individually and collectively respond in light of our faith. The text takes into account that we are all in different places, in different financial circumstances, health, family structure, race, age, and stage of life, and each of us has our own values and capacities.
Susan K. Taylor has invested much of her life exploring the intersections of faith and money. Taylor weaves money and faith together in her own life, as a mother of two (now young adults); a partner in Just Money Advisors, a financial planning and invest-ment management company that specializes in socially responsible and community investment strategies; regular writer on money and spirituality; vice-president of Faith and Money Network’s board of directors; treasurer for Kentucky Interfaith Power and Light, which mobilizes a religious response to global warming; and an active member in her Louisville, Kentucky, church.
Embracing Wholeness: An Earth Perspective on Covenantal Living
by Faye Wilson and Ellen Lipsey
The 2018 Spiritual Growth Study, Embracing Wholeness is the second in a two-part series about covenantal living. Part 1, Living as a Covenant Community, by Evy McDonald explores the scriptural definitions of covenant in order to bridge these definitions with their application and their implications for the modern church. Part 2, Embracing Wholeness, is designed to build on this work it explores the ways God has called us to live in covenantal relationship with all of creation and challenges readers to work toward stronger and healthier relationships with creation, their communities, themselves, and God. The study begins with the theological and biblical foundation for our covenantal relation-ship with creation and moves forward into our community, our relationships, and our very selves. Each chapter explores both our personal and corporate responsibilities to those around us and addresses current issues, such as climate change, social responsibility, and justice concerns. The study continues with a discussion of our relationship with ourselves and how we are indeed sacred.
Stonecypher, the participant’s guide writer, encourages her readers to consider the biblical command to love ourselves and to explore vocation, identity, play, happiness, and the fall, among other topics. The final chapters explore the more practical side of covenantal living and work toward helping the reader to develop a covenantal living plan, or rule of life.
Stonecypher is a United Methodist deacon in ministry with God’s creation seeking to bring wholeness and dignity to people, plants, animals, and the land, which others deem unworthy of care. She is the Abbess and a founding member of the Wesleyan Order of Saint Francis, a religious order called to live faithfully in solidarity with the marginalized, voiceless, and undervalued members of God’s creation through the lens of Wesleyan and Franciscan theology. Committed to ministry rooted in her place, Jessica lives in her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio, where she serves as the urban agriculture specialist at Muskingum Soil and Water Conservation District and the farm manger of marketing and administration at her family’s cattle farm.