Loading...The conference, “Building God’s Kingdom,” will provide participants with information and skills needed to serve people in their local areas and in the nation and world, according to Suzanne Warner, the department’s chair. Committee members of the department’s two divisions, Peace and Justice, and Jubilee Ministries, have planned a variety of workshops so participants will come away with a “better understanding” of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals and “our role in bringing those goals to fruition.”
Among sessions will be a workshop about Angel’s Attic, a thrift store started by St. John’s Church in Murray in 2002 to help fund Angel’s Clinic, which serves uninsured workers. The thrift store, now an interdenominational project, contributes more than $100,000 a year to the health clinic.
Conference sessions also will include workshops on parish health ministries; “Becoming a One Congregation” in support of the MDG campaign; and Jubilee ministries, which Warner said does not involve only the ongoing, established community organizations such as the Kentucky Refugee Ministries or Aaron McNeil House that are officially designated by The Episcopal Church as Jubilee Centers. Jubilee ministry is dedicated to serving “the least, the last and the lost” and is not always a permanent program, she said. Conference plans also call for a session on youth and peace and justice issues and for a session on planning and funding parish mission trips of all kinds.
Participants, however, will not just leave with information and skills. They will leave behind a tangible icon testifying to the enormous need to support the MDGs. Modeling a cross that was created during General Convention in Columbus, the participants will make a cross out of Popsicle sticks representing the number of children (30,000) that will die due to poverty during the 24 hours of the conference. According to Dr. Mary Abrams, chair of the diocese’s Peace and Justice Division, nearly 11 million children under the age of 5 die in the world every year, well over 1,200 every hour, and most die from easily preventable or treatable diseases.
Anyone, not just Episcopalians, who wants to learn about outreach ministry and “living out of peace and justice in the world” is encouraged to attend, said Warner.
Full registration costs $55 per person, which includes a shared room and three meals. The cost for Saturday only is $35, which includes two meals. For details, call the diocesan office at 502-584-7148 or 1-800-222-3462. Click here for registration form.
