Bishops Name Recipients of Grants and Scholarships
December 2022
Rev. Dr. Jean Hawxhurst
The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church holds leadership responsibility for the formal ecumenical and interreligious engagements of the church. To that end they actively offer ecumenical and interreligious trainings, and they offer grants and scholarships to help persons and groups engage in their local contexts.
Recently, Ecumenical Officer Bishop Sally Dyck has named both the recipients of the 2023 Local Initiative Grants and the recipients of partial scholarships to represent The United Methodist Church at the 2023 Parliament of the Worlds Religions.
The Local Initiative Grants are designed to help annual conference groups create ministry projects that are ecumenical and/or interreligious. Projects must include persons beyond The United Methodist Church, and they must focus on unity, reception and reconciliation. For 2023, two grants $1,000 have been awarded:
- The Youth and Young Adult Ministry of the Northern Conference of Nigeria, under Bishop Yohanna, will be working to revive the Fellowship of Christian Churches in Nigeria (FCCN). They will do this through the creation of a gathering called a Love Feast, hoping to include all thirteen churches in the organization. The Love Feast will take place in April of 2023 and will be an ecumenical revival, including ecumenical teaching, music and meals.
- The CACO United Methodist Youth Agency of Central Congo, under Bishop Lunge, will be creating a project called BOMOKO, which means “unity.” They will provide ecumenical and interreligious activities during their class holidays in order to bring together young people from different denominations for education, cultural and recreational activities around the theme of unity.
An additional grant from 2022 has been extended, as the project coordinators were unable to be complete their ministry due to the high number of COVID cases earlier this year. This project is being led by Parsippany United Methodist Church in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. This congregation will be hosting an interfaith meal and dialogue for forty Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus in their community in order to promote hospitality and dialogue.