Posted by: Jill @ 3:32 pm
 Ready to Party - Pictured is one of the youngest new residents of the Birmingham Babies First program. Over 120 visitors, staff and volunteers celebrated the opening of this new program for young mothers and their babies. |
We are continually amazed at how quickly support has grown for our Birmingham Babies First program. As recently as May, we were still hammering out the details of the program and had not hired any staff. Churches, volunteers, Sunday school classes and chruch groups have come together with supplies, money and moral support. Elise Smith, our new group home supervisor is passionate about this home. She is the perfect person for the job, and has worked tirelessly to build a staff and make a loving home for these young mothers.
The open house on Dec. 9 for our new Birmingham Babies First was a great success. 120 people signed the guest book. The blessing program was so nice. Guests got to meet the two young mothers in our program and their boys. One of the girls has already begun earning a certificate in massage therapy. The other is looking into cosmetology school. The two babies, ages 4 months and 8 months, are beautiful and developmentally on track. The 8-month old just stood up, so we may be in for a wild ride. Get some gates!!
Our thanks and Christmas prayers go out to everyone who has helped make this a success!
Posted by: Jill @ 3:18 pm
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“Every fall, for almost 80 years now, we’ve sent out invitations to churches to order print materials and invite speakers to promote the White Christmas Offering,” says Jill West, the agency’s Director of Development. “And every year, there is a tremendous response.”
Hundreds of churches from North Alabama to Northwest Florida hold banquets, barbecues, concerts, Christmas Eve collections and any number of other events to raise money. West estimates that the offering brings in almost half of the contributions needed to care for the kids that come to the group homes and other programs.
Volunteers are key to coordinating White Christmas events in their local churches. They are called Local Church Representatives, or LCRs. They are the first link in the chain that connects churches in mission across the region.
“Sometimes the LCR is a church staff member,” says West. “But more often it’s a lay person. Someone who is looking for a way to serve and has a passion for helping children.”
Judy Hammond of Steele United Methodist Church in Steele, Alabama, is one such LCR. Hammond says that her fellow church members joke about her efforts encouraging them to give.
“They say, ‘we’re afraid not to because she’ll get us,’” laughs Hammond. She actually coordinates Steele’s offering in October to coincide with the Children’s Sabbath.
The Children’s Home sets a goal of $10/member per church. In 1997, Steele church gave around $1/member, and every year since has increased its giving. This year, it will top $25 per member.
“I was so proud of them,” Hammond says of her fellow congregants who she says are just like a family.
She says that the church, led by Rev. Phillip Battles (“one of the most wonderful pastors,” says Hammond), is mission-minded and supports several other ministries. It gives $500 per year from its yearly budget, but also gives its members the opportunity to participate in the White Christmas Offering.
Another church, First United Methodist in Niceville, Florida, topped $25/member in its 2006 giving to the Children’s Home. This is unprecedented in a church this size—over 2,700 on the books—and reveals much about its members.
“Our congregation never ceases to amaze me,” says Sondra Dutram, the church’s Minister to Children and LCR for the Children’s Home. She says that the leadership of the church and its senior pastor, Rev. Rurel Ausley, are a hundred percent behind children.
In addition to a month of publicizing the White Christmas offering through church bulletins and newsletters, Rev. Ausley personally sends a letter to his church’s active members. In it, he explains the mission of the Children’s Home and encourages financial gifts.
Then, on Christmas Eve, the full collection at all five services is designated for the Children’s Home.
“This senior pastor and leadership are missions-oriented, outreach-oriented, and children-focused,” she says. Dutram feels that this makes it easy for the congregation to get behind a ministry like the Children’s Home.
The Children’s Home itself becomes the next link in the connectional chain. It identifies children needing critical care and begins providing the services.
And those services might be given some distance from where the money is raised. In the case of Steele UMC, the closest Children’s Home program is almost 50 miles away in Birmingham.
But children anywhere in the area of the two United Methodist Conferences the agency serves can get help if they are eligible.
For instance, a girl who was sexually abused by a close relative might need to be moved away for safety’s sake. Churches from the girl’s community that participate in White Christmas will be supporting her, but not only her.
Gifts to the Children’s Home also provide opportunities for people in other communities to be involved in missions.
“From the moment a child arrives at one of our programs, the ministry of the local church steps in,” says Rev. LuAnne Wages-Smith, Chaplain at the Children’s Home.
She says that a church’s youth groups, worship services, pastoral care and any number of other programs become available to children living in group homes and foster homes all over the region.
Children’s Home staff facilitates that relationship between the child and the church—they open the door. But ultimately it is the children who decide to walk through that door. Then it is the church members who welcome them into the church’s programs.
This becomes the next step in the connectional circle. The church members get involved in the ministry, their stories get told, and someone gets inspired to hold a bazaar or send a letter out to church members asking for volunteers, prayers and financial support.
And it starts again with someone new just like it did with Judy Hammond. She says that she was asked to serve, and so she read more about the ministry. “I learned that there is more to it than just a few abandoned children,” says Hammond.
Money raised from the White Christmas offering goes to provide basic needs like shelter, food and clothing to abused and neglected kids. It also provides transportation, psychological and spiritual help, access to medical and dental care, allowances, education and all the things any family provides to take care of its children.
“We’re not talking about making ourselves feel good,” says Hammond. “We’re talking about helping those who can’t help themselves. I feel that there’s not a one of us that can’t give back.”
Of her church in Niceville, Dutram says, “As a whole, our congregation, they just want to reach outside the boundaries of our church.” And thanks to the connectional nature of the United Methodist Church, they are able to do that.
Posted by: Jill @ 2:31 pm
 Faithful Fundraiser - Preston Bryant of Gandys Cove UMC inspires us all to give to the children at Christmastime. |
Submitted by Dana Ruth Schrimsher, Wife of Max D. Schrimsher, Children’s Home Local Church Representative for Gandys Cove United Methodist Church
There’s a very small United Methodist Church nestled in the rural part of North Alabama called Gandys Cove, and in that small but fine church (the oldest church in Morgan County, Alabama) is a little boy named Preston Maxwell Bryant who has had a compassionate and tender heart larger than most adults from the time he was small.
In 2005, Gandys Cove near Falkville, Alabama, was given a Certificate of Recognition for exceptional giving to the United Methodist Children’s Home—$11.44 per member. Preston and his family discussed how they were going to share and give the next year. His father Christopher (our Missions Chairman), his mother Lisa, his sisters Alaina and Camellia, and Preston had a family discussion and came to a decision.
Instead of giving just one sum at Christmastime which they had done in previous years, they decided it would be much easier to try to give about $5 every week throughout year. This idea thrilled little six-year-old Preston, who was in the Kids for Christ class at the time. He had seen the cardboard folders that held quarters so he preferred those to the envelopes.
I was blest to be Preston’s Sunday school teacher during this time. Almost every Sunday, he would come to the class smiling with the little folder in hand with his name on the back full of money, mostly quarters. Sometimes all the quarters didn’t come from just his family. He was allowed to ask others for quarters like the country store owner, his uncle, and others. But his father Chris made sure that Preston could give an explanation of why and how the money would be used.
So in his child-like, heart-felt way, he explained how some children didn’t have a loving home like his. It really disturbed Preston that there were some children who were treated badly or neglected. He and I had discussed this in class periodically.
Because of Preston’s efforts, by the end of 2006, the Chris Bryant family had given about four or five times what some others of us had given once at Christmas.
However, the Bryant family is of the quality of Christian that believes you can get a lot done if you don’t care who gets the credit. If, indeed, we had more adults with the heart of Preston, more could be done for the cause of Christ everywhere.
Isaiah 11:6 reads in part, “… and a little child shall lead them.” Proverbs 20:11 reads, “Even a child is known by his doings whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.” Preston’s work is “pure” and “right.”
You probably guessed that this plan worked so well that the Bryants are continuing to do this in 2007, and to God be the glory.