God's Mission Our Gifts: Your October Mission and Service Stories and more!

Your October Mission and Service Stories   OCTOBER 1 Education Beyond Classroom Walls   [Image credit: Pixabay/Canva]   The Church of Christ in Congo provides children with the education and training they need to take charge of their own lives when they leave school. With a combination of traditional education and life skills, they provide each child with the skillset they need to thrive after graduation. OCTOBER 8 Geeta's Story   [Image credit: Astha Sansthan's Association of Strong Women Alone] When Geeta’s husband died, she not only lost her life partner but also her home. Because she was no longer married, her in-laws wouldn’t allow her to stay in their multi-generational residence. That’s when she turned to Mission and Service partner Astha Sansthan’s Association of Strong Women Alone for help. OCTOBER 15 Ecumenical Church Loan Fund: Anert's Story   [Image credit: ECLOF Kenya]   Fifty-three-year-old Anert Mwenda is a bubbly and cheerful clothing trader in Syokimau, Kenya. Her path from housewife to entrepreneur has been filled with barriers, but with the help of Mission and Service partner Ecumenical Church Loan Fund (ECLOF), her business is flourishing.   OCTOBER 22 Building Climate Resiliency [Image credit:Women for Change, Zambia] In areas of Zambia where historically there has been little rain, now there are floods, and where there were floods, now there are droughts. Climate change makes the traditional women’s tasks of collecting firewood and charcoal and making food harder, so Women for Change makes building climate awareness and resiliency a priority.   OCTOBER 29 Empowering Women of the Past, Present, and Future   [Image credit:Rev. B. Silpa Rani] In India, women’s access to theological education has historically been limited in comparison to men. When Rev. B. Silpa Rani started her first degree, she spent two years as the only woman in a class of 16. Now she is actively encouraging women to pursue theological education and engage in leadership roles.   Fill out your Mission and Service goal-setting form online! Congregational Stewardship/Generosity This is your resource to help you grow generous disciples and do God’s mission.  Please modify and use these ideas in your context.   Called to Be the Church: The Journey     Called to Be the Church: The Journey modules really make a difference.   In each cohort, community of faith leaders rediscover how inspiring their church really is and get excited about telling their stories as they invite people to share their resources to grow in faith and make a difference in people’s lives.  Come and join the movement!   Getting Started in Stewardship:  May 2, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. (Eastern)  Join United Church people across the country to learn some stewardship first principles.     Register for Getting Started in Stewardship.    Stewardship Best Practices: next offered in spring 2024  Newly updated! Four two-hour sessions interspersed with practical exercises and discussions to examine Stewardship Best Practices in order for you to set goals, create an annual stewardship plan, and get energized!   Registration link for Stewardship Best Practices is coming soon!   Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program:  May 16 and 30, 2024, from 6:30–8:30 p.m. (ET) or May 17 and 31, 2024, from 1:00–3:00 p.m. (ET)  Learn how best to utilize the Called to Be the Church Giving Program materials and develop a plan that will work for your church with two, two-hour online sessions and coaching.     Registration link for Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program is coming soon!   Bequests & Planned Giving for Your Community of Faith: October 11 and 25, 2023, from 2:00–3:00 p.m. (ET) Explore how to set up and maintain a Planned Giving Program at your church, with two one-hour online sessions.    Register for Bequests & Planned Giving for Your Community of Faith.   For more information on these and other stewardship supports, contact called@united-church.ca.  Check Out the Most Recent Stewardship Blog Read the most recent Stewardship blog, Cherishing Creation by The Rev. Melody Duncanson Hales, to find out how one community of faith’s passion for creation is making a difference.  [Image credit:Pastor Pam Brown. Used with permission.] Worship Starter Ideas for the Season of Gratitude: World Communion Sunday to All Saints  Find a Sunday worship theme for each of the weeks between October 1 and 29 – the Season of Gratitude – in the Lectionary Worship Starters 2023 file on the Stewardship in Worship page.  Stewardship Seconds (revised for July-December 2023)   Short, pithy sayings that pack a punch, to help infiltrate stewardship thinking into your community of faith. Add them to newsletters, worship, announcements, webpages, wherever people gather!  Find them at the Stewardship in Worship page.  Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers (revised for July-December 2023)   The offering time in worship is NOT about collecting money! It is about growing generous disciples and stewards. These Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers, for each Sunday of the year, will help. Find them at the Stewardship in Worship page. If You Read Just One Book This Month Serving Money, Serving God by Sheryl Johnson  Christian stewardship from an anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, ecological, and class-critical standpoint, showing how justice commitments can be integrated into the totality of a church’s financial practices. Get the Stewardship Support You Need The people and resources to help you succeed are here.  Mission and Service Thanksgiving Resources Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, and we’d like to take the time to show gratitude to our United Church of Canada leaders in worship. To express our thanks and support your leadership, we're excited to share that the Mission and Service and United Church of Canada Foundation Thanksgiving resources are now available at Mission and Service This Season. Your Gifts with Vision Help Empower Women and Children  After a brief shutdown at the end of September for updates, the giftswithvision.ca website will return on October 2. Be one of the first 50 people to give online on October 2 and your gift will be matched (up to $100)!   Education, food security, a safe home, reliable power, even bus tokens—these are all things most of us take for granted. But because of economic instability, climate change, and conflicts breaking out around the world, there are many people – especially women and children – for whom these things are no longer attainable. You can make a difference in their lives through Gifts with Vision.   Unhoused women often need money to apply for identification, buy medicine and groceries, get bus tokens—and most of all, they need to be able to get these things without reliving their trauma through telling and retelling their stories to several different agencies. With support from Gifts with Vision, Coverdale Centre for Women in Saint John, NB helps meet their immediate needs so they can begin to plan for a better future.   Camp Cosmos, at Montréal City Mission, welcomes refugee children and helps introduce them to Canada, where they will live in safety. Most recently, Camp Cosmos welcomed 28 newly arrived Ukrainian children for six weeks of summer fun and Gifts with Vision helped make it possible.   Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre in Beausejour, MB, fosters Indigenous family well-being through Return of the Buffalo, a program that combines traditional knowledge with trauma-informed care. Gifts with Vision supports this program about returning to the land, Indigenous lifeways, and the teaching of respect for all our relations, which helps families begin to heal the generational wounds of the residential school system.   The Église du Christ au Congo, with Gifts with Vision support, is helping women in the Democratic Republic of Congo learn to set up biogas technology, which will fuel their homes as well as producing electricity. They will become energy-independent through technology, and then help others to do the same: a win-win!   Through Gifts with Vision, you can make a difference in the lives of women and children in Canada and around the world by giving gifts from the comfort of home, with no packaging or wrapping needed. These gifts and many more are available after October 2 at GiftsWithVision.ca. GOD’S MISSION, OUR GIFTS is your newsletter. We want to provide news and information that you can use in your community of faith, whether you’re a minister, a board member, an administrator, a treasurer, or anyone else who wants to make a difference.   What else would you like to see? What can we do to help your community of faith get where it needs to go? Send us your thoughts! Fill out your Mission and Service goal-setting form online! Donate Facebook Twitter Website Email Instagram YouTube LinkedIn   Your generosity enables the United Church to love, serve, and minister in the world. Make an online donation or learn more about your options to support the work of the church.

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