Promoting Mission Today

Encouraging local and district units to become Mission Today Units is a way to help United Methodist Women put a face on mission. It helps connect members with mission workers, mission projects and mission resources. It helps expand concepts of mission, including an understanding that social action is a vital part of mission. Being recognized as a Mission Today Unit gives local women incentive to pray for mission workers, learn about mission projects and become more involved in social justice. And as some units gain recognition, others are inspired to get involved.

The goal is to have 50% of all local and district units become Mission Today Units by 2004.

Ideas for Promotion

Here are some ideas conferences are using to promote Mission Today Units:

• Send brochures to each unit with the local unit evaluation form.
• Promote Mission Today at all events of the conference and district. Ideas for skits are coming soon.
• Highlight Mission Today at District Officer Training Events. Members of Jurisdiction Core Planning Groups have been trained to assist with this. Call on them as well as conference and district officers.
• Promote Mission Today as part of the District Visitation program. This is the most effective way to reach local units. The District Visitation notebook contains a program on Mission Today.
• Use the videos related to Mission Today: "The Face of Mission" (10 minutes) which relates to changing concepts of mission and challenges UMW to prayer, study and action in mission; and "Through the Corridors of Mission" (12 minutes) which reviews the history of mission, including the Scripture used as mission texts through the centuries. Each conference has these videos. Check with your conference Secretary for Program Resources or conference president.
• Include missionary letters, information about mission projects and the criteria for being a Mission Today Unit in each issue of the conference and district newsletter.
• Include the Mission Today Unit criteria in each packet at conference and district annual meetings.
• Sponsor in-gatherings of material resources for mission at district and annual events.
• Have a "missionary Christmas tree" at your annual meeting. Decorate a tree with paper ornaments that have the name and address of a missionary. Each participant agrees to contact and pray for the missionary. For labels with missionary addresses, contact the Executive Secretary for Mission Opportunities at Room 1503, 475 Riverside Dr., NY, NY 10115.
• Recognize Mission Today Units at district annual meetings with certificates, ribbons, pins. At conference annual meeting, recognize the districts that are moving toward the goal of having 50% of their units become Mission Today Units.

Tell us how you are promoting Mission Today Units. What is working for you?