This year, 2021, is the 120th anniversary of the first mission study, published in 1901 by the Central Committee on the United Study for Foreign Missions. Finding Peace will continue to be a book Mission u participants study together in 2021, along with Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, Bearing Witness in the Kin-dom: Living Into the Church’s Moral Witness Through Radical Discipleship and the youth and children’s studies Becoming Peacemakers in a Culture of Violence and Responding to Violence. The 2021 theme is “There’s Far More Here,” based on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. Many of this year’s Mission u events will be online as Mission u teams continue to keep participants safe in the ongoing pandemic while still bringing people together to learn and grow.

The Mountain Sky Conference has hosted a Mission u in 2021, over four Sunday afternoons in February. More than 273 people of many ages registered across 16 states according to Cathy 
Speich-Ferguson, dean of the Mountain Sky Mission u.

“We sent out invitations to all of the churches in our conference and to our United Methodist Women presidents and advertised on a national church site listing events. We shared the free event on our conference website calendar and our conference United Methodist Women website calendar,” Speich-Ferguson said. “Our conference normally would have 40 to 70 folks attend a Mission u — mostly retired and older folks — when we met in person. This virtual event has fantastic participation and is easier for folks who can’t travel, can’t get out of the house, have kids, or other barriers to participation.”

While we yearn for the chance to be together in person again, we can follow the example of creative and committed United Methodist Women members to continue offering the chance to transform in our learning, to continue the century-long mission to open eyes and hearts, for, as Irene Barnes stated at the 1900 missionary conference, “Prejudice has to be overcome.”


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This episode originally appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of response, the award winning magazine from United Methodist Women.

Visit www.UnitedMethodistWomen.org to find out more.