Working With UMW

Oak Haven is the first church I’ve been able to work closely with the United Methodist Women’s Group. In Bandera I was always in class when they met and in Edinburg I was always tied down with other responsibilities. I’ve enjoyed being a part of their meetings. A few nights ago they installed their new leaders for the year. That was a special time.

That same evening we share in a Love Feast. I had never led one of those. If you ask me I’d say it was meaningful. You know I wouldn’t just say that. A Love Feast has a few specific characteristics. There is always prayer and Bible reading, go figure. Also, a common element is the passing and sharing of the bread and water. Each person takes a piece of the bread and passes the loaf to the next. Similarly, the water is served to everyone.

There were a few things I did a little different. First was our prayer time. The Book of Worship suggests for a leader to pray and those attending respond with Amen, Hallelujah or Praise the Lord. I told the ladies they had two of each of the responses. When the prayer was offered they would respond either with an Amen, Hallelujah or Praise the Lord. Of course, they couldn’t use one more than twice. In the end, there were five prayers they responded to. The sixth was left out and explained they would have to share whatever response they had left with someone during the remainder of the week. In other words, some had used all but a Praise the Lord. Now, they would have to share something to praise the Lord about with someone this week.

Secondly, for our primary Scripture reading (I Corinthians 13) I separated the passage into four sections. Each section was printed on legal size paper that had been rolled as a scroll would be. We recalled how many of our ancient brothers and sisters in Christ had scrolls and fragments of their Scripture. Groups surrounding each scroll and read their piece. There was no particular order of their reading.


I’m really excited about their special project this year. We are going to put a great deal of effort to provide shoes for students in three surrounding elementary schools. The group will work with Payless to offer shoe vouchers that cannot be used for anything other than children’s shoes. This is going to be a great way to reach into this community. I’ll let you know how it is going once it begins. Stay blessed…john