By Rev. Ryan Gephart, SUSUMC Peace with Justice Coordinator, Preaching Faith & Justice Fellow
On Saturday, January 18, 2025, fifty-seven people of the Susquehanna Conference came together to learn about our new Social Principles and receive advocacy training at Calvary UMC, Harrisburg, PA. Rev. Dr. Lillian Smith, Freedom Trail (Altoona) District Superintendent, started our day with a sermon reminding us of the call from Micah 6 along with our United Methodist history to justice work. Dr. Smith stated that we need “to remember who we are” as followers of Jesus Christ.
Colleen Moore, director of Peace With Justice at the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), then led four sessions on various topics throughout the day. The topics included the new Social Principles of The United Methodist Church, Christian Nationalism, Israel/Palestine, Gun Violence Prevention, Advocacy Training, and other issues like Immigration. We participated in various exercises helping us explore the new Social Principles and how we could teach & relate them to our churches. The new Social Principles can be found at www.umcjustice.org and contain an index of topics from “The Community of All Creation” to “The Economic Community” to “The Social Community” to “The Political Community.“
One of the features of the day was building community for justice work. We are looking to build a peace with justice network for the conference using new resources from the General Board of Church & Society. GBCS has just created a new electronic resource for coordinators to be able to equip people faster for justice & advocacy work. Our new network will leverage this resource for justice & advocacy work.
We need to remember from the call of the prophets:
“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
If you are interested in joining justice work in our conference, please contact Rev. Ryan Gephart at rgephart@susumc.org or call 814-224-2815.
