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Obits: Judi Simmons and Avis McCray
- Judi Simmons, wife of Charles Simmons, pastor of Liberty UB church in Stockport, Ohio, has passed away.
- Avis McCray, who served for many years as WMF Regional President in Rock River Conference and held many other roles in the conference, passed away January 23, 2012. She was from Claytonville UB church in Claytonville, Ill.
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Christmas in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Francis Alie George, Emeric Young Memorial UB church (Freetown, Sierra Leone)
The Emeric Young Memorial UB church in Freetown, Sierra Leone, saw the Christmas season as a very important season to bring people together to foster the work of God. The board chose to have a home cell at each family head house from December 15-31, 2011, 6-9 pm. By this idea we transformed 12 people who are now part of our congregation (4 men, 5 women, and 3 children).
Our other event during the Christmas season was to bring all members born in the month of December and celebrate their birthday on December 25. All of them were happy to share food, drinks, and funds with each other, and our senior pastor prayed for them all.
Members attended a New Year’s Eve service on December 31, from 9-12 pm.
Finally, we kept a special service and a two-day revival for completing our tile project in the church, and also prayed for our sister church, Pleasant Valley, in the United States for helping us to complete the tiling.
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Fandana Music Festival Returns August 10-11
The Fandana music festival returns for the second year in a row on August 10-11, 2012. If your church is within driving distance of Huntington University, you might consider bringing your youth. And adults and families would enjoy the evening concerts outside in the grass. The evening crowds last summer, at the inaugural Fandana Festival, included adults of all ages, plus numerous youngsters.
Huntington University’s hit music festival will feature Christian recording artist Chris Tomlin and more than 50 bands on multiple stages.
Whether you’re into rock, pop, or praise and worship, there’s something for the whole family, including kid-friendly activities, a national talent search, and an on-campus film festival.
Tickets will be available this spring. Visit fandanafestival.com to learn more. You can also read reports about the 2011 Fandana here and here.
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Two Large Mission Organizations to Merge
On October 1, 2011, the memberships of CrossGlobal Link (formerly IFMA) and The Mission Exchange (formerly EFMA) agreed to merge. The new group will represent 35,000 evangelical missionaries from over 190 agencies and churches.
This historic decision took place on the heels of the North American Mission Leaders Conference. Present during the conference were Jeff Bleijerveld, our Global Ministries director, and Dave Datema, a member of the Global Ministries Leadership Team who is director of Frontier Missionary Fellowship at the US Center for World Mission.
The organization’s new name will be announced in early 2012 at a special Bi-Centennial Celebration in Salem, Mass. It was there, 200 years ago, that the first North American missionaries were commissioned for overseas service by an organized mission society.
The decision to form one new mission entity was not motivated by a desire to preserve “what is” but rather to better position them to pursue “what could be.” Five desired outcomes for the new organization were stated:
- Provide a powerful model of a unified, broadly based, evangelical, forward-thinking national mission movement for the rest of the world.
- Leverage the combined strengths of these two organizations to envision new ways to increase the effectiveness of the Great Commission community in North America.
- Provide a single point of entry for leaders from the majority world/global south to engage with missin-focused evangelicals in North America.
- Harness the collective wisdom and expertise of the most inclusive (church, business, education, mission) network of North American Great Commission oriented evangelicals.
- Attract growing numbers of next-generation mission leaders as well as innovative pioneers who operate on the periphery of the traditional mission enterprise.
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Contributing to the Kingdom in Lancaster, Ohio
The Lancaster Eagle Gazette published an article about Josh Dexter, a young black minister who started a new church in downtown Lancaster. In the article, Dexter tells about his wayward days, and how he came back to the Lord. He gives a lot of credit to Greg Voight (right), pastor of Lancaster UB Church.
“My old life of addictions disappeared, and I started to look into things that God wanted me to do….I became a worship leader for the Lancaster United Brethren. In that church, I realized I was turning that church into a more contemporary church. Later, I also discovered, God sent me there to be trained by a great minister named Pastor Greg Voight. I knew through his training he was preparing me for the ministry.”You can read the entire article here.
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Catching Up with Kyle McQuillen
Kyle McQuillen (right), former Director of Global Ministries (1993-2001), has been diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes. He wrote earlier this week, “They found a mass in a routine MRI following up on my back surgery last year. I will be contacting an oncologist locally and having a PET Scan on January 19. I feel fine and am asymptomatic. Fortunately, the cancer appears to be treatable and I’ll know more after the visit to the oncologist and the PET scan this week.“I am working fulltime at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach as a Chaplain, where I run two re-entry dorms for 264 inmates returning to the free world. I also continue working as pastor of visitation at the Edgewater Alliance Church. I’ll continue working even if I have to have chemo, which is likely.”
Kyle and Marlouise McQuillen came to the United Brethren church when they served as missionaries in Sierra Leone 1983-1985. Kyle later joined the national office staff as an associate director of Global Ministries for a couple years, and then left that position to pastor College Park church in Huntington, Ind., 1989-1993. After eight years as Director of Global Ministries, he and Marlouise “retired” to Edgewater, Fla.
You can write to Kyle at: Kyle W. McQuillen, 299 Casa Grande, Edgewater, FL 32141
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Nicaragua Baseball Trip 2012
The team.
Cody Young giving his testimony to kids at a clinic.
Team members with some of the kids at a clinic.
Steve Dennie, Communications Director
Jeff Dice: “I’ve been to Nicaragua 29 times, and have probably been on 45 mission trips in my life. But it’ll be hard to top this one.”
Jeff is a Global Ministries “nontraditional” staffmember serving part of the year in Nicaragua. He visited Huntington, Ind., soon after returning from Nicaragua as part of team which, on their Facebook page, described themselves as, “We are a group of men heading to Nicaragua to play baseball and share Jesus with kids.” They did both quite well.
The team had 20 members:
- Jeff and his son Camden.
- A friend of Jeff’s who is a coach in Clare, Mich., and his son.
- 10 baseball players from Huntington University.
- 3 soccer players from Huntington University who wanted a mission experience during January Term and, according to Jeff, “actually played pretty good baseball.”
- 2 former baseball players from Anderson University (Anderson, Ind.). One of them, Cory Young, played minor league baseball (shortstop and outfield) for the Baltimore Orioles.
- Josh Kesler, pastor of The Well in Huntington, Ind. He went along as the team pastor.
“We had a mixed bag of people, but the chemistry was unbelievable,” Jeff said. “From the first day, I’m happy to say, we never had any kind of group issue. The maturity of these guys was amazing.”
L-r: "Goliath," Camden Dice, and Cody Young. Cody Young is 6'3."
The team spent a week in Masaya, of city of 130,000 (the country’s third largest) which is the center of our work in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has a four-team winter league, which they would call their professional league. It includes players from many countries. Then in February, 16 teams—all Nicaraguans—begin playing what they call their First Division.
“We played the team from Masaya that plays in the First Division,” Jeff explained. “The level of player was at or slightly above that of a US college player. We matched up because we had Derrick McKinney and Mitch Bowers pitching. They are elite college-level players, both from Huntington University. That leveled it out for us.”
They played their first game—actually, a double-header–on Saturday, January 7. They lost the first game 3-0, but won the second 6-2. The team’s Facebook page recorded it this way: “McKinney scared the crap out of several local hitters by buzzing them inside and high. He pitched really well except to a hitter we now call Goliath. He is 6’7″ and hit a McKinney 3-2 offering that is on it’s way to Costa Rica.”
Jeff recalls, “After the inning, Derrick walked over to the Nicaraguan bench to shake Goliath’s hand. We had this baseball connection that overrode any barriers present, because we all loved baseball.”
The Americans shattered four bats during those first two games. They went to the local bat maker and bought ten more bats. Then they stopped at the local Papa Johns, where they ordered 8 large pizzas and watched the Cincinnati Bengals lose to the Houston Texans.
On Monday, January 9, they began a series of baseball clinics which ran every day from 9 am to 12:30 pm, a different age group each day. After the clinic they would get some lunch, and then have a few hours before the evening game.
The clinics were conducted in partnership with the Masaya mayor’s office, which contacted local baseball coaches. Those coaches then brought their teams to the clinics—an average of 40-50 players each day.
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Where UB Churches in the USA are Located
We participated in a study through the Church of the Nazarene, giving them information about our churches in the United States. In return, they sent us some interesting maps showing where our churches and constituents are located. The map above has been added to the “About Us” section on UB.org, our official website. (Click to enlarge.)
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- Number of United Brethren constituents in each county.
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- Each red dot represents a United Brethren church.
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JustONE Conference for Women Starts Jan 23
The JustONE Conference is a free virtual (online) conference for pastors’ wives and women in ministry.
It starts Monday, January 23, and continues for four weeks. Each week, the conference is held on Monday and Tuesday.
This conference will include over 20 speakers sharing from their personal lives and leadership. Each session will be shown 4 times during the week. So find a time that is right for your schedule, and join in!
Week 1: January 23-24
Week 2: January 30-31
Week 3: February 6-7
Week 4: February 13-14Go to the Leading And Loving It website for more information and to register.
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HU Building New Track and Soccer Field
A mini-campaign to build a new Huntington University track and soccer field is well under way, with $150,000 in donations from leaders at the university. During the past few years, the track and soccer programs have grown to include more than 125 student athletes, creating a need for updated facilities.
The mini-campaign was launched in early December as a subset of the $21 million Together: The Campaign for Huntington University, and received a strong kickoff with gifts from the university’s senior leaders, capital campaign committee members, and trustees.
In addition, Forester athletes will conduct a Phonathon during the week of January 9 to draw support for the campaign. Donors may “buy” a meter of the track for $185, or a square yard of the soccer field for $70.
To learn more about Huntington University’s Track/Soccer Field mini-campaign or to become a partner in the project, visit huntington.edu/advancement.
