Doing Mission with Motown During Peace Week



I wanted to start the week out by sharing a word of great joy.  This week nearly eighty youth and their leaders will be working in Detroit in partnership with Motown Mission.  Most of these youth are members of two Disciples of Christ churches, one from Indianapolis and Lexington, KY.  They will be joined by a group from a Michigan United Methodist Church.  They will be working with a group called Rippling Hope, which is serving as the project coordinators for work being done at and in the neighborhood of one of our Detroit Disciples churches -- Northwestern Christian Church, pastored by my good friend the Rev. Eugene James.  This is a dream come true, for when I came to Michigan three years ago, I asked the question of why Michigan churches were traveling hundreds of miles on mission trips, and yet I didn't see any involvement by Disciples churches in Detroit.  I also had a series of conversations with Eugene about partnering my suburban congregation with his urban congregation to do ministry in Detroit.  Peace Week is the fruit of these conversations -- for in the mean time I had discovered a United Methodist ministry called Motown Mission, directed by another new friend Rev. Carl Gladstone.  He jumped at the chance of partnering with Disciples churches, and so we began a conversation that eventuated in this week's events, which we decided to call Peace Week (thanks Diana!).  Then things just started to hum, with my congregation getting on board, the Region embracing it, and everything just fell into place!  I'm excited about what this week bodes for partnering in mission.  To add to my thoughts I want to share the press release Eugene sent out in celebration -- so continue reading!!

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CITY AND SUBURBAN CHURCHES PARTNER WITH COMMUNITY BLOCK CLUB ASSOCIATION TO MAKE AN IMPACT IN DETROIT NEIGHBORHOOD

Peace Week, June 13-18, 2011


On Monday, June 13, 2011 at 9:00 AM, over seventy volunteers from Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and the neighborhood will gather at Northwestern Christian Church, 13650 Ilene at Schoolcraft to kick off Peace Week with a massive clean-up of the neighborhood between Wyoming and Meyers; the Jeffries service drive and Intervale. Peace Week is a joint project of Northwestern Christian Church, Detroit, Central Woodward Christian Church, Troy, and Motown Mission, a ministry of Metropolitan United Methodist Church, Detroit. Rippling Hope, a mission volunteer ministry from Austin, Texas, is working with Northwestern Christian Church to facilitate the project. June 14-17, the volunteers will be doing painting and renovation work at Northwestern, the parsonage at United Christian Church, and at senior citizens homes in the community. Northwestern Christian Church and Rippling Hope will continue work in the community with various mission volunteer groups through the middle of July.

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