Washington Region

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

New Conference Center Address
Please use the new mailing address for the Conference Center. It is 11711 East Market Place, Fulton, MD 20759-2594. We are finding that mail sent to the old location takes at least two weeks to get redirected to our new location.

Church Newsletters
If your church publishes a newsletter, your guide and district superintendent would love to receive a copy. They would greatly appreciate receiving a copy via email. If not, please mail the newsletter to the new mailing address.

Charge Conference
Please remember to go into Gateway and submit any forms you have not submitted yet. Reminder emails will be sent out and we appreciate you taking the time to make sure your charge conference forms can be finalized correctly in Gateway.

A Welcoming Life Immersion Series

Have you heard? Fully Alive, an Immersion Series of the Baltimore-Washington Conference (BWC), received top honors at the United Methodist Association of Communicators Conference in San Francisco this fall. The BWC is now offering its newest Immersion Series, produced by the same team who created Fully Alive.

A Welcoming Life is a six-week Bible study, corresponding sermon series, related worship resources and a daily devotional guide focused on compelling faith sharing and radical hospitality so that your congregations may become even more welcoming places for all God’s children. This study was designed for participants to experience the wideness of God’s mercy by extending grace to others in the form of hospitality. Familiarity with people who are different from ourselves helps to break down artificial barriers we place between ourselves and others. For your convenience, each lesson is one-hour long. See how this study can transform lives and faith communities as a Sunday school lesson or small group study. The study is a perfect complement to the Advent season.

Materials needed for the study:

Each person in your small group should purchase a participant's guide at a cost of $5 each.
The group leader may purchase all the participant guides online at one time or each person may purchase their own online.
One DVD per church at $10 each. (A 50% discount is being offered to those who purchased the Fully Alive series. Please contact Pam Bowen at pbowen@bwcumc.org to take advantage of this special offer)

Learn more about A Welcoming Life, see a promotional video and purchase the series. Visit www.bwcumc.org/welcominglife.

Appointment Season

It is that time of year when Bishop Schol and the Cabinet begin to prepare for the new appointment season. The pastoral advisory form is due on December 1st along with the other evaluations. Please be prompt in completing this and letting us know if you are requesting to stay in your present appointment, would like a change, or are requesting a change to a different status. It is especially important that we hear from any of you that intend to retire this year by the December 1st deadline.

Quality of Life Retreats

The Quality of Life Retreats are a ministry under the Grow Mission Project of the Baltimore-Washington Conference and was started in 1988 as a result of an article written about a man who had HIV/AIDS dying alone. It was a time of ignorance, fear and avoidance. There was no satisfactory medication or support network. Some conference staff and clergy thought this death sad and unfortunate. From this event, Quality of Life Retreats for Persons with HIV/AIDS was born. The Rev. Terri Rae Chattin directed the first retreat at West River in 1988. Now in 2010 we have sponsored 84 retreats and serviced more than 3,291 participants.

Quality of Life plans to continue this ministry until it is no longer needed. New support and participation are needed. In particular, we are in need of resource people who can provide educational and medical information, arts & crafts persons, snacks, juices, water and sodas, homemade kits, and health bags. Also your church might consider a partial or full scholarship (approximately $225.00) to support participants at any of our retreats, as we only request a $20.00 registration fee from our participants.

For more information, please go to www.bwcumc.org/files/pdf/QualityofLifeInfo.pdf.

Annual Clergywomen's Christmas Lunch

The lunch will be held on Monday, December 6, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. at the Morniningside Inn in New Market, MD. Cost is $15. Menu will consist of old-fashioned potato soup, make your own sandwich/salad bar and bread pudding. Please email Revdeb8@aol.com for reservations by November 22. Bring checks or cash that day.

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Important Dates

November 1 & 2 & 3, 2011 - Discipler Groups http://www.bwcumc.org/content/discipler-group-roster
November 15, 2011 9:30 a.m.- Discipler Group Make-Up Session, Conference Mission Center
November 15, 2011 - Visioning 2020 with Bishop Schol http://www.bwcumc.org/events/visioning2020
November 29 & 30, 2011 9-11 a.m. & 1-3 p.m. : Gateway Training on Statistical Reports - Conference Mission Center
December 1, 2011 - Evaluations Due
December 1 & 6 & 7, 2011 - Discipler Groups http://www.bwcumc.org/content/discipler-group-roster
December 20, 2011 9:30 a.m. - Discipler Group Make-Up Session, Conference Mission Center http://www.bwcumc.org/content/discipler-group-roster
January 28, 2012 - Washington Region Leadership Day - Conference Mission Center
April 19, 2012 9-12:30 - Pastor Transition Workshop - Conference Mission Center
April 21, 2012 - Prodigal Worship, Queens Chapel UMC, Beltsville, MD
May 12, 2012 9-12:30 Washington Region Transition Workshop for Pastors/SPRC, Conference Mission Center
May 30 - June 1, 2012 - Annual Conference - Marriott Waterfront Hotel, Baltimore

Did you know?

If you have questions about taxes, W-2 forms and I-9's, the best place to go to have those questions answered is the GCFA website. www.gcfa.org/ls_CTP/html We suggest you access the information from GCFA, then contact accounting professionals for any additional information.

It is important that you update your leadership in Gateway, especially for Annual Conference. All new leaders should be added to your church. To do this, log into Gateway and click on Committee Overview. Then click on Committee Participation and Update. Click on Local Church Leadership Committee. For more information abut make changes/updates, go to www.bwcumc.org/content/gateway-resources and click on the Introduction to Gateway Manual.

The current address of the Conference Mission Center does not always show up on GPS or MapQuest. We suggest you use the address for Maggie Moo's Ice Cream which is 8170 Maple Lawn Boulevard, Fulton, MD 20759. The Conference Mission Center is located in the parking lot behind Maggie Moo's.

If you send mail to our old address on Gateway Drive in Columbia, it will be returned to you. Please be mindful of our new address when sending timely information.

Your guide and district superintendent (and your RA) enjoy reading your newsletters. If you have them electronically, please feel free to pass them on to us via email.

That if you forget your Gateway user name and password and set up a new account in Gateway that your new account will not be connected to your church and you will not be able to access the forms you need on Gateway. To avoid this from happening, please contact Pam Mullay to obtain your user name and password for Gateway if you have forgotten it.

Clergy Compensation Reports are linked to medical and pension and if the reports are not submitted on time your 2011 medical and pension benefits can be affected.

That if you register anyone other than yourself on Gateway (aside from ROCK) for training, that person's name and email will take over your account and your name and email will disappear from Gateway. To avoid this each person must register for events individually unless stated that group registrations are allowed. We do this to allow for monitoring of CEU credits. If you have someone else register you then they will receive credit for the class in your place.