January 30, 2025

Disaster Response Ministry offers love in action

Sign up to deploy for disaster recovery & make a difference

Information about the BWC’s ongoing disaster recovery ministry is online. 

Learn more about the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Give to UMCOR. (100 percent of your donation goes to disaster relief.)

Volunteers in Mission teams serve as short-term missionaries

With the end of the COVID pandemic, people began traveling again, and the number of mission trips is slowly rising as people rediscover the joy and meaning of serving those in need in significant, relational, and life-affirming ways. Within the BWC:

• Campus Ministers are planning a VIM trip to assist with hurricane relief over spring break.
• The youth of Emmanuel UMC are planning a VIM trip, and
• Leaders from the Central Appalachian Missionary Conference (formerly Red Bird) were present with us during our Annual Conference last year and are interested in hosting teams from the BWC.

To learn more about Volunteers in Mission opportunities locally and abroad, contact Thea Becton.

Flood buckets and hygiene kits offer hope

Conference Missons leaders are celebrating the BWC’s generosity by creating hygiene kits for UMCOR and for distribution in respond to local needs. In 2025, Thea Becton has already picked up 550 hygiene kits brought to the Mission Center drop off in Fulton. Students at Frostburg State University, youth at St. Matthews-New Life in Baltimore, and Centenary UMC and its partner churches in Annapolis, are planning packing events in the near future.

• How to Assemble an UMCOR Flood Bucket
• How to Assemble an UMCOR Hygiene Kit

Newly named PODs offer warehouse ministries

Churches creating these flood buckets and health kits can deliver them to one of four PODs in the BWC. The PODs – Points of Distribution – have been renamed. (They were formerly called Hubs.) Learn more about the PODs and their ministry at Bentley Springs UMC in Parkton, St. Matthews UMC in Bowie, Calvary UMC in Mt. Airy, and Mays Chapel UMC in Timonium. All items collected are transported to Mission Central, the NEJ Sager Brown Affiliate where resources are provided to Annual Conferences across the Connection upon request. Learn more about the Northeastern Jurisdiction’s Mission Central Hub.

A Prayer for Disaster Relief Ministries

"Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." -- Romans 5:3b-5a

Loving Savior, you have known the anguish of feeling estranged from friends and family and from life. Walk alongside us, giving us hope that tomorrow can be better. Help us to see the beauty that presents itself. Give us patience as we accustom ourselves to new surroundings. Help us feel at home, even here and now. Release us from the false belief that we can do it alone. You accept us as human beings who need your sustaining love. Help us rest in that acceptance and work with others to enable change in the world. Amen.