Thousands of Cleaning Buckets have poured into Michigan over the past two years to care for flood and tornado relief in both annual conferences. This bucket brigade was on duty in Warren last summer.
SUSAN KIM
United Methodist Committee on Relief
March 5, 2015—There is a most joyful assembly line at Messiah United Methodist Church, in Springfield, Va., as people stand beside long tables laden with towels, soap, bandages and other supplies. They are putting together United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) health kits that will ultimately connect the local church with people in need across the world.
The Messiah congregation has a challenging goal: to assemble 1,000 kits in around four hours. They are intently focused as they work together. Church member Cindy Dickinson, who helped organize the assembly, said she believes mission does not always mean travel, although she and her husband have been on many United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM) trips over the years.
“We tried to think of hands-on stuff where people don’t have to go anywhere,” she said. “We wanted to get the congregation engaged, to tell them they can do something here and now.”
Old? Young? You Can Help
Assembling UMCOR kits is an activity that draws people of all ages, agreed Eileen Angle-Sanders, also a member of Messiah. In the past, she has organized the assembly of cleaning buckets. “You can get people of any age to help,” she said. “On one occasion, we had mothers read the story of Noah’s ark with their children to make the connection with floods.”
As Patti O’Neill, a parish nurse, watched the health kits come together, she was especially moved when she thought of the people who would use the supplies. “If everybody shows up here at the church, something good will happen. That’s what’s happening right now,” she said.
Will You Accept the Challenge?
At Messiah, the congregation surpassed its goal of assembling 1,000 kits—on an early March morning in icy weather. Nicholas Jaeger, an UMCOR program manager who has overseen relief-kit distributions across the world, raised a question to churches everywhere: why not put this challenge to your church, or to your conference?
“Could your church meet the Thousand-Kit Challenge?” he asked. “Over the past couple of years our inventory has been low. We’re looking for ways to engage people in assembling kits.”
Kathy Kraiza, UMCOR’s executive director of Relief Supplies, commended the Messiah congregation for its commitment and effort. “This comes at a time when we are very low on health, school, layette, sewing and bedding kits,” she said.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could get churches to challenge each other within their conferences—and then conference-to-conference and then jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction? We could even get small churches to challenge larger churches if it was tallied by number of kits per number of church members,” Kraiza suggested.
At Messiah, church members collected money to purchase the items for the health kits. They then put together instruction sheets for assembly, set up long tables, and coordinated times for kids and adults to assemble. As they worked together assembling kits, they found themselves talking about the rapidly changing needs of the world, and how the church connects people through love and compassion.
As Kraiza manages the shipments of thousands of kits on a regular basis, she believes the church is more connected now than ever before. “I love the creative ways churches come up with to share God’s love,” she said.
#BeUMCOR
This year, UMCOR marks 75 years of being with those in times of crisis. Visit UMCOR’s anniversary resources page and download a Relief-Kit Assembly Fair Guide to help you take on the Thousand-Kit Challenge.
Last Updated on February 2, 2024