In the churches I have served, generally speaking, the UMW and UMM have had only older, mostly retired, members. I find that both the United Methodist Women and Men's groups in my present congregation have no members younger than 45 or 50 (except for myself). Now, the church as a whole has some younger members, but for some reason, they are attracted to neither the UMW nor UMM.
Is the mission and purpose of these groups appealing to younger adults? Or do they have agendas or programs that are out of touch with the cares and concerns of anyone younger than 40?
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18 comments:
Be glad to have church members younger than 45, let alone UMM and UMW members.
I've been a member of 2 UM churches. The first had no UMM, but an active UMW, and my current one has both. The UMW is more active, however.
My church has neither. they young peopl;e are just not interested in them. The concept of UMW began to die out about the time the UMC started ordaining wwomen
Being an under 45 year old woman, I can tell you that the reason the UMW does not appeal to me in our church is that it meets only during the day, when I am at work. It has not adapted to changing society. I have instead found other "small" groups that connect me to the church, and other ways to serve in mission.
On the other hand, the UMM in our church had died out. A few years ago, it was reborn. It appeals to men of all ages in our church -- youngest new fathers to grandfathers. This group of men work on habitat houses, do yard work at the parsonage, paint, and cook meals for the church (to name only a few of their activities). Next month they are serving as caterers for a church wedding.
The "rebirth" of the UMM group has made it alive, while our UMW group just keeps getting smaller. Sometimes death is necessary to create new life.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the ordination of women.
If our Methodist men would choose to meet at any other time then 8:00 am on a Saturday morning I might...might think about going. That is if they are going to talk about more than local politics and the military.
Who am I kidding...I'm not going to go and freakn' work here.
I know my church (a large one) has a UMW, I'm not sure about a UMM though. Like someone else said, the UMW meets during the day, something to doesn't work for many/most young adults.
I don't wrok in the mornings, so I supoose I could go, and would most likely be welcomed, but it just doesn't seem aimed at me or other my age. And from what I can tell it is just a social thing, with a special speaker. At least that is how I see it.
The UMW is dying in my church and the UMM is already died. The UMW has become only about "mission", not a bad thing, but there is no spiritual content. The UMM was about "work" and died years ago, again no spiritual content. Our bible studies have taken the place of these traditional organizations.
Years ago I went to a UMM retreat and, sad to say, it felt like I had stepped into a 1950s time machine. The men were retirement age and played dominoes all night.
In my travels, many UM churches have vital men's and women's groups--but they are not under the UMM or UMW umbrella. The men & women are doing their own thing: father/son fishing trips, mother/daughter teas, Wild at Heart studies, spa weekends, etc
Kim may be on to something. The UMM and UMW may be dying to give birth to an "emergent" men's and women's ministry within the UM church.
we dont do UMM or UMW in our local church. Most of our congregatoin are20-early 40s. and some small kids.
we have small groups and some are gender based but we do not report it as UMM or UMW work. I mean why would we?
Folks younger than 40 just do not join organizations anymore, of any type. They are involved with groups, but they are informal groups. This is true for both secular and religious groups.
At our church the UMW only meets during the day. UMM never happened in our church. Promise Keepers took off, but then the Bishop asked ministers in our conference to discourage being in PK. We lost a lot of young men.
Oh well.
Our UMW covers the entire age spectrum (at least late 20's to old) with 10 "circles" that meet on various schedules. They are, primarily, 45+ in age...but then so is our church. My problem is that, for the most part, they would rather talk about or contribute to missions rather than actually being in mission...at least in some of the older circles.
Our UMM group died a slow death. However, there is a stirring of life as it is being resurrected at the insistence of several young adult (late 20's - early 30's) men. Hopefully, the renaissance of the group won't be sabotaged (innocently) by this one guy whoose definition of what the group should be is so far removed from the other members. Unfortunatley, he's the type that can be such a pain in the rump that most of the guys will let him have his way just so he'll shut up.
I have some groups I report as UMW, I just tell THEM they are UMW. It's important to maintain the UMW in particular for a certain reason.
100 points to anyone who can tell me that reason.
(don't you just love pop-quizzes!)
this is hilariously true at our church. the UMW, made up of around 30 women over the age of 70 just can't figure out why the younger women aren't interested in coming.
my mom's church of around 400 in attendance officially closed its UMW and declared it truly dead and over.
our UMM consists of about 120 guys (85 of which come to church at no other time during the year) getting together once a year to have a Pancake Day, where they try to serve more pancakes than a church about 1/5th of our size. we always lose to them too.
a friend of mine in his forties is trying to get it going again, and can't get more than 8 dudes to come to monthly meetings even though he serves a full breakfast.
last week he decided to officially disband UMM, including Pancake Day, and to start it again as a home Bible study for truly committed men. He says that UMM as an organization will no longer put its stamp on the Pancake Day, if the other guys want to keep doing it fine.
My church has a UMW and they basically decide the missions of the church. They are the older ladies and meet in the afternoon. They tried to get a group of younger ones to meet at night, but that didn't pan out. I personally believe that the UMW will cease to exist in 10 or 15 years. But that comes from a limited view. Maybe they're stronger in other areas.
Rev. Mommy,
OK, I'll take a guess that the UM Book of Discipline requires a local congregation to have a UMW, while it allows a local congregation to have a UMM.
Hey! I am the president of our UMM and I AM NOT OLD!!!
But we are working on the age thing. There are four or five active members my age or younger (30's, 40's) and the rest are retirement age or older. We have begun inviting the younger men and even teenagers with some positive results.
Our UMW has circles from avery age group.
I echo what others have said in that there are men's and women's ministries here at Coy, but under neither banner. I'd rather there be "unbannered" ministry, than "offical" groups that do nothing.
I'm 22 years old, and I've actually been active in our campus ministry's version of UMW. We've changed the focus of it every year to meet the needs of the girls who want to be a part of it. One year, we had lots of interest so we had a lot of craft days and mission projects and did stuff with some other churches. This year we've cut it back to mostly only-girl social events, like "Date Night w/ Jesus" which have also been great. We're not a large ministry, so we don't have a large group. We're just a group of girls who enjoy each other's company and do what we can to enhance our campus ministry.
I probably will not, however, join a UMW when I leave my campus ministry. The churches I've been a member of have had UMW's, but, like other people have mentioned, they're all old ladies. Nothing wrong with old ladies, I'm just not one. They advertise that they do craft projects and knitting and cooking, all stuff I'm not really into. I've thought about going in to change the groups, but I really don't want to be the annoying kid who goes in, says, "I want to be a part of this, so let's change it to do what I want it to." Obviously some people enjoy it, and there are normally other programs more suited to young adults, so why shake things up?
Also, I've attended a few sub-district meetings, and the devotions and content of the meetings have been very spiritually shallow. Not to say that applies to all UMW circles, but it definately is another factor which adds to my current disinterest.
Money and holdings.
UMW has a budget of around $27 million this year. A full half of the money goes to the GBGM for mission work or to UMW sponsored mission projects.
Another third goes to upkeep of properties and pensions -- most of the centers that would have been called "orphanages" and their cousins are owned by UMW or the division of women (general conference level). There a many, many properties that are held and supported by the division of women.
It is founded on social justice. It does important work -- more that most people are aware. Work that is very important. But because there is lack of understanding about the purpose of UMW, there is a growing lack of support.
There is no structure like it for UMM. There is a general commission for UMM, but they do not have the budget or holdings like the Division on Women.
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