2023 WMJM Goals

In mid-February, members of the WMJM leadership team gathered in Beaverton, Oregon, and on Zoom for our first in person annual leadership retreat since the pandemic started.

The annual retreat is mainly a time to look back at the goals we had set, evaluate our work, and decide on goals for the next year. There was time to reflect and to really focus on what we have accomplished and what we do best as we seek to maximize our skills and gifts moving forward.

In addition to establishing goals for the coming year, we spent some time considering what legislation we would like to propose for annual conferences. Look for more information about that elsewhere in this newsletter, and watch for more details in your mailbox soon.

Here are the goals we agreed on for the next year:

1. Strengthen our existing partnerships and develop new ones

a.      Identify and assess our current partnerships and ways to strengthen them.

b.      Identify new potential partners and begin outreach

2. Leaven justice-seeking in the jurisdiction

a.      Encourage and help people in the jurisdiction to connect with social justice organizations (internal and external to UMC)

b.      Identify organizations in the jurisdiction and the annual conferences and be a catalyst for them to work together.

c.      Work to make jurisdictional leadership, structure, and practices effective for social justice – use jurisdictional values rubric in WMJM and encourage use in other jurisdictional groups 

d.      Identify and make contact with key people within the jurisdiction to facilitate collaborative work across the jurisdiction

e.      Regularly communicate the ideas and proposals of justice-seeking organizations within the jurisdiction

f. Give priority to the following focus areas: racial justice, migration, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive justice, Christian Nationalism, Palestinian human rights, Philippine human rights

3.     Provide support and education on issues related to General Conference and the future of the denomination

a.   Continue to promote decolonization, solidarity, and equity through regionalization as specified in the Christmas Covenant.

b. Submit and support legislation for General Conference that will help move the church toward justice.

Where do you see your work for justice in these goals? To which of the focus areas do you feel called? Are you part of an existing group that would like to work across a broader area? Let us know with a message to wmjm@wmjm.org and we will connect you with others who share the same passions. All of us together can make the United Methodist Church and the world more just and equitable.