| Bishop calls volunteers to Baltimore By Dean Snyder
UMCOnnection Staff In response to President Bushs national call for volunteerism, a United Methodist bishop is inviting Christians and people of faith and good will to serve in Baltimore this summer. The president is challenging Americans to commit 4,000 hours of their lives to volunteer service. Bishop Felton Edwin May of the Baltimore-Washington Conference applauded the presidents call. He said the presidents challenge is a secular version of Christs call to Christian discipleship. I am pleased that the president is mobilizing the country to do good, Bishop May said. Many of us who call ourselves Christians have not done enough to serve our neighbors even though this is what Jesus clearly tells us to do.  President Bush is calling us to be Good Samaritans, Bishop May added. Too often we have hurried by on the other side of human need on our way to church meetings and choir rehearsals.
Bishop May is issuing an invitation to Christians to volunteer in Baltimore this summer as part of an effort to transform the lives of a whole generation of lost children and offer an alternative to substance abuse to the one in 10 residents of the city now addicted to drugs. In an appeal made in his State of the Union address and featured on the cover of the April 20 issue of Parade Magazine, President Bush called upon Americans to overcome evil with the gathering momentum of millions of acts of kindness and good. During the past seven months we have been reminded that we are citizens with obligations to each other, to our country and to history, President Bush said. We have begun to think less of the goods we can accumulate and more about the good we can do. Consistent with the presidents emphasis on volunteering, after three summers of conducting tent ministries, called Saving Stations, Baltimore United Methodists are now turning to fellow Christians throughout the nation for help. I am going to ask America to come to Baltimore and help us, Bishop May told a gathering of United Methodist pastors April 17 at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Baltimore. Baltimore has been dubbed the heroin capital of America. Some families have now been addicted for three generations, Bishop May said. People are living a hell that should shame us, we who claim to believe in a loving God. We are going to love the hell out of Baltimore, he said. Saving Station ministries are an effort to meet human need wherever it exists through community and economic development, Bishop May said. Last summer Saving Stations helped 130 people to be delivered from drug addiction, according to Timothy Warner, director of Holy Boldness ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. The ministry brought healing to families and neighborhoods as well as addicted individuals, he said. Hundreds of others made commitments to Christ and became involved in local churches, according to Warner. Saving Stations, set up in vacant lots or parks near United Methodist churches, include social services and educational programs under the tent during the day and revival services during the evenings. Hesed ministers work with those seeking deliverance from addiction by helping them get access to detox and recovery programs and by offering support when they reenter the community. Programs for children include vacation Bible schools under the tent and a Jesus Circus, including clowns and marching bands parading through the neighborhood. Bishop May said there is a need for physicians and nurses, social workers, lawyers, technicians, teachers and people with strong backs and warm hearts to volunteer in the Saving Stations this summer. He hopes that Volunteers in Mission, a denominational program of short-term missionary service, will mobilize workers for Baltimore ministries. Everyone who senses any inner nudge from God to volunteer can make a difference, he added. If you sense God calling you, there will be work for you to do for the sake of Christ and the people of this city. Volunteer opportunities include medical screening, counseling, drug ministries, evangelism, music, clowning and teaching. Volunteers are asked to contribute a week or more between June 16 and Sept. 5. For more information contact Warner at (800) 492-2525, Ext. 433, or
or visit www.bwconf.org. | 
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