| Conference to broadcast racial reconciliation event by John W. Coleman, Jr.UMConnection Staff  The Baltimore-Washington Conference will again transmit by satellite part of its annual session in June to dozens of church downlink sites, thanks to its partnership with Church Communication Network (CCN), a national satellite communications firm based in California.
The conference and CCN will broadcast a three-hour morning program of Bible study, testimonies and worship Saturday, June 14, based on the theme for the meeting, 'Repair the Breach: Restore God's Community.' The program, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., will end with a Service of Repentance and Healing, intended to promote reconciliation for the racial prejudice and discrimination that are part of the legacy of American Methodism. The preacher for the worship service will be James Salley, Associate Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Advancement of the United Methodist-related Africa University, in Zimbabwe. Salley, a layman from South Carolina, is on the staff of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry in Nashville. Members of the annual conference will lead Bible study and worship, among them the leaders of the conference Commission on Religion and Race, Board of Ecumenical and Interreligious Life and Strengthening the Black Church for the Twenty-first Century Committee. Other highlights of the program will include liturgical dance by an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church dance troupe with physical disabilities, the distribution of miniature plumb lines to symbolize a commitment to reconciliation and liturgy to express a covenant of repentance, forgiveness and continued healing. The conference plans to send materials to host downlink sites to enhance their participation, according to Associate Council on Ministries Director Sandra Ferguson. Some program participants will offer testimonies from their experiences in intercultural learning opportunities being sponsored and promoted by the conference. Numerous churches have been using the study gbwc_superusere 'Steps Toward Wholeness' to help them discuss and understand implications of the historic racism in the church that spawned three black denominations. Twenty-nine church teams have taken the three-day Human Mosaic training, offered twice a year over several months, to learn how to welcome and engage people of diverse cultures and backgrounds as equals in shared ministry. For the 2003 broadcast, the conference will invite audiences at remote sites throughout the conference area to join in the worship service and discuss the theme, and Bible study, and reflect among themselves during and after the program. The 2000 General Conference, United Methodism's quadrennial legislative assembly, conducted a special service using liturgy and symbols to atone and seek reconciliation for the historic racist treatment of African American Methodists both those that left the former Methodist Episcopal Church, before further division and eventual merger, and those that remained. It asked all annual conferences to follow its example by encouraging churches to use 'Steps Toward Wholeness' in interracial, and where possible, Pan-Methodist, dialogues, and by conducting a similar symbolic service of repentance and reconciliation prior to the next General Conference in 2004. 'We are going a step further in expanding our service and broadcasting it to churches throughout the conference, thanks to CCN,' said Ferguson. 'We're urging all downlink sites to host and promote this historic event and invite others to attend.' | 
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