Prayer service at Bethel AME Columbia after Charleston Shooting – Rev. Ken Nelson Director of Clergy Services
Response to Charleston
South Carolina United Methodists are responding with prayer for our AME partners during this time of tragedy. We are encouraging our local United Methodist Churches to work with and support local AME churches in whatever ways possible. Many United Methodist Churches have already held or scheduled prayer services in the wake of the shooting.
The United Methodist News Service in partnership with the SC Conference communications wrote an article.
Here is the link: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/united-methodists-stand-with-ame-after-church-shooting2
“Let us pray individually, and collectively. Praying together for understanding and peace is the pathway to healing. Much prayer is needed in Charleston, in South Carolina, and in our world. My hope is that we will band together as people of faith at this time so that the world may see through us the love of Jesus Christ.” – Bishop Holston
Read Bishop Holston’s full statement about the shooting here.
The SEJ College of Bishops has also issued a response.
In response to the murders of the pastor and eight others during a prayer meeting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015, the Southeastern Jurisdiction College of Bishops of the United Methodist Church offers the following response:
“The College of Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church stands with our Methodist family at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, with our brother Bishop Richard Franklin Norris of the Seventh Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and with our colleague Bishop Jonathan Holston, of the South Carolina Conference.
We condemn this act of violence in the house of the Lord. We commit ourselves anew to the work of reconciliation in the midst of hatred. And we lift high the cross of Jesus Christ, as God’s witness to the violence and division that is our human condition.
Please join us in acts of prayer, compassion and justice on behalf of our Pan-Methodist sisters and brothers.”
We also commend the Statement on Racism offered at the Council of Bishops in Berlin, Germany, May 7, 2015.
