Native American leaders prepare charcoal that will be used to burn cedar during a prayer service for immigrant children held at the Casa Padre detention center in Brownsville, Texas. Many Native Americans believe that cedar smoke carries their prayers to God. (Photo: Mike DuBose, UMNS)

Native American Ministries grants, made possible through offerings on this special Sunday, can support ministries as unique and creative as the tribal affiliations of the congregations that put them to work.

When the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference (OIMC) first visited the Standing Rock Reservation to distribute UMCOR school kits, a wrong turn led their mission team to the Little Eagle community, where they observed several challenges faced by residents, including high unemployment and poverty. Through this wrong turn, which turned out to be God’s right turn, the OIMC established an ongoing relationship with the community.

An OIMC mission team brought holiday joy to the students at Little Eagle Grant School last Christmas through its annual Christmas mission trip, now in its fourth year. The project provides Christmas gifts to K-8th grade students at the school, located in a remote area of South Dakota. A second grant for OIMC supported another mission to the Standing Rock Reservation to distribute school kits earlier in the year.

Sunset over Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. (Photo: Jen Silver)

Great-Spirit UMC in Portland, Oregon, and the Native American Cooperative Ministry (NACM) in Pembroke, North Carolina, both applied for grants to provide food for their communities. Great-Spirit provides a Sunday dinner every week and NACM delivers food to mostly Lumbee community members. Their plan incorporated a host of volunteers to plant and harvest two vegetable gardens and make the food deliveries with a personal touch.

A Navajo congregation in Cortez, Colorado, requested help to support their pastor and his work. Native Grace UMC is seeking to build sustainability while serving intergenerational Navajo families just outside the Navajo Reservation, which is next door in Montezuma Creek, Utah. The Navajo pastor shares the love of Christ through the lens of Navajo language, culture and spiritual practice.

Contributions on Native American Ministries Sunday help develop and strengthen Native American ministries within each United Methodist annual conference and provide scholarships for Native Americans pursuing ordained or licensed pastoral ministry.

United Methodists are called to recognize and honor the gifts and contributions made by Native Americans to our society and church. The United Methodist Church acknowledges a gap in understanding Native American life and culture, while affirming the sacredness of Indigenous peoples, their languages, their unique identities and their contributions to the church and the world.

Half of what is collected on this special Sunday will stay within the annual conference of the churches that collect the offering to help sustain regional and local Native American Ministries.

Celebrate the ministries, communities and congregations of Native Americans across the U.S. with an online gift to Native American Ministries or drop a gift in the offering plate of your local church when the offering is taken.

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.

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