Hollywood United Methodist Women

Our first Hollywood UMW meeting!

I don't remember when I became a United Methodist Woman. Maybe it was yesterday, when we had our very first official meeting at Hollywood United Methodist Church. Maybe it was back in my early twenties when Angela and I were awarded mission pins from the Howell United Methodist Women. Maybe it was the day I was first carried into the church in the days after my birth. Or the day I was baptized. Or the day I was confirmed. Or the day I received my third grade Bible. Or the day I started teaching Sunday School when I was just eighteen. Or the day I took over as senior youth group leader. Or when Angela and I started to lead the young adult group at Hollywood UMC. It's hard to pick a day because there have been so many. And this is just another beginning.

It's been a year in the making. Last October, the pastors at Hollywood UMC suggested we re-start the group at our church. It's been decades since the UMW have been active there. So we began. First, I was an interested observer. Willing to attend meetings, volunteer, etc.  And I did. We served lunch at Ronald McDonald House, we chatted, we planned, and then things got serious. This spring I was asked to be the treasurer of our group.

And the rest is history...

Before long, Angela had come on as secretary and we were having hours-long meetings at Denny's in the middle of Hollywood. We were attending district meetings in Redondo Beach and fundraiser tea parties in Burbank and finally, after lots of planning, we were having our first event. Our kickoff meeting.

Our leadership team is five strong and Sunday we gathered in Grant Hall at Hollywood UMC praying more women would join us. And they did! We had over forty women stop in for a catered lunch (Olive Garden for the win!), some giveaways (young and old alike get serious when it comes to prizes!), and an introduction to what being a United Methodist Woman is all about.

We had an amazingly diverse group, which is really something you could say about Hollywood UMC as a whole, so I was not surprised. We had elementary and middle school-aged girls, we had young women, we had mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers, we had women who are looking to socialize, meet new friends, and make a difference. We had women who've been members of the church longer than I've been alive, we had women who've only stopped by once or twice before and were glad they stuck around.

And we had guests from the UMW Cal-Pac Conference and West District as well! These women took time out of their weekend to travel to Hollywood and join us, to share with us their knowledge, their love, and their prayers. And it really meant so much to all of us.

One of our guests from Cal-Pac gave us UMW notepads before she left, and she'd written First Timothy 4:12 on the first page. This morning I pulled out my Bible and looked up the verse. One I noted I'd highlighted some time ago:

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

As I sat at my desk thinking about this passage my first thought was, well I'm not that young. But then I thought about one of the women I sat across from yesterday. She is 90 years old. She'll celebrate her 62nd wedding anniversary on the 28th. And as she held my hand as I helped her out to her car, she squeezed it and said how happy she was that us girls were doing this. How great it was going to be for us.

And I thought about that again. She said this was going to be great for me. And I agreed, but didn't really process that. I had been thinking this whole time about how great this going to be for the church, and for the women of the church, as if I wasn't a member of either of those groups. But in reality, this is about me just as much.

Yesterday I got to speak to several women who I only see in passing during worship. I got to look at their nametag, make eye contact, and connect on a different level. I got to hug women I sometimes don't see for months at a time, I got to be in fellowship with these women who I'm really excited to spend more time with.

Yes, I hope to set an example for others. As a Christian, I try hard to do that always (and often fall short). But I hope that other women in our church, and in our conference, and in our larger denomination, see us, the women of Hollywood UMC, myself included, as an example.

We have awesome plans for our new group. We want to help women, children and youth in our community and around the world. We want to laugh and love and be in fellowship with one another.

I think about being called a girl yesterday and I smile, because to most of the guests from the other UMW groups, many of us are just that, girls. We're young blood in a thriving ministry that's doing amazing things. We're not desperately needed but we are needed. We are needed to set an example for each other, for those who came before, for those who'll come after.

I didn't learn how to be a United Methodist Woman from a book or a program. I learned it from the women in my life, the women in my church. I learned it from watching my mother who's had UMW meetings and activities on her calendar since before I was born. And I'm excited to continue that tradition out here on the west coast. Here's to our first year, Hollywood UMW!