Decades ago, Barbara Phillips, a young Navajo woman, noticed a cross and flame symbol on a thrift shop wall in Shiprock, New Mexico. The United Methodist Church logo and the encouragement of a missionary with Four Corners Native American Ministry became her inspiration to weave the symbol using beads and fishing line. It wasn’t long before Phillips was hand-making cross and flame necklaces for United Methodists across the globe.
Phillips’ son, Dennison Billy Jr., carries on the bead craft tradition with his mother. Most recently, the Phillipses’ work has included a United Women in Faith-approved bead-woven necklace featuring the organization’s new logo.
Your support of the World Service Fund apportionment supports program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church.
It’s a story Glenna Kyker tells as she explains the connection between her United Women in Faith sisters in Grand Junction, Colorado, and their Indigenous neighbors.
During her time in Texas, Kyker, who was raised Choctaw in Oklahoma, had served as director of Native American Ministries for the Texas Conference. When she moved to Colorado, she found that Pat Backes, Ellie Young, Pam Bersch, and other United Methodist Women felt as passionately as she did about nurturing relationships with Native Americans. They began visiting with the Navajo United Methodist churches in and around their district, learning from them.
They began buying their crafts, and selling those crafts to grow a ministry. But the connection goes much deeper than selling and promoting traditional bead-weaving to raise money for United Women in Faith and to return to their Indigenous neighbors. For United Women in Faith members, it’s about learning, listening, and being in ministry with Indigenous people, not in ministry to them.
“It was not always easy to accept a different way of doing, of supporting projects instead of leading them,” Kyker recently wrote for the Utah/Western Colorado District newsletter.
In 2023, the Grand Junction First United Methodist unit revived a dormant District Committee on Native American Ministries—implementing listening skills their Navajo neighbors had shared with them and the 2008 United Methodist Women Mission Study course on Native Americans titled “Giving Our Hearts Away.”
“It blossomed from there,” Backes said, adding that the “Giving Our Hearts Away” study became a foundation for how the unit carries out its ministry. (It even resulted in the unit crafting cloth bags for the Anasazi beans they sell rather than bagging the bean portions in plastic.)
And now, the women are hoping they can help others learn. So, they share articles regarding culture. They advocate for full participation of United Methodist Native Americans at all levels of the church and in the life of the church. They help individual churches write grants for Native American ministry projects. And they’re creating a toolkit for land acknowledgments based on what they’ve learned from Indigenous friends and from books and resources recommended by United Women in Faith.
For more information or to inquire about a purchase, reach out to the members of United Women in Faith of First United Methodist Church of Grand Junction at uwf.nativeministry@gmail.com. Please be mindful that all items are carefully hand-crafted and thus may not be available for immediate purchase.
excerpt from a story by Audrey Stanton-Smith, editor, Response
The World Service Fund provides basic financial support to program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church. Through World Service funding, agencies support annual conferences and local congregations in living out God’s mission for the worldwide Church. General agencies also provide essential services and ministries beyond the scope of individual local congregations and annual conferences through services and ministries that are highly focused, flexible, and capable of rapid response.
