pg. 22 — lightandlifemagazine.com
urfm You are the church
“The funds we obtained from membership from
churches went into a program for training interns in
urban ministry,” said Helen, who added that one of the
program’s highlights was training “Heidi Lyda, who has
been in charge of the LYN House in Indianapolis for
many years since that internship.”
Before FMUF formed, the denomination established
the Continental Urban Exchange (CUE) conference
in 1974 to bring urban Free Methodists together.
CUE continued under the direction of FMUF, and the
Kaufmanns became regulars.
“I came to the fourth CUE, and I’ve been to all the
CUEs ever since,” Milo said.
“From an early age when I was in school, I was always
interested in justice for African Americans. I think I
inherited that interest from my mother. So when Milo
attended several CUE conferences and then I began
going with him, ... my interest in justice ministry
generally increased,” Helen said. “I loved those meetings
where people of a variety of ethnicities got together and
sang and worshipped together, so CUE was really a high
point of the year for me.”
CUE attendance eventually turned into leadership,
and they were honored at the 2012 CUE conference and
given a plaque to commemorate their faithfulness.
“For about 12 years, I planned the CUE conferences,”
Milo said. “One was in Passaic, New Jersey, right on
the edge of Manhattan, and we managed to host half a
dozen graduate students to see what urban ministry
was like. And, of course, Passaic was the fruit of Dwight
Gregory’s wonderful ministry over 10 or 12 years, so we
had perhaps seven different ethnicities represented in
churches there in New Jersey, and our graduate students
were duly impressed.”
Milo also credited Gregory with speaking at rural
churches where “he would present urban ministry as the
new mission field, and the sweet, sainted WMS Women’s
Missionary Society women would latch onto that.”
Milo organized another memorable CUE in Chicago
through a collaboration between Hillside Church, the
+ FMUF Coordinating Council at CUE 2005: (Left to right) President Lieut Curry, John
Hay, B. Elliott Renfroe, Helen Kaufmann, U. Milo Kaufmann, Beth Scandrett-Leatherman
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