The Conference Board of Global Ministries (CBGM) was happy recently to introduce the new mission guide titled "Mission Links: Living the Beatitudes," which has replaced Rainbow Covenant. 

Mission Links is published in an online format in order to decrease costs and make it more flexible and easier to update. In this way, we hope that folks of the Northern Illinois Conference will find the guide to be a friendly resource to use for giving and serving in mission. 

To transition to the new guide, we thought that a summer sermon series on the Beatitudes using the guide would help educate our congregants and remind us why we support missions. We recommend using "#Blessed, The Great Invitation Worship Series" created by Discipleship Ministries. It can be found at umcdiscipleship.org by searching #Blessed or click here.

The board is grateful that in 2020 there were 52 faithful congregations who were Rainbow Covenant Churches. Our goal is to increase that number going forward; however, moving forward we think it’s more descriptive to call those faithful congregations “Mission Link Churches.”  

There is no change in the initial participation. To be a Mission Link church, your congregation must give 100% of your apportionments first, and then give to our mission partners in the guide. 

Although the name has changed and the rainbow color bands are gone, the mission remains the same. CBGM looks forward to many more years in mission with NIC congregations.

Click here to access the booklet.