TALLAHASSEE — When Saint Paul’s United Methodist Church here formed a Covenant Relationship with the Southeastern Jurisdiction United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM) last year, it reinforced what the church has been doing for years, according to Leroy Irwin, a member of the church and president of the board of directors for the jurisdiction’s UMVIM.

In the 22 years he has been a member of the church, Irwin says Saint Paul’s has always had a strong focus on missions. The church has been giving $1,000 of its annual budget to UMVIM for a number of years and is currently giving financial support to five missionaries.

"When people become involved in missions, the church becomes alive in mission," he said. "UMVIM is a good avenue for that."

The Covenant Relationship between churches and UMVIM was the idea of former Florida Conference Bishop H. Hasbrouck Hughes Jr. who worked for a year as Promoter/Interpreter for the Southeastern Jurisdiction’s UMVIM office, Irwin said. A relationship is formed when a church or organization agrees to contribute $3 per member annually to UMVIM. Churches or groups with more than 333 members can pay $1,000 annually.

Saint Paul’s, however, is not just giving money to missions. At least 60 people from the church have been part of district mission teams that have traveled to Mexico, Haiti, St. Vincent and the Red Bird Missionary Conference. Members have also joined Tallahassee District mission teams to Cuba during the last three years as part of a combined effort between the Cuba Florida Covenant and UMVIM, Irwin said. Twenty-five of the district’s churches have covenants with Cuban churches.

"When we send VIM teams out, we do it as a district program, rather than just a church program," he said. "We send work teams out with other members of the district and help smaller-membership churches participate in missions."

The most popular mission projects, though, are the ones close to home, Irwin said. Teams recently assisted with hurricane recovery in Apalachicola and helped build an African Methodist Episcopal church in rural Madison County.

"We also reopened a church that had been closed in Tallahassee," Irwin said. District volunteers completed nearly $30,000 worth of work on the building which now houses Ray of Hope United Methodist Church, the first African-American church in the Tallahassee District.

The reward for the commitment to missions, says Irwin, is seeing lives changed, especially the people on the mission team. "I love to see the change in people’s lives," he said. "Some people I know have gone into the ministry and list that as one of the contributing factors."

Of the 36 churches that have Covenant Relationships with UMVIM, six are in the Florida Conference. In addition to Saint Paul’s, they are First United Methodist Church, Stuart; First United Methodist Church, Winter Garden; Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Tampa; Killearn United Methodist Church, Tallahassee; and Trinity United Methodist Church, Gainesville.