Our Call to End Gun Violence

At First United Methodist Church in Olympia, Washington, we take seriously Jesus’s call to be peacemakers and John Wesley’s encouragement to “do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.” We believe that prayer must lead to action. We are calling on our fellow Methodists and all people of good will to contact their legislators and demand specific gun safety legislative actions.

Our webpage points to a tool for writing your U.S. Congress members quickly online, as well as information if you'd prefer to mail a letter.  If you would like to join us in the important ministry of ending gun violence, please take a few minutes to visit the webpage and make your voice heard. If we all send individual personalized letters to our lawmakers, together they become a message that cannot be ignored.

If you would like to watch our call to action video and learn more about how this ministry began please keep scrolling.

Inspired by the work of the Arkansas Annual Conference and their gun safety petition, our lay members to Pacific Northwest Annual Conference sought to submit a petition for the upcoming conference session. The petition asked our Bishop to send letters to our legislators on behalf of the entire Pacific Northwest Conference demanding specific gun safety regulations. In conversation with the conference office we learned that even when a letter represents the voices of a thousand people it still only counts as one letter. It is more impactful if we all send individual letters. In response to their suggestion, our Church Council voted to adopt a gun safety ministry as a ministry of our local church. We are thankful to the annual conference for their ongoing support and all of their help in creating the call to action video. Our lay members developed the webpage as a way to empower people to take action on gun safety.

If you would like more information on how to join our gun safety ministry please contact Angelina Goldwell (angelina@fumcoly.org) and she will connect you with the team.