United Methodist general agencies rate below average in fulfilling the church’s mission to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” A comprehensive study of church structures also found that agencies often fail to collaborate with each other and their boards are too large and meet too infrequently to provide effective oversight.

The Council of Bishops recently ratified the voting results on the nearly three dozen proposed amendments to the United Methodist Church’s constitution (news story on page 5). Of the 32 proposed amendments, 27 of them failed to receive the two-thirds vote necessary from annual conference members in order to become part of the church’s constitution.

Stepping around Biblical teaching and the firm stance of our United Methodist Discipline, proponents of full inclusion for practicing gays and lesbians gained another victory at the 2010 session of the West Ohio Annual Conference.

A significant aspect of John Wesley’s vision was to teach ordinary eighteenth century people to be theologians. Reading Wesley’s sermons or his writings such as Notes on the New Testament can be tough going. We need to remember that he spoke and wrote for “the average Methodist,” not for theological experts. That we find Wesley too intellectual is proof, not that Wesley’s church was more theological than our own, but rather that theological indifferentism is sapping the life out of us.

The United Methodist Church can experience revival by returning to the spiritual practices of Methodism’s early years, say two scholars leading an effort to develop passionate lay leaders.

It doesn’t happen often that I read something that stops me dead in my tracks and makes me think, “C’mon, he didn’t really say that, did he?” But it happened last week when I was perusing an article from the United Methodist News Service about the Call to Action Committee.

Lively, vital churches come in all sizes, locations, and settings says a new study commissioned by The United Methodist Church, but they consistently share some common factors that work together to influence congregational vitality. That means what works to make those churches energetic and growing can likely work for other churches too.

On August 17, 2009, a 40-day, nationwide prayer effort was launched with the goal of witnessing to United Methodist campus ministries as being vital centers of vocational calling. We are praying for new clergy and lay ministers who will answer Gods call over the coming decades to campus ministry and we are interceding for our campus ministries in the start of the 2009-2010 school year.

The Los Angeles Times ran a photo depicting a bloodied corpse lying prone on the ground, a victim of the infamous drug cartel violence in Juárez, Mexico. The caption described Tierra Nueva, the area where the shooting occurred, as “a graffiti-stained neighborhood of dirt streets and concrete shacks in south Ciudad Juárez.”

But that’s only part of the story.