New Life for Fractured Churches
New Life for Fractured Churches -- By Walter Fenton -- According to the latest figures, more than 6,100 local churches have disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church since 2019. According to a recent Christianity Today article, many more would as well, save for...
Taking Stock of Methodism’s Shift
Taking Stock of Methodism’s Shift -- By Thomas Lambrecht -- At the end of July, we reached the climax of church disaffiliations for the year. The flurry of spring annual conferences approved several thousand church disaffiliations, meaning most of the churches that...
National Treasure
By Steve Beard - I spent the holidays with Dolly Parton. Well, not literally. Like everything else in 2020, it was all virtual – and it was a whirlwind. Throughout her rhinestone-studded career, Dolly has sold over 100 million albums, starred in countless movies and...
Creating in Chaos
By Jessica LaGrone - 2020 was a mess. It was a global health mess, an economic mess, a political mess. It messed up our events, our holidays, our plans, and our lives. Some lives were certainly more devastated than others, whether by illness or grief or financial...
The Zacchaeus Surprise
By Scott Sauls - To the surprise of many, Jesus gave special, affirmational attention to the man Zacchaeus, who is identified in scripture as a chief tax collector (Luke 19:1-10). Because of his role as tax collector for the Roman treasury, Zacchaeus would have been...
The Indecency of Hope
By Elizabeth Glass Turner - There are two kinds of propaganda: the true and the false. Propaganda is a charged word, evoking a range of associations depending on your nationality or job. Marketing professionals may harbor fondness for it; historians, less so. But...
General Conference Options
By Thomas Lambrecht As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ramp up across the U.S. and around the world, church leaders are thinking once again of General Conference, scheduled for August 29-September 7, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are rumors floating around...
Water is Life
Photography by Mike DuBose, story by Kathy L. Gilbert - “Water is life,” the women sing. At 4:30 a.m., it is pitch black in the village of Mzira in Malawi – a nation wedged between Zambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania. In the early morning sky, the Southern Cross and the...
