Navigating Special Times of Refreshing
Navigating Special Times of Refreshing By Suzanne Nicholson What do you do when the streams of living water suddenly burst into a flood? The spiritual outpouring that began at Asbury University on February 8, 2023, was spontaneous and unexpected. After an ordinary...
Silencing United Methodist Voices
By Rob Renfroe I have now been banned in two states. Ok, that’s a bit of an overstatement. Two annual conferences, each covering an individual state, have determined that I may not speak to their churches. Even though I am still a United Methodist elder. Even if I am...
U.S. Regional Conference: Defeated Idea Revisited
By Tom Lambrecht - In the aftermath of the highly contentious General Conference last February in St. Louis, many ideas have surfaced as a way to attempt to resolve the conflict dividing our church. One of these ideas is a proposal from the denomination’s Connectional...
Missionary God
By Max A. Wilkins - God is a missionary God. From the moment of creation as told in Genesis, God makes his missionary nature known. With Jesus’ earthly mission, God burst forth into creation showing his missional heart. Jesus not only modeled a missional life, he also...
Wouldn’t it Be Nice…
By B.J. Funk - Wouldn’t it be nice if kindness made a comeback? Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t afraid to send our children to school, to go shopping at the mall, or to go without fear into a movie theater? Wouldn’t it be nice if church were a safe place to be, if...
U.S. Dips Below Majority Membership; Hispanic Growth Trends Up
By Heather Hahn - The U.S.’s majority status in The United Methodist Church is coming to an end – and may be there already. That’s according to projections from the denomination’s General Council on Finance and Administration – based on the continuing decline in U.S....
Are Traditionalists “Leaving” The United Methodist Church?
By Tom Lambrecht - The recently announced separation plan called the "Protocol on Reconciliation and Grace through Separation" has aroused many reactions in and beyond the church. Some are satisfied and even hopeful that the long-running conflict in our church can...
Why I Support the Separation Proposal
By Rob Renfroe - Responses to the proposed plan for separation could hardly be more divergent. Some are shouting "hallelujah" and others are feeling dismissed, even sold out. There are several components of the plan that I do not like. In particular, I don't like the...
