By Reed Haigler Hoppe

“You know, in 1978 we stoned a missionary here. Killed him. We haven’t allowed anyone else in here since then…until you guys. You are different. It’s not your words, it’s your actions. We love you. We’re really glad that you came.” –Peruvian Woman

By Barbara Dunlap-Berg
Evangelical United Methodist groups are teaming up with evangelical groups in other mainline Protestant denominations to share resources. Some of these evangelicals are working toward reform within their denominations. Others are in the process of splitting to form new denominations. The leaders have covenanted to engage in joint ministries and to explore cooperatively planting churches and sending missionaries, offering incubator facilities to support new church plants, providing theological education and sharing space with dislocated congregations.

By Karen Booth
Over a decade ago the Lord called me out of the local pastorate and into a ministry of sexual redemption, healing, and transformation. God invited and commissioned me to help Him equip local churches to become “cities of refuge” for the sexually confused and broken — communities where the truth about God’s will for human sexuality is taught and modeled and where those who sin and fall short are compassionately restored to righteous, holy life. I have to admit that I’ve sometimes doubted whether or not I heard God accurately. And I get discouraged when I consider the wealth of evangelical talent, treasure, and energy that has had to be devoted to defending a biblically faithful sexual ethic.

By Elizabeth Glass Turner
Over the past 20 years – and that covers a host of Incredible Hulk and Spiderman movies – many evangelicals have reexamined how we approach popular culture as individuals and as a church. Not that long ago, innumerable conservative ministries held prominent sway in the way we evangelicals thought of modern North American culture (think “Murphy Brown”), issuing tallies of the number of curse words used in certain sitcoms in their household newsletters.

By Thomas A. Lambrecht
Would you pay $149,000 for one seminary graduate? That is what The United Methodist Church did in 2011. According to statistics released in April by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the 13 official United Methodist seminaries received a total of $14,461,705 in Ministerial Education Fund money from our apportionments in 2011 and graduated 337 persons into ordained ministry. That averages out to $42,900 per ordinand.

By Timothy C. Tennent
Demographics don’t lie, you just have to be willing to listen to them. For example, if China has 90 million believers, but the vast majority of those believers are under 30 years old and the United States has 90 million evangelicals and the majority of those are over 50, then there is a demographic story which is gradually unfolding which is not “heard” when one is simply looking at raw statistics of Christian affiliation.