Discovering Advent Grace in the Darkness
By Fleming Rutledge - It is dark early at this time of year and that reminds us of a darkness in our world. There is Christmas tinsel in the streets and Christmas music on the radio, but there is a cheapness at the core. The clock on the bank says it is day, but the...
John Wesley and his ”Vital Religion”
“John Wesley and Karl Marx, unmistakably, are the two most influential characters of all modern history,” wrote social historian Dr. J. Wesley Bready (1887-1953) in his colorful and intriguing assessment of the ramifications of the theological and spiritual revival in...
Death, Where is your Sting?
By B.J. Funk
Realizing that he would soon be gone from this world, Dwight L. Moody said to a friend, “Someday you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody is dead. Don’t you believe it. At that moment, I will be more alive than I am now.
Mature Disciples supporting new givers
By Laura Heikes
My mother became a Christian when I was four. From that day forward, we were in church every Sunday…almost. Stewardship Sunday was the one day Mom encouraged us to skip church. Now that we are both pastors, we hope our people don’t feel the same way we did. But we know they do.
Thy Kin-Dom Come
By Liza Kittle
At the 2012 General Conference, the Women’s Division (the leadership organization of United Methodist Women) will petition the worldwide church to become their own separate general agency called United Methodist Women, Inc. If this action is passed, the impact on women and women’s ministry in the UM Church may be dramatic.
The difference that Jesus makes
By Rob Renfroe
I spent the first ten days of August in India, landing in Delhi, spending a day seeing the Taj Mahal, and then seeing what God is doing in the cities of Hyderabad (4 million residents) and Patna (6 million residents in India’s poorest state of Bihar).
Meeting with the Bishops‘ Unity Task Force
In order to keep the lines of communication open between evangelical renewal groups and the Council of Bishops, a gathering of representatives from both entities will take place in Chicago on October 21, 2011. This is a follow-up meeting to one that took place two years ago.
Transformation After Trial
By Diane West
When I was informed that Jimmy Creech had recently released a book of his “memoirs,” Adam’s Gift, I thought about whether or not I wanted to read it. I was raised in First United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska, and my family and I were very much involved in the situation that transpired there over a decade ago when Creech was appointed to the church as its pastor and was eventually put on trial for conducting a high-profile homosexual union ceremony.
