He described the Christian calendar as being like a spiral staircase: you come to the same point in the circle each year, but you have ascended higher up the stairs each year than you were the year before, or at least that is the purpose of the Christian calendar.
There I was, punching couch cushions, trying to keep my sudden, violent shouts muted so I wouldn’t wake up the kids. If you watched the University of Kentucky vs. Notre Dame college basketball game Saturday night, you know what I’m talking about: a nail-biter, an epic battle. “This is why we love sports,” a headline blazed the following morning. In
It has been said that the dinner table—that place where we eat, talk, and share life together with others—is an extension of the Eucharist.
The text for this sermon is Mark 2:13-22 Many of us have suffered a punch-the-clock kind of job. This is the kind of job that you see as a stepping stone, and you hope there may be a day when you do not have to live through its drudgery. Perhaps even now you currently yearn for the other side of
For Wesley, the purpose of fasting was not to lose weight or to be more physically healthy. Wesley believed fasting was crucial for the spiritual health of Jesus’ disciples.
The rise of the internet has created a perfect storm for growing numbers of men to become addicted. It is available. It is anonymous. I suspect no other generation of men – or their pastors – had such a collision of forces that are the same time both irresistible and destructive.
For some reason God seems to do the best character development work when we are in the wilderness. Throughout the biblical text we see people out in the wilderness or in the “wintertime” of their spiritual lives. It is often here that God decides to do something new. “Now my heart is returned to sister winter,” as singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens
But you need both. A Paul and a Peter. Someone who will confront and another who will comfort. It takes that balance of truth and grace to get someone to move beyond their epic fail and into effective service.
We allow grace to operate in our lives by allowing Christ to be alive in us. We affirm the living Christ. Freedom and joy in the Christian life depend on this. Christ is alive today. He is a now reality. This reality must become personal: Christ is alive in me.
Today my first-person perspective of Resurrection Day sits over at this website in honor of the traditional myrrh-bearers – the women who went to care for Jesus’ body at the tomb, later running and announcing the resurrection to the rest of the disciples. (Yes, Protestants – after Greek Orthodox Pascha [Easter], the tradition observes the Feast of the Holy Myrrhbearers; have
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 + Founded by missionaries from the United States, the Iglesia Metodista de Chile became autonomous in 1969. Today, it consists of 9,882 members across 90 congregations. This church has a powerful legacy of “integral mission,” maintaining a strong focus on education, social justice, and service. Notably, a vibrant Pentecostal movement grew out of
Dear Friends of World Methodist Evangelism, World Methodist Evangelism has been blessed with strong leadership since its inception. Sir Alan Walker of Australia, provided inspired early direction (1978-1988), launching the first International Christian Youth Conference on Evangelism – now known as Metanoia – in 1980. In 1989, Dr. H. Eddie Fox became WME’s first full-time Executive Director and significantly expanded
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 + The Chinese Methodist Church of Australia is a beautiful example of a “missionary church.” It grew out of the dedicated work of Methodists from Singapore and Malaysia who established the first congregation in 1986. Today, the CMCA has 1,482 members in 26 congregations, featuring mainly Mandarin-speaking services alongside several English-speaking ones. We
In the Philippines, our Christmas season starts on September 1 and ends around the second week of January the following year. Being a predominantly Catholic country, Christmas decorations are usually taken down after “Three Kings”, referring to when the Wise Men visited Jesus at the house and brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh as narrated in the Gospel of
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 K+ The Methodist presence in Brazil dates back to 1867. Today, it is a vibrant, autonomous church consisting of over 262,424 members across more than 1,101 congregations. At World Methodist Evangelism, we are especially grateful for our partnership with the Brazilian church, as three members of our own WME team – Paulo and Juliana
There are some experiences or encounters that are so solidly lodged in our memory they continue to invade our consciousness – to haunt us – to help us or to hinder our Christian walk, to call and challenge us to be more than we are. John Birkbeck is a person around whom for me a whole cluster of memories is
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 + The Iglesia Evangélica Metodista en Bolivia consists of 9,190 members worshiping in 194 congregations. While it was founded by American missionaries in 1906, it underwent a radical transformation in 1969 to become an autonomous, indigenous-led church. Today, it is a church that looks and sounds like its nation, with a majority of
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 + If you’ve ever visited Sweden, you know it’s breathtakingly beautiful. Deep forests. Thousands of islands. Long summer evenings. But it’s also one of the most secular nations in the world. For many people, faith is viewed as something private, or even unnecessary. And yet, the gospel continues to take root. Back in
official website Members 0 K+ Congregations 0 + Methodism arrived in Argentina in 1836, when a missionary named John Dempster arrived in Buenos Aires from New York. In 1843, the first Methodist sanctuary in all of South America was dedicated there. But here’s the twist: for decades, it was against local regulations to preach the gospel in Spanish. Methodists could minister
In my two previous articles (read part 1 here and part 2 here) we focused on two of the big truths the three wise men can teach us. One, only the wise know their wisdom is incomplete and limited. Two, the wise men not only know their wisdom is incomplete they know they can’t save themselves. Those who are wise always know that their wisdom
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