Summer is a season for seeing people we normally don’t get to visit much: family reunions in park pavilions, vacation at a camp where we hug people we only see once a year, travel to relatives several states away. The widespread family of faith isn’t really all that different, and sometimes when the flowering tree is in bloom and the
Preachers tend to have favorite passages and topics for preaching and teaching. If you don’t preach from the Revised Common Lectionary each week, it can be easy to fall into predictable patterns that limit your congregation’s exposure to the full range of God’s Word. We all have blind spots, and it’s worth asking where we might be missing the opportunity
“I do not always understand the mystery of prayer, but I know its power.”
World Methodist Evangelism is excited to launch the Residency In Mission program with the placement of our first Resident, Eliza Edge. Eliza will serve in Auckland, New Zealand at the Millwater Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand. As a part of our ongoing commitment to raise up the next generation of leadership in Evangelism and Mission, RIM seeks to foster
On my office shelf is a 200-year-old brick from Bethel Academy, the first Methodist school in the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains, established by circuit riding Methodist preacher Francis Asbury in 1790. From those roots sprang Asbury College in 1890 and Asbury Theological Seminary in 1923. You might look at that brick on my shelf and think it’s
Today’s reading is from Acts 27: 13-38: When a moderate south wind began to blow, they thought they could achieve their purpose; so they weighed anchor and began to sail past Crete, close to the shore. But soon a violent wind, called the northeaster, rushed down from Crete. Since the ship was caught and could not be turned head-on into the wind,
“Nehemiah is faced with the news that the walls and gates of Jerusalem have been destroyed, leaving the city’s inhabitants vulnerable. What are some things in your life that need to be rebuilt? Are you ready to ask God to show you something that is in need of repair?”
A crucial source of guidance for WME comes from our Regional Secretaries who are located across Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, North America, Pacifica, and South America. These global leaders help us identify the challenges facing the church in their part of the world. We recently gathered the WME Regional Secretaries in Seoul, South Korea to create strategies for WME’s ongoing
“I’ve discovered that there is a tremendous difference between easiness and simplicity.”
“More than just building a tower, the people of Babel wanted to build a reputation for themselves. They wanted others to recognize their intelligence and skill and to admire them. Abraham, on the other hand, didn’t seem that interested in making a name for himself. He was happy to follow God, to obey God’s calling, and to entrust his reputation
Recently Wesleyan Accent Editor Elizabeth Glass Turner chatted with Rev. Zach Szmara, the founder of one of the first immigration legal clinics within a church building, about sanctuary, immigration law, and cross-cultural ministry at home. Rev. Szmara is the Lead Pastor of The Bridge in Logansport, Indiana, a congregation within The Wesleyan Church. He is the National Director of Immigrant Connection – a growing
It’s happened again and again. Do they give out “Webby Awards” for“Best Social Networking Campaign Aimed at Disenfranchised Young Men Searching for Meaning and Manhood in a Post-Religious Context”? In the 90’s, radicalization looked like bored, angry, white, oddball suburban teenagers shooting up their classmates as they latched onto whatever Nihilistic philosophy made sense of their bullied, middle-class ennui. Now
It is better to stop worrying about the results of our evangelizing and instead worry about whether we have truly made the gospel known in our relationships with others.
Deep and authentic faith is meaningful; but can be costly, challenging, even frightening.
If you reflect on your spiritual walk, how do Peter’s various responses to Jesus resonate with your experience?
What is the better place? As seen in the last post, the three most popular sketches of the Christian “better place”—heaven-centered, human-centered, and world-centered—have been various soteriological attempts to depict both our hope and mission. (Soteriology, as you may remember, refers in theology to the theology of salvation.) However, as John C. Nugent argues in his book Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World
There are some things that I know I should believe with my head, but I struggle because I don’t experience them in my heart.
Go to the Limits of Your Longing -Rainer Maria Rilke God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows
Yet, for our faith to be real, for it to be authentic, we must risk moving out of the shadows. So the question is, how close to the fire will we get?
Have you ever felt really badly about something you’ve done wrong? Have you ever in some way harmed another person or harmed your walk with God? Have you ever done something that you just know you should not have done, and then you realize it. And wow. You feel terrible. You just feel awful. You want to make it right.
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