Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
One of the highlights at this year’s annual conference was Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection (COR). Adam led three presentations. We attended COR’s Leadership Institute in 2008 and thoroughly enjoyed it (see post here). Here are some of the highlights from Adam’s annual conference presentations … What Leaders … Read more
West Side UMC was blessed to host a concert by the Alleluia Singers from Towson UMC, Towson Maryland. The Alleluia Singers is composed of a talented group of middle school and high school students. As part of a tour that took them through our area, they presented a program of music and drama, creatively entitled, … Read more
I sing with the Chi Rho Singers, the clergy choir of the Susquehanna Conference. We do one concert a month, meeting in a different district, nine months out of the year. We gather in a local church at 1:00 p.m. and rehearse until 5:00 p.m. After a dinner break, we conduct a concert at 7:00 … Read more
Yesterday, United Methodist leaders gathered in groups around the world in more than 1,000 locations to hear and discuss the Call to Action report as part of the United Methodist Leadership Summit (you can watch the entire video at the site). While the event took place at a convenient hour for many of us, in … Read more
Yesterday, we attended an afternoon seminar in Camp Hill, PA where Rev. Bob Farr (from the Missouri Conference) was the featured speaker. Farr presented material from his upcoming book, Renovate or Die: 10 Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission. (Edited to add link for the book, now published.) Here are a few quotes from … Read more
This past week, Joleen and I attended one of our remaining requirements for ordination, an all-day training day sponsored by the Board of Ordained Ministry. The day featured Dr. Lovett Weems from Wesley Theological Seminary. The topic was “Church Finances.” Part of the content confirmed some things we already knew, but we did learn some … Read more
A few days ago while in New York City, I wrote, Bracing for the Storm. A monster storm, which moved across the country, went through New York City dumping snow and ice. There were concerns about how the weather would impact the final day of our seminar, but we were, in act, able to complete … Read more
We just returned from New York City where we participated in a seminar at the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), whose motto is “Connecting the Church in mission.” We survived the storm; more on that in the next post. The three days were pretty intense, including two days at GBGM and one day visiting … Read more
The storm that’s headed this way has been a popular topic of discussion for our group ever since we met in Harrisburg on Sunday for our orientation; in fact, the intensity seems to be increasing as the hours go by. As we go to sleep Monday night, there is a winter storm watch here in … Read more
Today was our first full day in New York City. We are here for the Global Ministries seminar. We spent most of the day at the General Board of Global Ministries learning about what the UMC does around the world. It was a great day (we’ll reflect on what we’re learning later when we have … Read more