Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
As part of our ordination process, we were required to attend a seminar at the General Board of Church and Society, which took place earlier this week, Monday through Wednesday (more on that in a later post). Sunday morning, we drove to Harrisburg where we joined the rest of the group and a bus transported … Read more
We have blogged a bit about our journey through the ordination process of The United Methodist Church (see our last post or Our Journey Toward Ordination for the longer story). We are currently working through the final stages of this process, having been commissioned as Provisional Elders in June 2009. We are on target to … Read more
Picking up where we left off five months ago (due to parental leaves), our Covenant Groups resumed last night (see Simple Church 1.0). Our Covenant Groups (a requirement of our ordination process) are discussing Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s book, Simple Church. Since we had only read chapter one for our September 2009 meeting, we … Read more
In my post on the Provisional Member Retreat, I mentioned that we were preparing for upcoming interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry, as part of the ordination process. On Tuesday, we travelled to Halifax, PA for those interviews. The interviews went very well and we learned Tuesday evening that we have been approved to … Read more
If you’ve followed our journey, you probably know that we are Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church working toward ordination. As part of the process, we attended a retreat Sunday evening through Monday afternoon. On Monday, Revs. Greg Myers (Wilkes-Barre District Superintendent) and Mark Webb (York District Superintendent) each led us in a discussion … Read more
In July, we began meeting with our covenant groups (that are meeting together), which is a requirement in the ordination process of The United Methodist Church. Meeting every other month, we met for the second time earlier this week. First, we discussed the leadership paper we’re required to write for the Board of Ordained Ministry. … Read more
A couple months ago, we wrote about becoming Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church, which took place at Annual Conference last month. Over the course of the next two years, leading up to ordination as Full Elders, we’ll have some work to do. One part of the process is to work with a Covenant … Read more
In my last post, I described the process of becoming provisional elders in The United Methodist Church. Now I want to say more about how we got to this point. In early 1998, after a lengthy search for our place in the body of Christ, we made contact with then District Superintendent, Rev. Thomas Irwin. … Read more
Recently, I wrote Why We are United Methodists. But one thing we have not blogged is the ordination process we’ve been engaged in ever since we have been United Methodists. The process of becoming ordained pastors in the UMC has been long for us, mainly due to coming from another denomination (I’ll say more about … Read more
Awhile back, I read some posts of (young) United Methodist clergy stating why they stay in The United Methodist Church. I finally took some time to put part of our story in writing. Joleen and I became members of (and pastors in) The United Methodist Church 11 years ago. We did not grow up in … Read more