Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
Ilearned (via various United Methodist sources) about an 8-week series of blog posts that Mark Beeson, senior pastor of Granger Community Church (Granger, IN) is writing, called “Methodist Mondays.” In Beeson’s first post, he explains the rationale for the series as well as the process (i.e., a new post each Mondays for eight weeks). In … 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
At last week’s Bishop’s Retreat, Gilbert Rendle talked about the change that’s taking place in the world and in the church as well as the leadership that’s needed, as a result of the cultural change. At the end of his presentation on Tuesday evening, Rendle challenged attendees to discover the “ten percent” (the amount of … Read more
We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church. We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get … 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
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
I recently heard that the United States is currently the fifth largest mission field in the world (third in the English speaking world), which is discussed in this article at umc.org. That’s an incredible statement! People in the U.S. have as much (or more) access to the gospel of Jesus Christ than in other nations … Read more
At around 4:00 p.m. today, we wrapped up annual conference with the ordination service. The ordination service is always one of the highlights of annual conference. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the service is at the end when the Bishop invites people from the congregation who sense that God may be calling … Read more
Home. That’s a word that Ethan has been saying over the course of the last 24 hours or so. Ethan is ready to go home. Being in an unfamiliar place in a sea of mostly unfamiliar people is pretty daunting, especially for a soon-to-be two-year-old who is getting a lot of attention! Today’s session of … Read more