by This week the Heartland District of the Missouri Conference learned that our District Superintendent of 2 years was being appointed back into the local church. Needless to say, many of us are disappointed. It came as a big surprise as we recently developed some big initiatives that I referenced here. Is the Local Church more important than the District? Or the Conference? Are they mutually exclusive in importance? Are the instrumentalists more important…
by Our District Superintendent, Kendall Waller, recently asked the pastors of the Heartland District to enter into conversation about Gil Rendle’s new book. In his book, “Doing the Math of Mission“, Gil Rendle proposes radically changing the way in which we count/measure ministry in the United Methodist Church. Up to now, much of our focus for defining fruitfulness and effectiveness of churches has been based on the ABC’s of ministry (attendance, buildings, cash). These numbers as…
by Grace Church, I hope and pray you were able to take the Lenten 40 Day Challenge. Personally, I have deeply enjoyed seeing the likes and shares on Facebook. Keep it up! Now for my own personal joy with the challenge. The challenge on Feb 26th was “Sit Down and Look at Old Pictures/Albums with Someone You Love”. So, we don’t have albums. I was inspired to put all of our family vacation photos into…
by I am a United Methodist Pastor. My humanness may pull me away from my calling, but I seek, struggle and fight to stand firm on my faith in Jesus Christ. The faith community I come from is inclusive of those seeking to fulfill their call from God. Our focus on serving the needs of the poor is paramount to our service in Christ. Our focus of sharing the good news in word and deed…
by People are searching for answers. People want to be connected. People want to be heard. I Want and Need Answers Three of the most successful companies over the past tens years have addressed those wants and needs. When Google came along there were other search engines. The creators of Google did not like the way those search engines “page ranked” things. So they designed a new way to rank pages. It was intuitive. It…
by Prevailing wisdom and philosophies do not cover all of a generation. No, it is sadly and usually the loudest that are heard. So in the following, this is not all inclusive or encompassing. It is an attempt to explain why things, for some, are very confusing. I know members of all these generations who get it. I know some who don’t. All that matters is LOVE. If you struggle understanding why Twitter is so…
by One of the more difficult aspects to following Christ for many is actually sharing our faith story. Whether it’s a cultural thing here in the US or the inability of the modern church to actually train people to share their faith, it’s a thing. So, here are a few easy tips to sharing your faith and pointing people to Christ. 1- Let people around you know you are a follower of Jesus Christ. Your…
by My beautiful and amazing wife often remarks that “we are all in this together”. It’s a good phrase to remember during the tough days. When driving to work and the traffic slows, it’s the man or woman who cuts through traffic, the person that is only out for themselves that doesn’t understand that we are all in this together. The rude, the mean, the arrogant and the selfish does not bring us together. In…
by My son will grow up in a world without borders. It’s true. There will be no borders. Many people, maybe not many, have discussed this topic for a few years. Recently, it has become more of a relevant topic. This past week the word came out that there will be no more borders in the whole wide world. Who announced this? It was announced in the Wall Street Journal. Why would they announce it?…
by 7. It’s All About Connecting In the last thirty years, staying connected to others has taken a giant leap forward. Think about it for a moment, do you remember in the early 1980’s and making a long distance phone call was a big deal? Or those new car phones that were outrageously expensive and rarely worked. Then pagers for people other than doctors. Cell phones came along in the mid 1990’s for some of…