He Set His Face to Jerusalem

A Lenten Study by Bishop Dick Wilke For our first post in our “Interviews with Influencers” series, From the Branches had a chance to catch up with Bishop Dick Wilke regarding his new Lenten study, published through Abingdon Press, and featured this year as an online course for Be A Disciple. Bishop Richard B. Wilke…

Lingering Leaves 2.7.14

Welcome to this week’s edition of Lingering Leaves – our most memorable posts from around the web. This week: Facebook and the Church; Amazon and Christian Publishing; Pentecostal Scholarship; Christian ethics and spending; and an exploration of spiritual winters. The Church Jarrod Johnston comments on the importance of Facebook for the Church, on his blog,…

Confessions of an Active Child

guest post by Leah Hartman   Instead, I am content and at peace. As a child lies quietly in its mother’s arms, so my heart is quiet within me. Psalm 131:2 (GNT) Being an Active Child My daughter, Claire, is what they call an “active” baby. That’s the nice way of saying she doesn’t nap.…

Lingering Leaves 1.31.14

Welcome to this week’s edition of Lingering Leaves – our most memorable posts from around the web. This week: the Superbowl competition is more than just football, communing with the Church Fathers, Rolling Stone’s new cover star, seminary, and Sundance. The Church Congregations in Denver and Seattle develop a friendly food drive competition alongside the…

tab•u•la ra•sa

tab·u·la ra·sa noun: The mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience; an opportunity for a fresh start; an opportunity to start over without prejudice; the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions. Late in the evening, December 31, our New Year’s party in Orlando spilled outside for…

Lingering Leaves 1.24.14

Welcome to this week’s edition of Lingering Leaves – our most memorable posts from around the web. This week: True Love (doesn’t?) Wait, Mid-Year Moves in the UMC, Social Holiness, Iconoclasm, and the World’s Everyday Heroes. The Church United Methodist Pastor Christy Thomas shares five advantages to a mid-year move as a UM pastor, on…

Lingering Leaves 1.17.14

Here are a few notable posts from several sources as we finish up another week of this new year. Thoughts about topics ranging from social principles in the UMC, unsafe labor conditions in Bangladesh, Ron Burgundy…and some thoughts to take us to Epiphany and beyond! Take a look. Tell us what you think. The Church Elizabeth Wellington reports on…

Imagining Christ’s Baptism

Many of our congregations marked the Baptism of Christ this Sunday. Whether your congregation engaged this event or not, you might like to do so now through a practice called Visio Divina. “While Lectio Divina is a method of praying with scripture, Visio Divina (Latin for “divine seeing”) is a method for praying with images…