News and Views

Postcards Home from Korea – Day 1

Posted by Melissa Lauber on Apr 01, 2016

After a 15-hour flight, there is nothing better than being greeted with a feast of chicken, fruit and kindness.

On March19, members of the Patapsco-Lodge Forest Cooperative Parish, a United Methodist Community, spent part of their Saturday making prayer beads for General Conference delegates.

BMCR Meets in Baltimore

Posted by Melissa Lauber on Mar 30, 2016

Standing before the 330 members of the national Black Methodists for Church Renewal, who gathered in Baltimore March 10-12, U.S. Congressman Elijah Cummings shared how, as a child, he could not come into downtown Baltimore because it was a segregated city and he was black.

Belle W. Sunderland, 100, the wife of the late Rev. Thomas W. Sunderland died in her sleep Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nev., where she had lived the past 25 years, near her youngest son. A memorial service was held at Camp Chapel UMC May 28, with the Rev. Richard Brown-Whale...

Tales and Lessons of Vitality and Transformation

Posted by Melissa Lauber on Mar 16, 2016

In today’s world of church growth, vitality is something to which congregations aspire. But in the Washington Region, five unique congregations have stopped striving to be vital and begun to simply live out, in the best ways they know, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

Three weeks. It was three weeks ago this morning when I settled into my favorite chair with a cup of hot coffee on the table next to me and opened the pages of the Washington Post.

With 55 EMS (Every Man Shares in Evangelism, Mission and Spiritual Life) members and support for scores of community projects, Queen’s Chapel UMC in Beltsville, Md., breezed away with the top award in the second annual national contest to select a UM church with the most effective ministry to...

The Easter Vigil service is all about remembering and reliving our story of salvation. Usually we do this within the confines of a sanctuary. But last year, the multi-site church I serve in Northwest Washington, DC, partnered with other churches to conduct an Easter Vigil in multiple locations...

When self-described special needs “mompreneur” Isabella Yosuico gave birth to her son Isaac, who has Down syndrome, she could never have imagined where it would lead.

Pop sensation Adele wasn’t only at the Grammys. She also was well represented at a Capitol Hill police station.