$13,365 for Pathway Out of Poverty This offering was given during the opening worship service on Friday. Empowering the next generation for a different tomorrow is one of the Conference’s priorities. The Pathway Out of ...
By Ken Rosenauer John Wesley considered Communion “the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God.” Along those lines, it follows that the 2019 Annual Conference ...
By Fred Koenig In a year of turbulence, Bishop Bob Farr reminded people in his address of the steadfast purpose of the United Methodist Church that binds the churches in Missouri together. This is the 200th year of ...
By Pam Ekey If the church is to survive in the future, its leadership must change, says Tod Bolsinger, Ph.D., who is the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary. Unfortunately, most seminaries do ...
By Susan Sneed It takes a lot of love to follow a call to vocational ministry and build a life around being in service to God’s church. Throughout the retirement service a series love stories videos played with ...
By Ken Rosenauer “We’ve changed the entire narrative of congregational excellence,” Rev. Roger Ross said. As director of the Center for Congregational Excellence for the past year, Ross has made new places for new ...
By Fred Koenig Energy needed to create something new is less than energy needed to create change. Campus pastor Mitch Buhman credits Rev. Spencer Smith with that statement. They both agreed it was a motivating factor of...
By Susan Sneed Bishop Robert Farr formally opened the 2019 Missouri Annual Conference with the traditional singing of “And Are We Yet Alive.” It is a Charles Wesley hymn that has been sung at an annual conference ...
By Pam Ekey One year into a partnership with the Iglesia Metodista de Puerto Rico, the Missouri Annual Conference has made considerable progress in helping with the recovery effort from Hurricane Maria. Rev. Lucas ...
By Susan Sneed Rev. Tina Harris, director of Mission, Service and Justice Ministry introduced the resolution and invited the author, Rev. Dr. Kyle Butler to formally present it to the Conference. Resolution 1 will ...
By Susan Sneed There are many types of pastors in United Methodism. The process of being commissioned and then later ordained into full connection as an elder or deacon is one of the highlights of annual conference. But...
By Susan Sneed Missional Communities are described as communities meeting outside the walls of the church without an intention of those persons ever being a formal part of the church. It is being Christ in the ...
By Fred Koenig You don’t even have to be United Methodist to be familiar with the debate about how the denomination relates to, regulates, or restricts churches and clergy regarding same-sex marriage and homosexual ...
Each year during Annual Conference Session the United Methodist Women get up early for a neighborhood stroll. Mission Walk t-shirts were sold at the UMW Booth at Annual Conference Session for $20. The shirts were paid ...
By Ken Rosenauer Conference Lay Leader Amy Thompson put meat on the bones of the 2019 conference goals as she ticked off one set of numbers after another. Most Missouri United Methodists are quite familiar with those ...
The Office of Mission, Service and Justice has named Sidney Owens as Community Engagement Specialist. In this full-time role, Owens will serve as the primary Conference contact for local churches in the development of ...
What You Can Do To End Child Detention Firsthand report of ‘inhumane conditions’ at a migrant children’s detention facility in Texas has stirred people of faith to respond. If you’re wondering what you or your local ...
2019 Annual Conference session recordings are now available! These resources are free for you to use in your local church. Visit www.vimeo.com/channels/moac19 to view and download videos of the following: Opening ...
Story by Kathy L. Gilbert, Photos by Mike DuBose With winds up to 125 miles per hour, the cyclone ripped tin roofs off houses and hurtled them like deadly missiles that killed and maimed. Otherwise placid rivers jumped...
Take the survey will be the drumbeat over the next few weeks, including at the Annual Conference, from the Clergy and Church Financial Ministry (C2FM). Chris Bouchard, C2FM Director, hopes to get at least 80 percent of ...
By Ryan McClouth Are you choosing music that’s right for your congregation? This is a question we should all be considering as church leaders. Are we choosing music for the right reasons? Sometimes we tend to make ...
By Brian Hammons, SCJ Jurisdiction Lay Leader Conference lay leaders from United Methodist annual conferences all over the U.S. (and one from Africa) met in April for their annual meeting. This group truly represents ...
Sarah Ciavarri, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pastor, preached her first sermon after seminary 10 days after the terrorism attack on the United States on September 11. Her sermon was on resiliency. Resiliency ...
If I’m going to be gathering with a group of people with divergent opinions, I’m going to be all for everyone praying to be led by the Holy Spirit. This is tricky on my part. It’s almost like I’m cheating. You see, I ...
Two thoughts have encouraged my spirits as we go through some very uncertain times in our church and in our world. The first is a prayer shared in cabinet this winter titled, “Slow Work of God” by Pierre Teilhard De ...
By Amy Thompson In our society today we see many images of leaders. Amid all these images, it can be hard to determine who might be a good leader and worth following. In thinking about leaders and what makes them good, ...
By Eric Mattson Presence is vital to both our relationship with God and with people. Presence requires an inner knowledge of what’s going on within us as well as an awareness and alertness to who and what is around us. ...
For pastors on the move, the 2019 appointive season has been a year of opportunity for Missouri Conference clergy. There are 64 full-time clergy that will be reporting to new churches this year. Appointments changes ...
Saint Paul School of Theology is alive and well and very different from the seminary many Missouri Conference clergy remember. With campuses at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, and at Oklahoma State ...
Every spring the Missouri Conference offers Right Start to help pastors who are changing churches make a successful exchange of the baton in the “change-over zone.” The seminar provides nuts and bolts information ...
This year the Missouri Conference’s Soul Connections retreat embraced a tool that many people have used for growth for decades: the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a personality system that combines both psychology and ...
By Hal Knight Pentecost Sunday — which the Wesleys would also know as “Whitsunday” — is celebrated as the time of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the church. Both are important, as long as it is ...
Standing on the western shore of Haiti and looking out to sea, the large land mass looks relatively close. It is the island of La Gonave, farther away than it appears because it’s high country rises 2,500 above sea ...
On March 27 and April 4, 2019, leaders interested in a fully inclusive church from across The United Methodist Church gathered in Dallas, Texas and in Atlanta, Georgia. Facilitated by Gil Rendle and Bishop Janice Huie, ...
Missourians know Dr. Lovett Weems as a previous president of Saint Paul School of Theology, an author of many books relating to United Methodism and the current director of the Lewis Center of Church Leadership. ...
By Fred Koenig You could write a book about what people had to say about the special session of General Conference held in St. Louis in February. Kevin Slimp has done just that. Actually, he didn’t really write it. ...
A persistently high Missouri River is taking its toll on nearby communities in central Missouri, as feeding rivers have nowhere to flow to when local rains fall. The town of Dalton is up on a hill, but the Dalton United...
On Wednesday, May 22, at about 10:30 p.m. an EF-3 tornado hit the town of Eldon, causing extensive damage to the central business district and one residential area. There were no deaths or serious injuries reported. ...
Just before midnight on May 22 an EF3 tornado struck Jefferson City, causing damage in a three-square mile area. There were no fatalities and approximately 25 reported injuries. Within that area most of the 1,000 ...
Joyce Appel started as the new Missouri Conference Response and Readiness Coordinator on May 13. Initially she was focused on developing a plan for recovery assistance to areas in Northwest Missouri that have been ...
There are three reported deaths in the Golden City area, some hospitalizations with minor injuries in Jefferson City and significant property damage around the state due to a series of storms in Missouri last night ...
After a long, wet spring Northwest Missouri is beginning to dry out, and the people who live there are preparing to begin work on another recovery process. Flooding further upstream on the Missouri River and its ...
If you’ve ever been in New Orleans and found you wanted to get back to Missouri as quickly as possible, you may have found yourself taking a long drive across a lot of water. In 1956 a road was built straight through ...
If the name “Rev. Alice Fowler” sounds familiar, it may be because she was the preacher for the Sunday morning worship service at Annual Conference Session in 2015. It will soon be a name you hear more often: Fowler will...
In a church conference room at Harrisonville UMC, a local business leader asked the high school student she was interviewing basic job interview questions. “What have you accomplished that you are most proud of?” she ...
Archbishop Robert James Carlson of St. Louis and Bishop Robert Farr of the Missouri Conference sat together on a panel in St. Louis at the National Workshop on Christian Unity in the first week of April and discussed ...
It is the season in the life of the church where leaders across the Conference along with Conference staff are preparing for Annual Conference. The residents of Springfield, Missouri will be invaded by laity and clergy ...
Ken Cleeton got a call asking him if he could do some pulpit supply at a local Methodist Church. He was born and raised Baptist but became a Methodist when he got married. He agreed and went to work on a sermon. He ...
A Message From Cody Collier: If people visit your church once or twice but don’t return, you may have a “guest readiness” issue, according to Dr. Kim Pope-Seiberling, professor at Lindsey Wilson College and elder in ...
Southwest District Superintendent Mark Statler is not leaving the Missouri Conference Cabinet, but he will soon be serving churches in Missouri in a new way. This June he will be appointed to Conference staff as the new ...