Dear friends, This comes to wish you and yours every blessing and happiness during the Advent and Christmas season. The anticipation builds as we meditate, traditionally, on ‘the Last Things’ – death, judgement, heaven and hell – and as we reflect on God’s people waiting for a Savior, on the prophets who foretold the […]
The Executive Committee of the World Methodist Council met recently at the Council headquarters in Lake Junaluska, NC, USA following participation in the Korean Roundtable. They were there 2-1/2 days, which allowed for much-needed planning time, as well as taking care of other Council matters. The Steering Committee Meeting in Mexico City, August 28-31, 2019 was […]
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who helped avert a crisis between North Korea and the United States in 1994, has been working for peace for the entire Korean Peninsula ever since. In his opening address at the 2018 Roundtable for Peace on the Korean Peninsula — a Nov. 9-11 event hosted by the United Methodist Board of […]
Over the past few months, the government of Angola has reviewed laws and procedures governing the presence of Christian denominations in the country due to the proliferation of small evangelical churches primarily from Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Senegal. Denominations must now meet specific criteria including being established in a minimum number […]
By Joao Filimone Sambo Malhangalene United Methodist Church, an inner-city congregation in Maputo, recently partnered with the city municipality to help reduce the number of undocumented national citizens. The congregation organized a communitywide health fair, inviting people to get identification cards, measure their blood pressure and get medical and exercise advice. The medical team also […]
In an age of migration with 68.5 million forcibly displaced people, many Christians are longing for a spiritual home far from their homes. At the WMC Seoul Meeting we agreed to bring a group of people together: migrants, church leaders, those who are on the move and people from countries where migrants and refugees seek […]
Work in the red-light district of Moldova is heavy, challenging, and sometimes heartbreaking, but local Nazarene trafficking intervention workers get to see the power of God’s love transform women and families in ways they may never have been able to experience on their own. This ministry includes an intervention team and a mobile medical […]
More than 230,000 acres of land have been burned over the past week in two California wildfires, the Camp Fire north of Sacramento and the Woolsey Fire north of Los Angeles. Nearly 70 people have died and more than 600 are still missing. At least 12,000 structures have been destroyed and more than 52,000 people have been […]
At the entry to the Nassar family farm outside Bethlehem is a large rough piece of the local limestone. Carved into its face, in Arabic, English and German, are the words, ‘We refuse to be enemies.’ It is for the active living-out of this philosophy in the face of almost intolerable pressure and difficulty that […]
At the Peace Award presentation, many people were moved by the work that had brought this moment to fruition and by the symbolism. Perhaps, the explanation from Bill Plitt who is the Executive-director/co-founder of the Friends of Tent of Nations North America will allow readers of the FFL to go there and to hear the […]
In late August, Vice President, Gillian Kingston, and General Secretary, Ivan Abrahams, traveled to the beautiful town of Torre Pellice in northern Italy to attend the Synod of the Waldensian Church and OPCEMI (the Methodist Church in Italy) and to present the 2017 World Methodist Peace Award to OPCEMI. Later, in mid-October, they traveled to […]
The chair of the ecumenical relationships committee, Reverend Dr. Tim Macquiban, Director of the Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome, represented the WMC as fraternal delegate to the Synod of Bishops meeting over three weeks to advise Pope Francis on the chosen theme, ‘Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment’. His summary of the meeting, which should be of […]
(c) 2015 World Methodist Council