by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Feb 13, 2020
As United Methodists face General Conference 2020 and the potential of forming new church bodies, it feels as though the denomination is at a significant crossroad. As if we are doing something we have never done before. If only that were true. The truth is,...
by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Mar 26, 2019
Satan offered Jesus power over all the kingdoms of the world. Tempting indeed for a person who was here to proclaim the Kingdom. Yet what Jesus meant by “kingdom” and what Satan meant were two entirely different things. Jesus had to have understood the difference....
by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Mar 13, 2019
Jesus survived the temptations of the wilderness because of his spiritual grounding and his guidance by God. Another factor empowered him as well: his emotional intelligence. Jesus had his wits about him. He never could have survived otherwise. The UMC faces its own...
by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Mar 6, 2019
As we begin the Lenten journey, we in the UMC traverse a strange road. We will walk through the 40 days of Lent and into Easter Sunday all before the Judicial Council meets to determine the constitutionality of General Conference decisions. In other words, we will...
by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Feb 27, 2019
By now you know that it was a brutal General Conference. Personally, I was in favor of the One Church Plan. I thought it was a gracious acknowledgment of our varying cultural contexts, biblical sensibilities, and deeply held convictions. It didn’t pronounce each...
by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Feb 18, 2019
As General Conference meets to decide the future organization of the United Methodist Church, anxiety hangs in the air. Will delegates adopt the One Church Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan or the Traditionalist Plan? Or will they defer...
