Like so many, I have been heartbroken and grieving the news from Palestine and Israel in the last several months. Maybe you have been glued to the news or maybe you have not been able to look at all. It is a hard balance to strike and one I never mastered, even while serving as a Global Mission Fellow in Palestine and Israel from 2013 to 2015.
Tag Archives: UMC
Coming Home to the UMC
I can’t promise this will be home forever, but it’s home for right now.
For Itinerancy
We won’t have a garden this year
We’ll uproot our home
Pulling the tender shoots from where we’ve grown content
And hope we will take to new soil
Called Unto Holiness
Rethinking holiness for today and reinvigorating a doctrine of holiness for the Wesleyan tradition is sure to have generative consequences for our churches and our lives. When we begin to rightly equate holiness with love, the idea of holiness as a discipline and practice becomes much more concrete.
If You Cannot Be United, Be Holy
A new moment is here. The die is cast: schism is in full swing, and it will be significant and traumatic in many regions across the connection. It is time that the United Methodist Church decide to stand on a vision of holiness, without hesitating out of the fear of losing people and congregations on the fence. If we’re breaking up, let it be for something; let us welcome this window of opportunity to allow Methodists with incompatible visions of holiness to go our separate ways. What is unsustainable is the status quo for the post-separation United Methodist Church, even in the very near term.
Bordering on the Shades of Death: The Choice of Advent
For those of us for whom the early nightfall quickly gets old, or who are exhausted by the dim prospects that we see in our world’s futures, Advent offers us a kindred spirit.
A Queer Methodist Tradition
The groups against LGBTQIA+ people in the United Methodist Church call themselves “traditional.” To start out with, tradition is not a monolith. Tradition is not a singular or consistent concept. Traditions evolve and develop and are not static. Likewise, there is ample evidence for a queer-affirming Methodist tradition—that even originates with Methodism’s founder, John WesleyContinue reading “A Queer Methodist Tradition”
Dancing into Hope
Spring 2022 I just booked tickets to a concert for my family and me. The last time I went, it was with my then-six-month-old daughter in June 2019, the week after her baptism into the community of faith. Something about this particular concert, the Indigo Girls at the Zoo, which so frequently overlaps with ourContinue reading “Dancing into Hope”
The BoOM Heard Around the World: A Q&A with Three of the Rejected Florida UMC Provisional Clergy Candidates
Three of the rejected candidates—Shawn Klein, Erin Wagner, and Anna Swygert—sat down with Yet Alive’s Dylan Parson and Trevor Warren for an exclusive interview about the process, their futures, and their hopes for a fully inclusive United Methodist Church.
On Schism: A Proposed Ecclesiology for a Post-Split UMC
What I believe is most helpful for the Methodist church as it comes to its current crossroads is the ability to demote the definition of the church as a continuity with its past, and instead favor a definition by which the church is conforming to the vision God has for it.
Welcome at the Table: Latinidad in Methodist Churches
Our interview covered many topics, but Alfredo Santiago’s commitment to honoring the richness of Latinidad and his love of Methodism were clear dominant themes. We have tried to capture those loves in these excerpts from our interview.
We Are Yet Alive
The reason our team—young United Methodists from across the United States, lay, clergy, and almost-clergy—came together to create this publication is our earnest belief that the Holy Spirit is at work in this moment.
Yet Alive 