This summer, the Rev. Rod Miller, a retired Elder in the BWC, taught at the United Methodist Seminary in Moscow. There, he encountered students who are starting small covenant groups in predominantly Islamic communities, launching a coffee house in a church, building a school for the Roma people...
If your travels take you to upstate New York or northern Vermont, it might just be worth your time to slip across the frontier to where some significant landmarks of Canadian Methodism await the modern “circuit rider.” One of these is the Odelltown Church, located in the Lacolle...
Monique’s and Joseph’s new bedroom has something that few couples can boast: graffiti, now 180 years old, carved into the woodwork by British soldiers who were billeted there. That’s because the new residence was, until just a few years ago, the Philipsburg United...
By Charles L. Harrell the old hay bay church On the shore of an inlet off Lake Ontario stands a stout but charming frame building, the oldest structure of the United Church of Canada. Known as the Old Hay Bay Church, it was actually founded as a Methodist chapel, the first...
On the edge of Queen Anne's County, Maryland, close to the geographical center of the Delmarva Peninsula, stands a tiny but significant sentinel of Methodist history. If walls could speak, the stories these could tell would surely make for a dramatic miniseries. It's not the first...
“Coming Home” captured the theme of this year’s annual Advent candlelight service held on Dec. 10 at the historic Strawbridge Shrine near New Windsor.
By Rev. Charles Harrell (A response to Tom Starnes’ “UM’s ask: what is doctrine, what is law, and what is right?” The case before the Judicial Council mentioned in both their essays, was decided in October. See the story.) Thanks to Tom Starnes for his...
In Queen Anne County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore stands one of the oldest Methodist chapels in America. It was built in 1783 along Red Lyon Branch on a 1.5-acre parcel known as “Sarah’s Portion” that had been donated by Joshua Dudley, a local farmer. Dudley’s Chapel – earlier known as Queen...
Edward Keenan’s conversion to the warm-hearted religion of the Methodists occurred about twenty miles away from the picturesque hollow where Old Rehoboth Church has sat for more than two hundred years. Keenan, a Roman Catholic immigrant from Ireland who had long been well-disposed toward the...
“Philip, you must preach to us, or we shall all go to Hell together and God will require our blood at your hands!” Safe to say, this is not a typical reaction to seeing friends playing a hand of cards. Then again, Barbara von Ruckle Heck was not typical, either. A native of the Palatinate (part...
