by Patricia Ann Tefft | Oct 13, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). “Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34:5). As the North Michigan Conference’s Global Associate Prayer (GAP) missionary, my call is to...
by Mark Adams | Oct 13, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
Governor George Ryan handed me the Illinois Excellence Award for Hillside Free Methodist Church’s Refugee Ministry. It was a proud moment for the church. Serving refugees in Chicago had never been about awards (though the church received many) but simply about...
by Derik Heumann | Sep 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
“What is a disciple and how do we make one?” This question has been a blessing and a curse to many leaders in the church in the last few years. We are reaping the fruit of decades of attractional, consumer focused, seeker-sensitive, non-missional forms of “church”...
by Chris Hemberry | Sep 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
I have become an avid golfer. For most of the past 20 years of my life, I played golf sparingly — something like 12 to 15 rounds a year. The bar I set for myself as a golfer during that time was relatively low. Scoring below 90 was “clearing the bar” for...
by George F. Ford | Sep 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
The Great Commission given to us by Jesus Christ was to go and make disciples. But what is a Christian and disciple? Churches have many different definitions of a Christian (convert, adherent, learner, member, believer, attender, etc.) and they also have many...
by Michael Forney | Sep 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Discipleship is a word around which most followers of Jesus agree in its importance but have broadly different understandings as to what constitutes a disciple and...
by Brett Heintzman, Director of Communications, Free Methodist Church - USA | Aug 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
Anniversaries are times to celebrate and reflect, remember where we’ve been and dream of where we’re going. Such is the case with the Free Methodist Church – USA. We are 160 years old this month! It’s appropriate to ask ourselves, are we the...
by Jonny Radcliff | Aug 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
My Volunteers Aren’t Committed Leadership has one frustrating ingredient: people. You can be the champion of the vision. It can be directly from God. But you can’t do it without people. And people can be tricky to corral. There are going to be times in leadership...
by Katie Sawade Hall | Aug 18, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
Long before I was a pastor, my experience with church ministry was that of a volunteer. Growing up in the FMC as a pastor’s kid, I helped with a little bit of everything–from teaching CLC and singing in choirs, to painting on church workdays. My first pastoral...
by Dr. Gay Zambrano and Dan Zambrano | Jul 8, 2020 | Pastors and Leaders Newsletter
It was a Thursday, late afternoon, as my wife and I finally settled in behind the “news desk” – really just an eight-foot long folding table covered with a checkered tablecloth – while the senior pastor adjusted the zoom feature and double-checked the audio on the...
