Faith Stories

Local Church
United Methodists stand in front of the new Mont Morija United Methodist Church in Golf Plateau III, a fast-growing district of Lubumbashi, Congo. The new building can accommodate 800 worshippers. Photo courtesy of the Jerusalem District.

Family donates funds to build South Congo church

The new United Methodist sanctuary with room for 800 worshippers is helping grow membership and ministries in the South Congo Conference.
Church Leadership
The Rev. Michael Adam Beck leads The United Methodist Church’s Fresh Expressions movement. In his new book, “Never Alone,” the pastor of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Ocala, Fla., says Fresh Expressions can help create community for people suffering from loneliness. Photo courtesy of the Rev. Michael Adam Beck.

From prisoner to pastor

The Rev. Michael Adam Beck knows all about being lonely, and he thinks he can help a lot of other people like him get to a better place.
Mission and Ministry
Larry and Jane Kies pose for a photo in Vumba, one of the scenic areas outside Mutare, Zimbabwe. Behind them is a Zimbabwean indigenous tree called Musasa.  As United Methodist missionaries, the couple contributed to the development of agriculture and education in the country at the church’s Nyadire Mission and Africa University. Photo courtesy of Larry Kies.

Missionaries leave mark on agriculture, education

Larry and Jane Kies retired last year after serving for three decades in Zimbabwe at United Methodist Nyadire Mission and Africa University.
Faith Stories
The Rev. Russell E. Richey speaks during a panel discussion on theological education at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, Tenn., in 2015. Richey, who died Jan. 19 at his home in Durham, N.C., was a professor at Duke Divinity School in Durham, and former dean of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. File photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.

Richey, influential historian, remembered

The Rev. Russell E. Richey, who died Jan. 19, was praised by colleagues, friends and former students as an amiable yet exacting historian who steered scholarly research of the denomination toward sources beyond the minutes of General Conference.

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