UM News Digest - Oct. 7, 2026

UM News Digest - Oct. 7, 2026

Volunteers in Mission | Pop-up clinics | Regionalization

“We are much more than disaster response.” — The Rev. Tammy Kuntz, United Methodist Volunteers in Mission coordinator.

A member of a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission Disaster Response Team from Virginia works to clear a flood-damaged home in Western North Carolina during the days following Hurricane Helene in 2024. Photo by Lilla Marigza, UM News.

50 years of turning faith into action
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UM News) — From rebuilding communities after disasters to medical missions, construction projects and vocational training around the world, United Methodist Volunteers in Mission is celebrating a half-century of making a difference. Lilla Marigza has the story.

Watch video

Dr. Gustave Ngoy, head of the non-malaria program for the Tanganyika Episcopal Area’s medical coordination team, speaks with Cathérine Shabani during a consultation at a mobile clinic in Kalemie, Congo. Photo by Chadrack Tambwe Londe, UM News.

In medical desert, pop-up clinics help Congolese
KALEMIE, Congo (UM News) — More than 600 people received free healthcare during United Methodist annual conferences meeting in the southeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Funded by Bishop Nelson Kalombo Ngoy, the mobile medical clinics enabled the diagnosis of serious medical conditions and provided follow-up care in a region faced with extreme poverty and limited healthcare. Chadrack Tambwe Londe reports.
Read story

Alabama-West Florida Conference
Conference keeps eye on Tropical Storm Isaias
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama-West Florida Conference continues to closely monitor Tropical Storm Isaias as it moves through the Gulf. Based on the latest forecast this morning, the projected path currently brings the storm ashore somewhere between Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. The conference is urging people to stay alert and be prepared.
Read update

Desert Southwest Conference
New cooperative parish connects digital churches
PHOENIX — Desert Southwest Conference is sponsoring a Digital Cooperative Parish with three unique United Methodist communities: The Clearing, Checkpoint Church and Zao Church Collective. The cooperative brings together three distinct faith communities that exist primarily in digital spaces and serve people across the U.S. and beyond. The conference calls this a new form of connectionalism. Christina Dillabough has the stories.
Read story and watch video
Desert Southwest Conference: New opportunities for connection

Baltimore-Washington Conference
Lovely Lane meets Lovely Lane
BALTIMORE — The Rev. Scott Meador, lead pastor of Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recently traveled to Baltimore to visit the congregation that inspired his church’s name, the historic Lovely Lane United Methodist Church, known as the Mother Church of American Methodism. Meador has the story.
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United Methodist Men
Men’s agency ends affiliation with association
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Rev. Rick Vance, top executive of the Commission on United Methodist Men, along with Bishop Jonathan Holston, United Methodist Men board president, has announced that United Methodist Men has ended its affiliate relationship with the National Association of Conference Presidents. Several sections of the association’s constitution and bylaws conflict with the denomination’s Book of Discipline, Vance said.
Read press release

UM News includes in the Digest various commentaries about issues in the denomination. The opinion pieces reflect a variety of viewpoints and are the opinions of the writers, not UM News staff.

A vision for funding regional conferences
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The equal constitutional authority granted to The United Methodist Church’s regions doesn’t require equal financial obligation. Each regional United Methodist conference should contribute according to its capacity, writes the Rev. Dr. Luan-Vu “Lui” Tran, assistant chancellor in the California-Pacific Conference.
Read commentary

The Tennessean
Maybe the state doesn’t need better executions
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — After the failed two attempts to execute Christa Pike, the Rev. Timothy Holton-Overcast writes that perhaps Tennessee does not need a better way to execute people. Holton-Overcast is a United Methodist pastor and chaplain to people on Tennessee’s death row. Christa Pike is now conscious, according to her attorneys. “We can tell the truth about what Christa did and still ask whether killing her is justice,” Holton-Overcast writes.
Read commentary
UM News: Pastor’s life shaped by family murders

Journey Films
New PBS series features United Methodists
SILVER SPRING, Md. — “Christianity at a Crossroads,” a new four-part PBS documentary series that began airing Oct. 1, explores the changing landscape of Christianity in America — from declining participation to congregations finding new growth. Among examples of vitality, the series features Silver Spring United Methodist Church in Maryland in its second and fourth episodes, and Resurrection, a United Methodist church in Leawood, Kansas, in the second episode. Check local PBS listings. Journey Films, the producer, is also posting the episodes.
Watch episodes
Watch trailer

Historical Society of The United Methodist Church
Webinar on ‘Reckoning Methodism’
WASHINGTON — The Historical Society of The United Methodist Church plans to discuss what divisions within United Methodism say about the future of U.S. democracy at a webinar at 7:30-8:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time Oct. 13. Helping to lead the discussion will be the Rev. Darryl W. Stephens, author of “Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church.”
Register
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