umclead

God’s Realities versus the United Methodist Church’s Realities

March 2, 2012 By Gavin Richardson Leave a Comment

United Methodist Financial Church Realities

I just watched this video below put together the by United Methodist Church’s General Council on Finance and Accountability. There are some seriously sobering statistics in here that deal with the hard numbers of money. To not paint this as total doom and gloom they highlighted that the church was still doing good work (and [...]

Filed Under: Church, Methodism, UMC, Video Tagged With: bankruptcy, church finances, church growth, church spending, church work, debt, financial accountability, investment, Methodism, over spending, umc, umclead, united brethren, united methodist church, vital congregations

the beginnings of the Methodist Mission in America?

September 20, 2011 By Gavin Richardson 2 Comments

A number of years ago when the Episcopal church has elected Bishop Gene Robinson and had gone through the turmoil of theological, ethical, and cultural debates of gay clergy and affirming those positions there were many from the Episcopal church. Not just because of that reason, there were a few localized reasons, my friend Thomas [...]

Filed Under: Church, Methodism, Mission, UMC Tagged With: africa, america, anglican mission, church, gcumc2012, general conference 2012, Methodism, methodist revival, umc, umclead, united methodist

Delegation Grudge Match! #umc #umclead #tnac2011

June 17, 2011 By Gavin Richardson 4 Comments

While at Annual Conference we found ourselves in some deadlocks of General Conference and Jurisdictional Conference delegate voting. Talk was made of suspending the rules in order to implement a more stream lined and exciting approach to choosing delegates for GC & JC. Have an all out Grudge Match! SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!! LIVE AT THE [...]

Filed Under: Church, Creativity, Culture, Featured, Methodism, UMC Tagged With: 2012, church, clergy, conference, doctrine, elections, fighting, funny, gcumc2012, general conference, holy conferencing, humor, jurisdictional conference, laity, methodist church, order, pastors, roberts rules, rumble, tnac2011, umc, umclead, wesleyan, wrestling, wrestling names

The Book of Discipline The Musical #umc #umclead #tnac2011

June 17, 2011 By Gavin Richardson 17 Comments

With the success of “The Book of Mormon” & our United Methodist Church Annual Conferences happening around the UMC over the past month and half. Some friends & I had running imaginations that “The Book of Discipline” is just as confusing as the Book of Mormon so why not create a equally compelling broadway play [...]

Filed Under: Church, Emergent, Featured, Methodism, Ministry, UMC Tagged With: annual conference, broadway, charles wesley, church, doctrine, funny, general conference 2012, humor, hymns, methodist, silly, the book of mormon, tnac2011, tnumc, umc, umclead

Does the UMC really want us to disengage? #umclead

April 15, 2011 By Gavin Richardson 3 Comments

In pondering the whole “Call to Action” and my thoughts yesterday on “Poking the Church” it had me wondering. Why don’t more people get involved and take on their communities and their faith.. What is the one thing? Are we all just to lazy? or maybe we claim to be to ‘busy?’ Maybe, as Dave [...]

Filed Under: Church, Creativity, Culture, Methodism, Mission Tagged With: apathy, call to action, church, creativity, dave meslin, doing stuff, get involved, involvement, mission, umc, umclead

Poke the Church! #umclead

April 14, 2011 By Gavin Richardson 2 Comments

Last week I spent a good part of a day listening and communicating with a number of folks during my UMC’s global Leadership Summit webcast. It was a good time to be a twitter native. Our community of folks were not intentionally courted for the webcast, but we sure did have our own little conference. [...]