Recent Posts

  • Unpacking Disaffiliation

    Unpacking Disaffiliation By Thomas Lambrecht By my count, as of December 31, 2023, 7,651 churches have disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church in the U.S. since 2019. This represents 25.8 percent of the number of churches that were listed by the denomination in 2019. Dr. Lovett Weems, of the Lewis

  • February 24 | Choosing the Priests

    Today’s Reading: Read Numbers 3:1-9; 4:46-50 In Leviticus 8:1-14, we learned all about the requirements for being a priest. Now as the Israelites are about to start their journey, God identified exactly who the priests would be.  The Levite tribe was chosen and instructed to get direction from Aaron and

  • The Eucharist and Human Dignity

    When we read the stories of Jesuit priest Alfred Delp, celebrating mass in shackles in Tegel prison in Berlin in the fall of 1944, of Archbishop (later Cardinal) Francis-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận, celebrating the Eucharist in solitary confinement in Vietnam with a drop of wine and a little bit of

  • The Compelling Imagery of Hunger and Thirst

    A personal appeal from Publisher Scot Proctor: Please don’t scroll past this 10-second read. Meridian needs reader support each year to help us keep publishing. Will you join in helping? Click here to become a voluntary subscriber. Thank you! Editor’s Note: This article was first published on Meridian June 11, 2010, we are running it

  • The UM Church Adjusts to Fewer Bishops

      The UM Church Adjusts to Fewer Bishops By Thomas Lambrecht In the aftermath of losing one-fourth of its congregations and members in the U.S., The United Methodist Church anticipates a number of adjustments to its ministry and structure. For example, UM News Service has reported that since 2016, general

  • February 19 | What’s Different?

    Today’s Reading: Read Leviticus 11:1; Leviticus 11:45 Let’s play a guessing game.  From this list choose the one thing that is different than the others: yellow, orange, blue, one.  Which one did you choose?  Yellow, orange and blue are all colors, one is a number.  One is the word that