Author Archive

Every year the United Methodist conference and retreat center, Lake Junaluska, hosts a Peace Conference that is sponsored by various United Methodist agencies, annual conferences, and seminaries.

Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite offers a sermon for those who will preach on the day after this year’s anniversary of 9/11. Based on the text, “Perfect Love Casts Out Fear” in 1 John 4:18, Thistlewaite’s sermon explores the danger of harboring fear and how it drives us away from love.

In his book, Redeeming the Wounded, B. Bruce Cook uses his experience as crime victim, correctional chaplain and crime victim counselor to reveal a restorative justice approach for enabling the process of healing the wounds and repairing harm.

In our churches, despite best efforts, people can get locked into entrenched positions. Sharon Strand Ellison will show us how to break through defensiveness and/or anxiety so we can talk with each other openly, with both honestly and compassion.

Peacemaker Ministries is hosting their annual Peacemaker Conference on Sept 16-19th in Washington, DC. The theme is forgiveness – as Colossians 3:13b says, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Today, August 28th, 2010, marks the 47th anniversary of the historic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, DC. by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rev. Dr. John M. Swomley, a United Methodist minister and pacifist Christian, died this week. Swomley was the Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, president of the Methodist Peace Fellowship, and helped influence Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “pilgrimage to nonviolence.”

At the 2010 meeting of the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, Bishop Palmer laid out plans to create a conference-wide initiative to launch a conflict transformation and reconciliation ministry to train lay and clergy volunteers in becoming conflict interventionists.

On 21 September, churches and communities throughout the world are committing to the International Day of Prayer for Peace (IDPP) through prayer, meditation and other forms of spiritual observance.

Leaders need to move towards conflict, not away from it. This provides opportunities to reach resolution before the matter gets out of control. A small brush fire can be extinguished by stomping it with one’s foot or using a garden hose, but if it is allowed to expand into the forest it may become unmanageable.