As Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard says,

“To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle

In my deepest, darkest moments, what really got me through was a prayer. Sometimes my prayer was 'Help me.'

Sometimes a prayer was 'Thank you.' What I've discovered is that intimate connection and communication with my creator will always get me through because I know my support, my help, is just a prayer away.

~ Iyanla Vanzant

Reversing Lent: Often Lent is traditionally understood as a somber and sad time for doing hard things like fasting or giving something up, however the purpose of this holy season is to draw closer to God through spiritual practices of giving, hospitality, training, prayer and witness.

~ Pastor Jill

A few years ago, I started focusing less on what I was giving up for Lent and more on what I was adding. I often added by giving up something. For instance, if I gave up chocolate, I not only tried to stop eating chocolate and setting aside that amount of money to give to a mission...I was not sad or upset that I was going without something or giving away more money; I was experiencing a joyful Lent through giving to support God's work in the world. Max Vincent

As someone who has grown up in our church and as someone who is gay and goes to the least religious college in the US, my evangelism on campus has grown. We have brought people to Jesus because they say they have not heard this message before: they didn’t know God could love them, because their churches said God didn’t, and so if we can be a church which brings Jesus to people who are told [they] can’t be loved, that’s what I want our church to be, and that’s the Methodist church that I love and that I want to be a pastor in one day. I want to be a pastor in the Methodist church because I love our tradition and I love all of you. We are the church together. This is the body of Christ and we are stronger together than we are apart. No plan to separate us can unite us like God’s love. We are the church.

We are God’s children. Let us be the church together.

~ JJ Warren, Upper New York Annual Conference, speech on the floor of General Conference

The first four months of my tenure in the Mountain Sky Area were spent traveling with each of the district superintendents through their districts. It was a grueling schedule as we covered the 470,000 square miles of this area, but it was necessary if I was to get a clear picture of the state of the United Methodism in the Mountain Sky area…As the first openly lesbian bishop, I knew people had to meet me. In many small communities, LGBTQ people are rare—most leave as soon as they can to move to cities where they can find community with others like them. People had an understanding of what they thought an LGBTQ person was like, but not necessarily from a first-hand encounter…Robin frequently made these trips with me…As my spouse, we knew it was important for people to see us together. For many in these small towns, we would be the first married lesbian couple they had ever met. We wanted to dispel any misconceptions about who we were, and to stand authentically and vulnerably before them.

~ Bishop Karen Oliveto

I love baptism. I especially love baptizing babies, because when we baptize a baby we are reminded of something of the nature of God. There is nothing a baby has to do to earn love. She doesn't have to be a good girl; he doesn't have to behave in any particular way. Just by being, a baby is loved. This is what baptism is about: you are loved, and there is nothing you can do about it... our task, as brothers and sisters, is to provide a reminder of this love whenever one of us forgets.

Bishop Karen Oliveto

The One Church Plan inserts grace in the place of judgement and punishment. The One Church Plan inserts grace in the place of trials and removal from the church. The One Church Plan believes that we can be united in Christ and give permission for every pastor, every church, every bishop and every annual conference to faithfully reach their mission field. The One Church Plan embodies the grace of Jesus Christ for the United Methodist Church.

Rev. Mark Holland

Each (model) directs the spotlight on particular ingredients or convictions that are essential to any Christian approach to other religions. But in concentrating the spotlight on a particular piece of the Gospel each model runs the risk of leaving others in the background. Thus the need for the different models to shine for each other and check and balance each other. Paul Knitter

The Acceptance Model thinks it can do a better job at this balancing act (between the particularity of Jesus and God's universal love) ...It does so not by holding up the superiority of any one religion, nor by searching for that common something that makes them all valid, but by accepting the real diversity of all faiths. The religious traditions of the world are really different, and we have to accept those differences....

Paul Knitter, Theologies of Religion

...in this Mutuality Model the greater weight will fall on the side of God's universal love and presence in other religions.

Paul Knitter, Theologies of Religion

{The Mutuality Model} demands a paradigm shift from a Christianity-centered or Jesus centered to a God centered model of the universe of faiths. One then sees the great world religions as different human responses to the one divine Reality, embodying different perceptions which have been formed in different historical and cultural circumstances. John Hick