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Clearer Picture Emerging of UMC’s future
Religion

Clearer Picture Emerging of UMC’s future

Cynthia Astle, Baptist News GlobalAugust 24, 2023

Even before its official year of splintering is completed, United Methodists are carving out a clearer identity for the denomination’s future and a clearer picture is emerging of who has stayed and who has left, about clergy health and the state of LGBTQ inclusion. Staying and leaving In March this year, an initial study of churches disaffiliating from The United Methodist Church found most were rural, located in the Southern United States and typically led by a male pastor, but not necessarily a United Methodist elder, the status denoting a seminary-trained minister. That study was led by Lovett H. Weems Jr.

Bridgeforth Among Four Blacks Elected as United Methodist Bishops
Religion

Bridgeforth Among Four Blacks Elected as United Methodist Bishops

UMC News ServiceNovember 9, 2022

 The Rev. Cedrick D. Bridgeforth, director of innovation and communication in the California-Pacific Conference, has been elected a bishop by The United Methodist Church’s Western Jurisdiction. He becomes the first openly gay African American man to be elected a bishop in The United Methodist Church. Delegates elected Bridgeforth on Nov. 4 at the jurisdiction’s meeting at Christ United Methodist Church on the 18th ballot. He received 73 votes out of 93 valid ballots cast. He needed 63 to be elected. Current Western Jurisdiction rules require two-thirds of valid ballots. “It is the church where I found purpose — even when it felt like it was

Bennett College Raises $8.2 Million to Keep Accreditation
EducationNews

Bennett College Raises $8.2 Million to Keep Accreditation

Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire CorrespondentFebruary 14, 2019

“We’ve raised enough to produce additional resources. That’s what we did – and more,” Dawkins said in announcing that the all-women’s school had raised $8.2 million, or $3.2 million more than the $5 million needed to save the accreditation.Stacy M. Brown, Bennett College, Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, historically black college, accreditation, $8.2 million, Fundraising efforts, High Point University, Nido Qubein, United Methodist Church, Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, Presbyterian Church, Rev. John Chavis

Wilson Headlines Benefit Concert at Holman UMC
Religion

Wilson Headlines Benefit Concert at Holman UMC

Sentinel News ServiceSeptember 12, 2018

Rev. Dr. Cynthia A. Wilson, a renowned vocalist and conductor, will headline a benefit concert on Sunday, September 23, at 4 p.m., at Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd., in Los Angeles. The concert will benefit the Bishop Charles Wesley Jordan Scholarship at Claremont School of Theology (CST). The scholarship CST supports African-American students entering the pastoral ministry. An ordained UMC deacon, Wilson serves as associate general secretary of the denomination’s Discipleship Ministries and founder of the Center for Music and Worship in the Black Church Experience at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She was also the first female and first

Brown Named Holman UMC Interim Senior Pastor
Religion

Brown Named Holman UMC Interim Senior Pastor

Sentinel News ServiceJuly 25, 2018

Bishop Warner H. Brown, Jr. is the new interim pastor at Holman United Methodist Church in L.A.’s West Adams District. Brown will serve a one-year term according to Bishop Grant Hagiya of the California-Pacific Conference. A retired bishop of the United Methodist Church, Brown has held various pastoral and executive roles in the denomination. Recruited while in seminary by the Western Pennsylvania Conference, he directed a ministry in two public housing projects and pastored two congregations in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1973 to 1979. He served next on the program staff of the California-Nevada Annual Conference, followed by a promotion to