“It’s more important than ever that churches like ours rise up” in the crisis, the Rev. Tish Malloy preached June 2 to the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Moore, Okla., in a sanctuary without electricity or water. “We’ve got to be community for people who (now) don’t have one. We must light the darkness for others.”

Speaking to the 450 new graduates, Daniel Sherrard, provost of Earth University, San José, Costa Rica, told the 19th graduating class of United Methodist-related Africa University that the solution to the world’s problems lay in their capable hands.

The Louisiana Annual Conference event attracted 2,500 runners, walkers and volunteers, and raised awareness of Imagine No Malaria.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief has reached out to Bishops Rosemarie Wenner, Germany Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church and president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, and Patrick Streiff, Southern and Central Europe Episcopal Area, to offer assistance after flooding in Central Europe, especially in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, caused extensive damage in the last week.

The Rev. Maxie Dunnam, retired president of Asbury Theological Seminary and honorary co-chairman of the Confessing Movement, an unofficial evangelical United Methodist caucus, was one of 28 pastors who signed in 1963 the Born of Conviction statement. Dunnam talks in this commentary about why those pastors took their stand in those troubled times. The group is being honored this weekend by the Mississippi Annual (regional) Conference.