Choosing to live faithfully presents any number of moments for discernment. Everyday choices usually don’t call for serious discernment but are simply a matter of doing, as an individual, what we know is right. But now and then we need to dig a little deeper.
The last listening session in a series sponsored by the Church of the Brethren Mission and Ministry Board’s committee considering recommendations related to the future of Annual Conference is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 2 p.m. (Eastern time).
The Apostle Paul wrote to the members of the church in Thessalonica in 2 Thessalonians 1:3, “We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing” (NRSVue).
The Church of the Brethren Mission and Ministry Board appointed a committee to consider recommendations related to the future of Annual Conference. The task emerged from the “Breaking Down Barriers—Increasing Access to Denominational Events” study completed in 2025.
“As we approach the 250th anniversary of the event that kicked off the revolution, we might ask, what do we Brethren think about the Declaration of Independence? … And what would our forebears say about what we’ve become?” asked Denise Kettering-Lane at her standing-room-only equipping session titled “Dunkers and the Declaration of Independence: Then and Now.”
The following call to worship was shared during the closing worship service of the 2026 Conference on Thursday morning, July 2, with leadership from Gail Heisel. And it has a back story.
The delegate body of the 2026 Annual Conference on Wednesday afternoon, July 1, adopted a “Resolution on Weapons Transfer” with a solid majority vote. The paper cites Matthew 5:44b-45, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…,” to call the Church of the Brethren to “examine and respond to the impacts of the arms industry.”
For some time, the Church of the Brethren has undertaken a periodic review every decade to evaluate the denomination’s organizational structures and procedures, with a committee assigned to bring recommendations to Annual Conference for possible changes. This decade’s Review and Evaluation Committee, elected in 2025, presented its first interim report.
Norton as executive director of Global Mission for the Church of the Brethren introduced the international guests who were present. She then introduced the evening’s speaker and guest of honor Daniel Mbaya, president of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria), “the largest Anabaptist communion in the world.”
Angelo Mante was a graduate student in Atlanta when he received a predawn phone call on Sept. 13, 2016. It changed everything. He received the news that his first cousin Nick had been violently killed in Fort Wayne.
