When a man critical of illegal immigration trips and falls at a farmers’ market, a Hispanic vendor named Carlos rushes to help him without hesitation. In Rev. Paul Graves’ parable, the unexpected kindness quietly rattles the man’s assumptions, leaving him wondering whether the people he’d written off as threats might simply be neighbors he hadn’t met yet.

The Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church is administering more than $1 million in disaster recovery funding across Washington State. A new $675,000 UMCOR Recovery Grant will support long-term recovery efforts for survivors of the December 2025 floods across 16 counties and tribal nations, funding Disaster Case Management staff in Whatcom and Skagit Counties. The conference is also supporting survivors of the 2023 Spokane wildfires.

The PNW Conference Board of Church and Society, in partnership with United Women in Faith, is awarding Peace with Justice Grants to seven ministries across the conference. Recipients are addressing food insecurity, housing, mental health, domestic violence, media literacy, and more. The grants coincide with Peace with Justice Sunday, May 31. This year's Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award is also announced.

Seventy years after the Methodist Church granted women full clergy rights, the Pacific Northwest Conference has real progress to show; women now hold a slim majority of pastoral positions and outpace men in average compensation. But Patrick Scriven shares that numbers don't capture every experience, and gender equity remains unfinished work inside the Church and beyond it.

A lay servant course through BeADisciple and the Wesley Academy is proving to be more than an academic exercise. For student and newly elected mayor Dr. Shawna Beese, eight weeks studying eschatology alongside lay speakers and licensed pastors has yielded unexpected hope and clarity, including a fresh appreciation for Revelation as a source of comfort and a call to build more just communities.