Recent News

Lay Servant Ministries (foundational & advanced) courses for July and August 2026

Multiple opportunities await in Lay Servant Ministries (LSM)! Upcoming courses on Zoom are open to laity throughout the Greater Northwest and Mountain Sky areas. To participate, you'll need to purchase the course book, complete all readings and assignments, and engage fully in all five sessions with both audio and video active. Check out the courses and find the right fit for you.

Everyone is an ‘other’ to someone else

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.

United Methodists surpass $1 Million in disaster recovery support in the Pacific Northwest

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.

2026 PNW Peace with Justice Grants, MLK award, announced

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.

Still standing at the edge

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.
Laity

Hope in uncertain times

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.
Communications

Smaller, sent and still here

The Pacific Northwest Conference has changed significantly over the last decade. We have fewer churches, fewer people in the pews, and a very different distribution of congregation sizes than we did in 2016. But the mission field hasn't shrunk. Patrick Scriven looks at what the data shows and considers what it might mean for how we move forward together.
Opinion/Editorial

History is complicated. We prefer simplicity.

Reflecting on Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch's call for Americans to embrace ambiguity when facing complex history, Patrick Scriven connects it to his own seminary journey of reconciling faith with historical scholarship. He critiques a White House report accusing the Smithsonian of "radical, activist ideology," arguing that ideological pressure toward simplicity, whether nationalistic or partisan, distorts our understanding of history and faith alike.
Patrick Scriven -

Alaska Conference

Oregon-Idaho Conference

Creation Care

Caring for God’s creation: 17 EarthKeepers commissioned across the Greater Northwest

Recently commissioned Global Ministries EarthKeepers completed training in environmental stewardship and faithful action. This cohort included EarthKeepers from both the Oregon-Idaho and Pacific Northwest Conferences, who are now developing community-based creation care projects. A recording of the commissioning service is now available for congregations and individuals to watch.
Patrick Scriven -

Pacific Northwest Conference

Opinion/Editorial

History is complicated. We prefer simplicity.

Reflecting on Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch's call for Americans to embrace ambiguity when facing complex history, Patrick Scriven connects it to his own seminary journey of reconciling faith with historical scholarship. He critiques a White House report accusing the Smithsonian of "radical, activist ideology," arguing that ideological pressure toward simplicity, whether nationalistic or partisan, distorts our understanding of history and faith alike.
Patrick Scriven -

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