Authentic worship appeals to outsiders 
By Rachel L. Toalson
Managing Editor
He was reeled in by Riverside Community, a United Methodist congregation in North San Antonio.
Josh Dean, 34, says he never really doubted his faith in Christ in the decade he spent away from the church. He just had a hard time seeing God’s involvement in the world.
He was a cop. He saw partners die in the line of duty, watched men beat their wives, found the bodies of beaten-to-death children buried under their parents’ houses.
Then his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I thought, ‘There’s her reward for all her faith,’” Dean said. “I was done with it. But I watched my mom’s faith never change and never weaken. She never questioned why. They found Riverside, and my dad started going to church, too.
“They said I needed to come check this church out. They told me the church didn’t even have a building yet, but they had a Hope Center and The Loft Coffeeshop.”
Riverside’s Hope Center helps families and children in need of clothes, furniture, food or other needs and assists women with their search for a job or other agencies that might help.
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27 dialogues to explore faith sharing tactics
Besides voting on action items next month in Corpus Christi, Southwest Texas Conference leaders are to discuss church transformation. The Council on Ministries has scheduled 27 one-hour discussion sessions June 5 and 6 during the Southwest Texas Annual Conference session.
The dialogues are to run from 4:45 to 6 p.m. Thursday and 2 to 3:15 p.m. Friday. Sessions are for delegates and guests.
Conference program agencies are organizing each session.
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General Conference delegates approve $642 million budget
United Methodist News Service
United Methodists must live with a spirit of abundance and not scarcity as they go into the world, the new president of the Council of Bishops told delegates on May 2, at the closing worship of the 2008 General Conference.
It is “incumbent on you and me as people of Christian faith that we not become stingy with the blessings—stingy with what we have received from God,” said Bishop Gregory Palmer in his sermon to close the denomination’s top legislative assembly. Palmer, who leads the church’s Iowa Area, was installed as president of the council on April 26.
“I am more hopeful for the church tonight than I have ever been because I am more vulnerable than I have ever been, and I need to depend more on the Holy Ghost than I have ever depended on the Holy Ghost,” he said.
Palmer’s sermon closed the April 23-May 2 assembly shortly before midnight.
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