East Chain United Methodist Church

07/17/2026

A new vision for the UMC—and making it real
July 14, 2026

By: Reid Baumann

The new vision statement for The United Methodist Church, "The United Methodist Church forms disciples of Jesus Christ who, empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously in local communities and worldwide connections," and its more concise version, “Love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously” was adopted by the UMC in May of 2025. This vision went hand in hand with the mission of the church to “Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” How do we share this very Wesleyan vision with our congregations and our neighbors?

The UMC Vision area rugs

Rev. Matt Sipe, pastor at Hilltop United Methodist Church in Mankato, has seen this vision reach his congregation over time. “When we first talked about it, people were like ‘what’s this’?” said Sipe. However, that was soon to change.
Pastor Matt Sipe from Hilltop UMC in Mankato

Hilltop had an “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” area rug near the church entrance from many years ago.

“My office administrator, Michelle, found that the UMC had new floor mats that were really visually striking—and featured the 'Love Boldly, Serve Joyfully, and Lead Courageously' vision statement," related Sipe.

These simple area rugs, one at each of the church’s three doors, began to make an impact almost immediately. “We had quite the discussion in church about whether we should have them facing so that you can see them when you enter, or as you leave,” said Sipe. “We made it so that every person entering Hilltop can see the message on their way in.”

Seeing these words every Sunday has been powerful for parishioners. “It has helped us try to think about how to put things into action, and to help it shape our identity,” said Sipe.

Using this vision to make disciples of Jesus Christ has become central to Hilltop’s identity. In a recent capital campaign, they leaned into this statement as the central focus of what they wanted to accomplish with their work.

“(This vision and mission) are hugely Wesleyan ideas; this is what it means to be a Methodist,” noted Sipe.
Hilltop UMC

Sipe has gotten back to Methodism’s roots by rewriting several of John Wesley’s sermons with modern language so that people can relate better to the timeless messages. “Last week, I did the 'Almost Christian'…the sermon hit hard, and it spoke right into our cultural moment.”

In the sermon, Wesley discussed the 18th century Church of England, and the malaise that was prevalent in the church at the time. “His call was to love…and to love boldly; that is part of our roots, what it means to be The UMC,” said Sipe.

This vision to “Love Boldly, Serve Joyfully, and Lead Courageously” has given United Methodists the impetus to work toward this goal of personal holiness. It is something we all can do. The exploration of the Social Principles has also become a part of this work— personal holiness from a Wesleyan standpoint was never to be lived in isolation.

“These six words hit people: that I want to do this, that I can do this, that I can be this person!” said Sipe.

Engagement with these ideas, and the roots of Christianity, have been powerful for the people of Hilltop UMC— and a few humble area rugs helped to get the conversation going.

06/27/2026

Image
June 26, 2026



Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

As our nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are invited to reflect on liberty, belonging, and our shared responsibilities.

I believe anniversaries invite more than celebration—though celebration is warranted. Anniversaries also invite gratitude, truth-telling, and discernment. They ask us to remember where we have come from, honestly assess where we are, and consider what kind of future we hope to build together.

Writing to God's people in exile, the prophet Jeremiah offered this instruction:

"Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you ... for in its welfare you will find your welfare." (Jeremiah 29:7)

The Hebrew word translated as "welfare" is shalom: peace, wholeness, flourishing, justice, and well-being.

These words were spoken not to citizens, but to exiles. Their commitment to the common good flowed not from status or power, but from their identity as God's people.

That vision speaks powerfully into our own moment.

Some of us trace our family stories to the First Nations peoples who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial. Some descend from those who crossed oceans seeking opportunity and refuge. Some are descendants of those brought here against their will. Some arrived recently. Some are citizens. Some are permanent residents. Some are still seeking a place to call home.

Yet all of us are neighbors, and all of us are bound together in one another's flourishing.

As we tell the story of our nation, we must also tell it truthfully. We remember Indigenous communities who experienced the loss of land, language, and culture; African men, women, and children who were enslaved while others proclaimed freedom; and generations of immigrants and laborers who endured hardship in pursuit of belonging.

These stories do not diminish our nation. They deepen our understanding of it.

The Christian faith teaches that healing begins with truth. Confession is not the opposite of hope; it is often the doorway to hope.

The Apostle Paul reminds us: "Our citizenship is in heaven." (Philippians 3:20)

Christians live with a kind of dual citizenship. We belong to the communities and nations in which we live, yet our deepest identity is found in the Kingdom of God. That citizenship shapes every other loyalty and reminds us that no earthly power can claim the devotion that belongs to God alone.

In every generation, Christians face the temptation to confuse love of country with devotion to God. The Church serves the nation best not when it becomes the chaplain of power, but when it remains faithful to Jesus Christ.

In the Wesleyan tradition, freedom is not merely freedom from something. It is freedom for something: loving God, loving neighbor, pursuing mercy and justice, and participating in God's healing work in the world.

Jesus expressed this calling simply:

"You are the salt of the earth."

"You are the light of the world." (Matthew 5:13-14)

Which brings us to another enduring symbol: the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

A torch provides light. It helps people find their way.

The Statue of Liberty lifts her light toward the horizon. The Church carries another light: the light of Christ.

As we approach this anniversary, may we resist both cynicism and nostalgia. May we seek the shalom of the places where God has planted us. May we welcome the stranger, pursue justice, build peace, and love our neighbors.

Every generation receives the torch of liberty.

The question is how we will carry it.

May we carry it with humility, courage, compassion, and hope.

Whether citizen or newcomer, native-born or newly arrived, may we seek together the flourishing of our communities and all God's children.

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Resident Bishop
Dakotas-Minnesota Episcopal Area



Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
122 W. Franklin Ave., Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55404 | 612-230-6152

04/02/2026

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

The first Easter morning did not begin in triumph.

The world into which Jesus was raised from the dead was neither peaceful nor orderly. It was a world of empire and occupation. Roman soldiers stood watch over restless and vulnerable populations. Taxes pressed the poor. Religious leaders struggled to preserve identity and faith under political pressure. Violence was public and common. Crucifixion was Rome’s way of making fear visible. Jesus died, as many others did in that time. Executed by the machinery of empire. Abandoned by frightened friends. Buried quickly before the Sabbath.

No...that the first Easter morning did not begin in triumph.

It began in grief. It began with diminished hope, where expectation of what Messiah meant, they feared, would not be realized. Life as they had hoped for...it was not what they were experiencing. In fact, it was counter to the vision of Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven

Think about Matthew 5—the Beatitudes, Matthew 25—“Whenever you care for the least of these, you also care for me.” Or even from Micah 6:8—where we are called to practice mercy, justice, and humility. A posture of God-likeness in the world.

And that first Easter morning wasn’t about a posture of God-likeness.

It was a posture of women walking to a tomb while the city was still quiet. They were carrying spices to care for a dead body. They expected nothing except the completion of mourning. They expected to tend to death amid despair. But instead, they encountered the impossible.

A stone rolled away.

An empty grave.

A message that made no sense to their head nor their heart:

“He is not here. He has risen!"

Learning these two things, they did not run away, shouting certainty. They ran away trembling. Scripture tells us they were afraid, amazed, and perplexed.

You see, Easter did not arrive as an explanation.

It arrived as disruption. And in many ways our own time—this time that we are living in—is not so different from theirs. We live in a world where we look around and can say with certainty, “This is not what God intended or intends."

Where nations struggle and communities divide.

Where families carry grief and bodies carry illness.

Where many labor long hours for wages that barely sustain life.

Where anxiety, loneliness, depression, exhaustion, and despair quietly settle into the people’s bones.

Some among us live with great stability and comfort. Others live with deep precarity.

And yet, in this world, just as in that ancient one, the Easter proclamation still breaks open the morning:

Christ is risen.

Not as an idea. Not as a metaphor. But as the stubborn, holy claim that death does not have the final word in this.

The resurrection of Jesus does not erase suffering. It does not instantly solve the conflicts of our time, but it does something just as powerful. It interrupts the story that says the world—marked by war, famine, disease and dis-ease—is irreparable and unredeemable.

Instead, Easter says, “God is as work, bringing life into places marked by death.”

Easter says, “Life can emerge from sealed tombs.

Hope can rise where fear once ruled.

Love can outlast violence.

That death does not and will not have final word.”

This is why the church still gathers, still sings, still dares to proclaim this ancient greeting.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

And yet, if we are honest, Easter still confounds us.

We wrestle with it.

We analyze it.

We try to explain it.

Perhaps that is why this prayer by Walter Brueggemann speaks so truthfully to our moment. Please hear these words:

“We are baffled. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! We are baffled by the very Easter claim we voice. Your new life fits none of our categories. We wonder and stew and argue, and add clarifying adjectives like 'spiritual' and 'physical.'

But we remain baffled at seeking clarity and explanation. We who are prosperous, and full and safe and tenured. We are baffled and want explanations.

But there are those, not baffled, but stunned by the news.

Stunned while at minimum wage jobs. Stunned while the body wastes in cancer. Stunned while the fabric of life rots away in fatigue and despair. Stunned while unprosperous and unfull and unsafe and untenured.

Waiting only for you in your Easter outfit. Waiting for you to say, ‘Fear not, it is I.’

Deliver us from our bafflement and our many explanations. Push us over into stunned need and show yourself to us lively.

Easter us in honesty. Easter us in fear. Easter us in joy, and let us be Eastered. Amen.”
~Walter Brueggemann

Did you hear that?

Let us be “Eastered.” Let us be Eastered, indeed.

Not merely convinced, but changed.

Not simply informed, but awakened.

To be Eastered is to have the stone rolled away in places where it had sealed things shut. It is to feel light slip into the cracks of grief we thought were permanent. It is to hear our names spoken, as Mary did, and suddenly recognize that love is alive and calling us forward.

To be Eastered is to rise. Not all at once, not perfectly, but with some intention. It is to stand up again in a world that still bears wounds, and yet refuse to let those wounds have the last word. It is to live as people who expect surprise from God, who look at closed doors and wonder what new life might be pressing on the hinges. Who dare to believe that even now, even here, resurrection is already underway.

To be Eastered is to carry hope not as a fragile idea, but as a living fire, warm enough to comfort, bright enough to guide, bold enough to share.

It is to become people who say with our lives, “Fear will not define us. Despair will not claim us. Death will not keep us. Because Christ is risen. And in him, we are rising too.”

So let us be Eastered in our churches and in our streets, in our leadership and in our love, in our weariness and in our witness.

Let us be Eastered with courage for this moment, with tenderness for one another, and with a joy that refuses to be contained.

For the tomb is empty.

The morning is breaking.

And the Risen Christ is already ahead of us, calling us by name, and leading us into life.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

Resurrection blessings, Eastered people.

Go into the light of this world, as the light of Christ in this world.

Go and be Eastered people, blessing all those seeking love, light, hope, relationship, seeking Christ.

The tomb is empty.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

Happy Easter!

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Resident Bishop
Dakotas-Minnesota Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church



Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
122 W. Franklin Ave., Suite 400,
Minneapolis, MN 55404
612-230-6152

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02/18/2026

Beloved Friends in Christ across the Dakotas–Minnesota Episcopal Area,

Grace and peace to you as we step across the quiet threshold of Ash Wednesday and into the 40-day season of Lent.

This Ash Wednesday, many of you will receive a cross traced in palm-dust either placed on your forehead or perhaps the back of your hand. This marking is a reminder of our mortality and of our humanity. A reminder that is both tender and unsettling.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

These words are not meant to frighten us. They are meant to locate us. To ground us in truth. We are finite. Dependent. Held in the mercy of God.

When we receive the mark of the cross, we are invited into 40 days of self-examination and reflection shaped by repentance, fasting, prayer, service, alms-giving and preparation for Easter. The cross is an outward sign of an inward trust. It quietly declares, “I belong to Christ. I am following Jesus.”

This tradition of ash marking reaches back into the Old Testament, where ashes signified repentance and humility before God. It also draws us to the desert-dust of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness.

There is another ancient symbol that invites us into this holy season: the Ichthys, the simple fish.

In the early church, the ichthus was drawn with two curved lines, sometimes in dust, sometimes etched into stone. A confession hidden in plain sight. The Greek letters formed an acrostic:

Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter
Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

But the symbol carried more than doctrine and theology. It marked belonging. It signaled community. It told a story.

It re-members us, quite literally gathers us back into, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

We are re-membered to the shoreline at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at the Sea of Galilee when he calls the first disciples (Mt 4.18-22). We are re-membered to another shoreline after the resurrection (John 21), when he welcomed his friends to breakfast and restored both their identity and marked a redemptive return to their calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Lent invites that same re-turning in us. The cross and the ichthys are symbolic reminders of that.

This transformation is about kingdom living, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 5:1–16; Matthew 25:31–46). It begins with holy examination, a willingness to pray:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways. (from Psalm 139)

We are about to enter these forty days together on a shared journey, a journey that reminds us of who and whose we are. I trust you will find faithful ways to mark this season. You may take on a new practice such as daily reading of Scripture, journaling, or a service project. You may fast from habits that hinder your ability to love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Over these next forty days, I invite you to dwell more deeply in the meaning of ichthys: Jesus Christ, Son of God. Savior as we journey to the foot of the cross.

If you look at my wrists during Lent, you will see that I carry the mark of the ichthys (ick-toos) and the cross drawn in marker on my wrists near my radial pulse mark. I do this as a reminder to take my spiritual pulse throughout the season. Am I following? Am I loving? Am I listening?

That is the invitation of Lent. To take your spiritual pulse. To step again into the waters of your baptism. To love God with the whole of who you are, so that the whole world might glimpse the reach of God’s grace.

With you in the Lenten journey,

Bishop Lanette

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01/08/2026

A Pastoral Letter to the Dakotas–Minnesota Episcopal Area

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; ...those whose spirits are overwhelmed.” - Psalm 34.18 NLT, adapt.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6.8 NRSV

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I write as one who, in my episcopal role, is called to guard the faith, shepherd the people, and work for unity. It is from this responsibility that I offer these words.

Today in Minneapolis, during a federal immigration enforcement operation, Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot. Investigations are underway. Accounts differ. Many details remain unclear. At the time of this writing, what we know, and must not move past too quickly, is this: a human life has been lost.

The work of the church begins here. Before we receive deep analysis or a full explanation of the events that led to the shooting, we enter into lament. We grieve a life ended too soon. We hold in prayer the family and loved ones who now carry an unimaginable loss. We acknowledge the fear and trauma this event has stirred, especially among immigrant and refugee neighbors for whom encounters with law enforcement already carry profound risk.

We also speak to the wider moment in which this tragedy occurred. Across our nation, we are witnessing a troubling willingness to normalize violence as a tool of order and to resist accountability as though it were a threat rather than a safeguard. The church must say clearly: power that is unexamined, unchecked, or unaccountable stands in tension with the way of Jesus Christ.

Scripture reminds us that authority is given for the sake of the common good. When power is exercised, its first obligation is to preserve life and protect the vulnerable. The measure of justice is not how quickly actions are justified, but how faithfully truth is sought and responsibility is held.

This word is spoken not in condemnation, but in love. Love for communities living in fear. Love for institutions that must be called back to their highest purposes. Love for a nation whose soul is shaped, for better or worse, by the choices it makes in moments like these.

As your bishop, I call our congregations to be places of refuge and prayer in the days ahead. Be attentive to grief. Listen deeply to those who are afraid. Stay rooted in Christ, who chose the way of self-giving love over the way of force.

In moments of grief and uncertainty, most of us naturally lean toward news voices we already trust. In our vulnerability, we rush to make complex situations clear-cut. While that is human, it can also narrow our understanding. I encourage us to broaden our listening, seek out careful reporting from news sources representing multiple perspectives, and remain open to voices that may challenge our assumptions. Expanding how we listen is one way we practice humility and love in the pursuit of truth.

In this fragile space between tragedy and truth, may we be a people who lament honestly, seek justice humbly, and refuse the lie that violence has the final word. We hold fast to the resurrection promise that love endures and that life, not death, will have the final say.

May the God who binds up the brokenhearted draw near to all who mourn, and may the Spirit lead us in the way of justice, mercy, and peace.

Grace and peace,

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Resident Bishop
Dakotas-Minnesota Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church

Prayer

God of mercy and nearness,
we come to you with heavy hearts.
We grieve a life lost and hold close all who mourn.
Be near to those whose hearts are broken,
to those who are afraid,
and to all who are waiting for truth to come into the light.

In this tender space between tragedy and understanding,
teach us to lament honestly,
to seek justice with humility,
and to walk gently with one another.
Guard us from haste, from hardened hearts,
and from the temptation to let fear or violence shape our way.

We place our hope in you, O God of resurrection.
When death and grief seem to have the final word,
remind us that life and love endure.
Make us instruments of your peace,
and keep us faithful in the days ahead.

We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus,
who brings life out of death
and hope out of sorrow.

Amen.

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12/01/2025

Join us for a summary walk through of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. Journey toward Christmas Day with a renewed vision and appreciation for the life of Jesus Christ. Each day you will find a link to the Bible passage for that day.

December 1 - Read Psalm 100.

December 2 - Read Galatians 4:1-7.

December 3 - Read Isaiah 7:14.

December 4 - Read Micah 5:2.

December 5 - Read Isaiah 9:6.

December 6 - Read John 1:1-5.

December 7 - Read John 1:14.

December 8 - Read Philippians 2:1-11.

December 9 - Read James 1:16-17.

December 10 - Read Luke 1:5-25.

December 11 - Read Luke 1:26-33.

December 12 - Read Luke 1:34-38.

December 13 - Read Luke 1:39-45.

December 14 - Read Luke 1:46-56.

December 15 - Read Luke 1:57-66.

December 16 - Read Luke 1:67-80.

December 17 - Read Luke 2:1-5.

December 18 - Read Luke 2:6-7.

December 19 - Read Luke 2:8-14.

December 20 - Read Luke 2:15-20.

December 21 - Read Matthew 2:1-12.

December 22 - Read Luke 2:21-35.

December 23 - Read Luke 2:36-40.

December 24 - Read Matthew 1:18-25.

December 25 - Read 2 Corinthians 9:15.

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