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| Bishop Hope Morgan Ward |
Bishop Hope Morgan Ward came to the Mississippi Area in 2004 after she was the first bishop elected at the 2004 Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference. Read Bishop Hope Morgan Ward's latest "E-pistle" column »
A bishop serves as a general superintendent for the church. In the United Methodist tradition, bishops are not "ordained" as bishops, but are clergy elected and consecrated to the office of bishop. Bishops give general oversight to the worldly and spiritual interests of the church and also are responsible for setting all clergy appointments, or assignments, in the annual conferences they serve. The bishop is the presiding officer at the annual conference session and rules on points of law.
RETHINK STEWARDSHIP - Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 9:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M. The Mississippi United Methodist Foundaiton, Inc., 2415 Highland Colony Parkway, Ridgeland, MS
SCHOLARSHIPS
The Scholarship Committee of The Mississippi United Methodist Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2010-2011
school year. Call our office for a new application form.
II Timothy 2:15 (NRSV) The NRSV states II Timothy 2:15 as saying, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth."
In the King James Version, the word "study" is used in the place of "do your best," but the meaning is the same: learning and discipleship are joined together; learning prepares Christ-followers to be effective co-workers with God. John Wesley, and the Wesleyans, believed and followed this admonition to join learning and discipleship in Christian living. John himself attended charterhouse on a scholarship for poor boys; he studied at Christ Church, one of the Oxford colleges, on a scholarship/fellowship; and he returned to Oxford as a teaching fellow at Lincoln College. Early in the Methodist movement, the Wesleys were active in organizing schools. In 1748, just ten years after John Wesley's "Heartwarming Experience" at Aldersgate, the Methodists opened Kingswood School. Charles Wesley wrote a hymn for the opening which included the verse: "...unite the two so long divided, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combined and truth and love let all men see."
Early in American Methodism this emphasis on sound learning and vital piety was continued, as Methodists organized schools and colleges throughout the 1800's and 1900's; through the years Methodists have been active in providing chaplaincies, and organizing church-related organizations on campuses; thus, continuing the union of sound learning and vital piety. It is properly within the scope of the purposes of the Mississippi United Methodist Foundation to try to encourage and enable students in general studies or ministerial studies to achieve in their lives sound learning and vital piety.
I hope we on this scholarship committee, and the Foundation, will not see our work as just dispensing money, but as helping to enable men and women to develop lives that combine sound learning and vital piety, or, in the words of one of my mentors, Dr. Robert Bergmark, are "intellectually respectable and spiritually satisfying," so that they may make positive contributions to society and to what God is up to in the world.
