Who We Are, How We Serve

The Columbia Union Conference, established in 1907 to coordinate the Seventh-day Adventist Church's work in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, is part of the worldwide Protestant denomination of 23 million members in more than 212 countries. At the union level, we connect and provide administrative leadership, governance and support services to our conferences, schools, health care networks and ministries. Each year, our organizations sponsor programs and projects that address human needs, improve quality of life and introduce people to Jesus. Read our Mission, Values and Priorities.

We Believe

God is love, power, and splendor—and God is a mystery. His ways are far beyond us, but He still reaches out to us. God is infinite yet intimate, three yet one,
all-knowing yet all-forgiving.

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Photo by Ben Grey from Flickr

Editorial by Andre Hastick

Each day you and I use thousands of words; we share sentences to express our thoughts and feelings. Our intended messages, however, can sometimes get lost in translation. It is estimated that in the Scots language, spoken in the winter wonderland of the northern United Kingdom, there are more than 400 words for “snow.” I live in Maryland, where we make a big deal about any winter precipitation. In fact, it seems like our only term for snow is “School’s closed!” If Scots-speaking people tried to teach me about their snowfall without me experiencing it personally, their lesson would probably get lost in translation.

Interview by V. Michelle Bernard

Through her book, One Thing I Ask, Debbie Luther Howell wants to lead Christians back to knowing God through His Word.

Through her book, One Thing I Ask, Debbie Luther Howell wants to lead Christians back to knowing God through His Word. “I want them to have a passion for the Bible because when they open its pages they sense His very presence,” says the member of the Chesapeake Conference’s New Hope church in Fulton, Md. Read our interview with Howell below:

Visitor Magazine: How has praying through the Bible impacted you personally?

In her book, Walking the Pathway of Prayer, Violet Cox, Prayer Ministries director for the Allegheny West Conference, invites readers to journey with her and discover a more meaningful prayer life.

Cox writes about how she grew in her understanding of what prayer is (and isn't) and shares a story about the first time she prayed her own prayer as child. After seeing a pair of pretty green shoes, and praying that 'If God really heard her, He'd let her have the shoes.' A day or so later, her mother came home with the exact shoes she had prayed about.