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.
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.
Story by Keisha May
I am a graduate from the Appalachian School of Law (Va.). In 2001 Peter Odighizuwa was one of my classmates and acquaintances. On January 16, 2002, Odighizuwa, fueled by the news that he had been suspended, stormed through the law school with a handgun. During his killing spree, he shot the academic dean, a professor and a first-year student. Three other students were wounded and hospitalized, but survived.
Read these stories from the May 2018 Visitor:
Editorial by Dave Weigley
Recently my niece, a determined genealogist, discovered through her research that we Weigleys came from a little German village not far from the city of Worms. A quick look online reveals this was the place Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, took his stand for conscience, declaring before the Diet of Worms in 1521, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God” (Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483-1521, Vol. 1, p. 460).
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nterview by V. Michelle Bernard
In an Anxious Kind of Mind, Randy Fishell, a member of the Chesapeake Conference’s Willowbrook church in Boonsboro, Md., shares his story of how his life turned around after years of struggling with anxiety disorders.
Read our interview with Fishell to find out more about his story and the book:
America was founded by religious refugees. At our best, we continue the tradition by welcoming those in greatest need. At our worst, we close our doors to those in dire distress, as we did in 1939 when we rejected the call to bring 20,000 Jewish children to America. As a result, many of those beautiful children were starved, beaten, brutally abused in unimaginable sadistic ways, and systematically slaughtered in the Nazi death factories. Today as we see men, women and children reaching out to us in hope, we can either open our hearts, or we live with the eternal consequences of turning our backs.