United Methodist Insight Goes on Sabbatical

A Message from the Editor and Founder

by

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed."

– Hannah Arendt, scholar of totalitarianism (1906-1975)

A United Methodist Insight Special | Dec. 4, 2025

Fourteen years ago this month, I was out of a job.

Directors of the Boston Wesleyan Association, publishers of the venerable Methodist social justice magazine Zion’s Herald (later rebranded The Progressive Christian), suspended publication because they ran out of money. I don’t recall exactly how I got the word, but the effect was simple and sudden: I no longer had a job as the magazine’s editor.

A few days later, I got a telephone call from Barbara Cook Wendland, a longtime friend and sister writer who was a BWA director. Barbara was the only director to contact me, and she asked me what I was going to do for work. When I replied I had no idea, she asked a fateful question: “What would you do if you could?”

Immediately I replied: “I’d start a website where people who are shut out of mainstream United Methodist discussions could have a voice.”

Thus was born United Methodist Insight and its mission: discerning together God’s will for the future.

I started this online journal through the sponsorship of my congregation, St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite, Texas, and with a $25,000 grant to St. Stephen from Barbara’s family charity, the Joe B. and Louise P. Cook Foundation. My intention in the beginning was that those who weren’t being heard in the run-up to the 2012 General Conference could voice their concerns.

What I thought would be a six-month project turned into a 14-year tenure because when the 2012 General Conference was over, readers insisted they wanted an independent “news-and-views” publication to continue. They said they wanted a journal that would ask tough questions, spotlight the UMC’s drawbacks, highlight its overlooked accomplishments, and seek to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with integrity in today’s world.

Now, like many other journals these days, United Methodist Insight is going on sabbatical effective with the Dec. 12 issue. Maybe for a month or two. Maybe permanently.

I’ve chosen to call this suspension a “sabbatical” for several reasons.

First, we’re out of money. Barbara Wendland died on Christmas Day 2023, and her family foundation suffered a setback this year, a mail theft last January of this year’s grants to Insight and other recipients. Despite generous gifts from many readers – some of whom I know to be retired pastors with little disposable income – there isn’t enough money in the bank to keep Insight going, and grant prospects are dim. All nonprofits, including faith-based ones like us, are hurting.

Second, since Insight is officially a ministry under a local congregation’s sponsorship, I’ve not been able to develop the kind of independent governing board it needs. Although I’ve had a devoted “kitchen cabinet” of friends and colleagues who’ve been stalwart counselors and contributors, a publication needs a steering committee willing and able to implement policy, develop funding and maintain legal identity. The complexities of establishing such governance have been too daunting for me to complete.

Third, at age 72 after 53 years as a working journalist, I have to accept that I’m not the young – or even middle-aged – firebrand I used to be. This fall’s succession of health challenges for my husband John, who serves as Insight’s associate editor and business manager, and for me has forced us to accept a new reality: much like Indiana Jones, it’s not the years, folks, it’s the mileage – too much intellectual, physical and emotional mileage.

Side note: I cannot say enough thanks for the priceless contributions John W. Coleman has brought over the past 18 months as Editor-at-large. We both hoped that free-ranging title would lead to something more permanent but, alas, it seems less likely for now.

Finally, I’m thinking of Insight’s suspension as a “sabbatical” because that concept means renewal and rebirth – sabbath. Taking a sabbatical will be a new experience for me. In the 38 years I’ve covered the UMC, I’ve not once had a study leave or even a vacation longer than three weeks (which probably puts me in good company with a lot of pastors). It's darn nigh impossible to achieve a respite from a high-stress job that requires daily attention. Back at the late United Methodist Reporter newspaper, we always joked we were changing a flat tire on a still-moving car. The harsh truth: the car has to stop to change the flat, or you’re running on the rims.

Even though we’re running on the rims, I look back on the past 14 years with both sadness and pride.

I often joke that my hobby is “leaping to the defense of” those who’ve been harmed by the church or the world – sometimes both simultaneously. I regret the times my impetuousness led to errors. “Leaping to the defense of” marks a deep character trait instilled in me by my journalism mentor, a former CBS and Associated Press newsman named Judson Bailey. Jud took on a cocky, green kid with no sense of purpose when I was just out of college. By painstaking real-world tutelage at what he called “a little country weekly,” he made a world-class journalist out of me.

Jud’s cardinal rule was that journalism is a public-service-oriented business. Whether the topic was courts or cops, boring city council meetings, Little League or church suppers, Jud insisted the true story was how and why such happenings affected people’s lives. If the city’s water rates went up, Jud wanted to know how many more dollars the widow down the street would have to pay.

That’s the outlook I’ve brought to my life, career and United Methodist Insight: whatever big decisions, whatever management trends, whatever lofty goals an institution pursued, I wanted to know the effect on people. In the UMC’s case, my focus was whether people were being energized to go out into a scary world and live Jesus’s gospel of love and justice, and if not, why not? Because if living and spreading the gospel isn’t happening, what’s the point of church?

So I beg mercy on those times when like Jeremiah I let the “burning in my bones” lead me astray. I ask forgiveness for those mistakes I now recall with shame.

And the pride? It comes in brief notes accompanying a few dollars’ donation from readers, the notes that say, “thanks for what you’re doing.”

To put a number to Insight’s accomplishments, consider this: our online content management system currently houses more than 12,000 articles and more than 17,000 photos and graphics. The bulk of the written content has come from the people I set out to serve. That’s why a sabbatical goal is to develop a searchable database of Insight articles to donate to the General Commission on Archives and History, and possibly to a seminary library as well. I’ve been trying to accomplish this record for at least three years, and it simply takes more time than I could carve out from weekly news cycles.

If nothing else, Insight has chronicled the life of The United Methodist Church for the past 14 years. We've published articles ranging from small congregations' ministries to the momentous 2020/2024 General Conference that finally rid the denomination of its official discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons.

Oh, what a glorious moment that was! To stand weeping, hugging, in the Charlotte Convention Center, knowing that the people who worked faithfully through decades to rid our church of gender discrimination had used this media channel (among others) to amplify God’s love and justice. I weep with gratitude at the memory.

There have been other accomplishments along the way, but I won’t list them here. Whatever I remember about specific stories pales in comparison to the bnefits our readers and their communities have reported. That’s what good journalism does, makes a difference, and readers' evidence shows Insight has provided good journalism overall.

Should Insight’s sabbatical turn out to be its end, I hope and pray that across the United Methodist connection there are writers, editors, photographers and designers, readers and supporters who understand how important a community’s “first-line” chronicle is. The UMC has turned a historic corner in its life, and it needs a watchdog to hold it accountable as it navigates change.

Such independent journalism is crucial everywhere now. We’re living through a horrific time in so many ways, but especially as we are confronted by blatant, intentional deceit, brutality and tyranny. American Christianity has been co-opted and corrupted by those who use it to dominate and destroy. This reality has spurred me to keep going beyond when I probably should have stopped for the sake of my family and my health, but there it is.

Nonetheless, I’m encouraged by reports from pastors and church members who are defending our immigrant neighbors against the illegal, immoral, racially discriminatory practices of President Donald Trump’s administration. (Yes, I went there). Collectively these United Methodists have exposed the lie that current “immigration enforcement” is righteous. It isn’t. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s tyrannical tactics transgress the beloved community Jesus calls us to build – and people of faith have made it clear they’re not going to stand silent in the face of it.

That’s why Insight has published for the past 14 years: to tell the church and the world that there are followers of Jesus, the Christ, going about their daily lives with dignity, courage and love.

I’ll let you know if Insight comes to a full stop. In the meantime, if you have any ideas about how to foster a renewal – especially with more diverse funding, formal governance and editorial succession – drop us an email. I probably won’t respond until after the holidays, but I promise I’ll get back to you.

My farewell request: please be as kind and generous to one another as Barbara Wendland once was to me. Such Christian love really can – and does – change the world.