Macland Community Blog

You can’t hurry the rising of yeast.
You can help it. You can create the right environment.
But you cannot rush it.

I first learned about LifeWise Academy on Dr. Michael Easley’s Ask Dr. E podcast in August 2023 when founder Joel Penton was a guest. I was immediately interested and conversations started! Several members of our church leadership team also heard the episode, and now—by God’s grace—we’re on the ground floor of bringing LifeWise to our county and throughout our state, Georgia.

Rev. Hollis said that as we trust the Holy Spirit to lead us, God will bring people next to us, whether at work, on the bleachers at a ballgame or in the airline seat beside us. Our job, Rev. Hollis explained, is to show God’s love to people by showing genuine interest in them and their stories.

Two days ago, we arrived in Abuja and stayed at the Peace Media Hotel.
Then we boarded a flight from Abuja to Gombe—on Air Peace.
We stayed on peace. We traveled on peace.
And today, we stand together in Gombe, still wrapped in peace.
Because deep down, each one of us longs for peace. Each one of us needs peace.

In the beginning, creation was good, and humanity was very good, made in the image of God to reflect His glory to the world. Adam and Eve were the first image-bearers, entrusted with the task of representing God.

One of my earliest and most vivid memories is from a family reunion, where my grandfather—Pop, my dad’s father, Clarence—stood before us with a small Bible in his hand. What he offered that day wasn’t money or possessions, but the most important gift he had: a relationship with Jesus Christ. That was our real inheritance.

In this conversation, Judy Stevenson invites us into her story—not just the polished parts, but the real, Spirit-led journey of leadership, faith, and unlearning.

If you knew—for sure—that Jesus would come back to earth exactly 10 years from now, what would you do with that 10 years? Would you buy more stuff? Binge watch another tv show? Build a bigger house, even though the world as we know it would end in 10 years? What would be the point?…

The felt heartbeat of Methodist evangelism has always been this: testimony changes lives. From its earliest days, Methodism has been a movement of storytelling—not abstract theology alone, but real, Spirit-breathed accounts of God’s transforming grace in ordinary people.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the vision of John Wesley, founder of Methodism and editor of…