Connections are important.

Nobody understands the word connection as do United Methodists. When we talk about the larger church we refer to it as “the connection.”

Connections are important. I remember visiting with a young man in Nashville 25 years ago -- I was the editor of the Upper Room and this young man was a student at Vanderbilt University. His parents were friends of mine but I had known him only in passing. This was one of those encounters that we have now and then that we sense are charged with deep meaning. I remember it as though it were yesterday, praying as that young man left, “Oh God, we need that young man in the ministry of your church.”

Connections are important. That young man was David Thomas.

Three years ago I came to be the president of Asbury Theological Semina…