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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Columbia Union Publishes Communication Handbook

Image from Free Photos on Pixabay

Story by Jenevieve Lettsome

Earlier this year, the Columbia Union’s Office of Strategic Communication and Public Relations partnered with AdventSource to publish the Communication Handbook with articles on copyright law, social media, media relations, video production, marketing, photography, branding, news writing, website design and more.

Project coordinator and editor, Celeste Ryan Blyden, vice president for Strategic Communication and Public Relations, notes, “Our goal was to provide tools and
ideas to facilitate and enhance efforts to tell our Church’s stories and share our message internally and externally.”

Dupont Park Church Showers Community with Love (and Diapers)

Story by Dupont Park Church Staff

Members of Allegheny East Conference’s Dupont Park church in Washington, D.C., were disappointed when they had to suspend their Community Baby Shower (CBS) and Back to School Giveaway, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several months into the community’s new normal of social distancing, and after much prayer and discussion over the church’s spiritual obligation to the community, church members started planning the event.

Dupont Park’s Inner-City Ministries leader, Lamont Bailey, says, “Our goal [was] simple: to eliminate the choice parents have to make—deciding between what’s best for their kids and best for their budget.” 

Ministry Around the World: Swiss Listener Shares About WGTS

By WGTS Staff

Much like books can stretch our imagination and transport us to new and exciting places, the radio signal of WGTS 91.9 has the ability to reach beyond our area and bring people from throughout the world into our listening family.

Meet WGTS 91.9 listener Christian Sollberger, a pastor of a Mennonite church in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He discovered the station when his daughter attended her Swiss friend’s wedding in Washington, D.C., and she started listening. “Since then, I tune into WGTS several times a week,” says Sollberger, “especially as I pray when I’m jogging or hiking.

“As soon as I turn it on, the ‘encouragement engine’ is started,” he says.

Highland View Academy STEM Program Receives Grant

Story by Jacklyn Ruth

Recently, the STEM department at Highland View Academy (Hagerstown, Md.) received a grant totaling $9,992 from the Toshiba America Foundation (TAF). These funds will go to support the Astronomy for All Project, a new STEM elective course created by Kenji Nomura, computer science, math teacher and IT Manager at Highland View Academy. 

"When we went online during the spring semester, I started researching potential astronomy projects that we could conduct remotely with the students in our STEM program," says Nomura. "The class is taught partially as a lecture and partially as night observation sessions with the equipment we were able to obtain through the grant awarded by Toshiba. The class is designed to cover several cross-curricular topics surrounding astronomy."