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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Teaching Boys to Trust Again

Story by Tompaul Wheeler

Pennsylvania Conference’s Grace Outlet church has taken on its own challenge—fostering connections with the male residents of the Children’s Home of Reading. Grace Outlet chose the center as a way to meet one of their main missions, to “connect the disconnected.” Church volunteers have a very simple goal, to spend quality time with teens that have lost their ability to trust and interact in healthy ways with adults.

Some leaders and members of the CROP program. Photograph by Hayne Photography

Bringing up Boys

Story by Tompaul Wheeler

As many as 24 million children in the United States live in a fatherless home.* Without present or involved dads, boys especially are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to use drugs, be incarcerated and commit suicide, and generally struggle to succeed. Who can offer these youth a more promising future? Positive, Christian, male role models—and the Columbia Union has some you should meet: