...OTHER people's lives. That's always going to be a cause for debate. Why would I start a church if I couldn't tell you what you can't do?

You have to read all the way to the end of the article to learn the details about who and why.

on the site. Created really bad writing with paras of filler and personal commentary. Last para or so is the actual news. I’ve developed the habit of scrolling to the end and reading up.

I thought it was just the writers' egos getting in the way of the story. They go on and on about their personal history with the story but won't tell me what the story is, they give somebody's life story in irrelevant detail and after ten screenfuls of bs they finally tell you what the guy did, they blather endlessly about descriptions of the heath in Victorian England before they finally tell you what they're talking about, videos go on for twenty minutes of background and blather before they tell you what happened.

. . . About all the personal life stories that are front-loaded onto articles that don't require such content. I find that practice to be particularly annoying when I'm looking up a recipe. I suppose that if I were writing a cookbook, I might include a foreward on my grandmother and her association with the food of my heritage, but when I look up a recipe online, I want to get down to business. Show me the ingredients and give me the instructions, please. I don't care about your farmhouse or your antique baking tools or your kids' food allergies.

. . . last I heard 104 churches statewide had "disassociated" from the Virginia General Conference.

In my little rural county, five of our ten UMC churches have disassociated. One of them is our biggest Methodist church with about 125 on the roll but only about 40 at services. My church has 104 on the rolls, we do well to have 20 at services.

None of us small churches are paying our way, the general conference is bailing us out; my church has a retired minister who is working for gas money. We don't know how much longer all of us can hang on. We REALLY need to consolidate all the small churches, but whenever that is mentioned, we hear "My great-granddaddy built this church!! It will never close and consolidate!!"