Peace Flowing Like a River : Thoughts of Bishop Kenneth W. Hicks

KennethW. Hicks served sixteen years as a United Methodist bishop in Arkansas and Kansas with distinction and grace, and to this day encourages people to live every day with an attitude of peace and justice. He doesn’t just want people to talk about peace and justice issues, he wants them to put those concepts into practice as commanded in the Bible: Seek peace, and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14b NRSV). Throughout his episcopacy, Hicks wrote regular columns in United Methodist publications, and this book is a collection of his memorable thoughts from those well-received messages. In these pages, the reader is invited to discover Hicks’s appreciation for God’s extraordinary gifts; his wonder as to the glory of Christian holidays; his observations of the full responsibility of being in leadership in the church; and his desperate need for humankind to wake up and see what peace, justice, prayer, hope, and love can do. The reader is in for a real treat with this book—there is poetry in the thoughts of Bishop Kenneth W. Hicks.

Born and raised in southeast Kansas in an Evangelical United Brethren household, Kenneth William Hicks joined the Methodist Church in 1946 after which he entered and completed studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. Prior to being chosen as a United Methodist bishop in 1976, Hicks most ably served in pulpits in Colorado and Nebraska. He and his wife, Elaine, live in Little Rock, Arkansas, and are the parents of two daughters.