About Us

Prayer

At St. Paul UMC we value prayer.  Prayer is a joyful privilege and we would be delighted to pray for you.  We offer prayer on Sunday morning as well as through the week.  May God be graceful.  From the Bible and in the Epistle of James it is written (from the Message version):

“Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.  Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.”

 We pray God’s presence with you.

Rev. Dr. Deborah Appler

Rev. Dr. Deborah Appler retired May 2025 after 26 years under appointment teaching Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Moravian Theological Seminary. She holds degrees from McDaniel College (BS Chemistry), Perkins School of Theology (M.Div.), and Vanderbilt University (Ph.D. Hebrew Bible).

Deborah grew up in a small United Methodist Church in West Friendship, Maryland and continues to find spiritual grounding in the Wesleyan tradition. She was ordained in 1987 in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, where she served local churches before responding to the call to the seminary setting and later transferring to the EPA Conference.

She is passionate about teaching and preaching the Bible in ways that that foster faith, love, justice, and healthy relationships among people and the earth. Deborah currently serves as an EarthKeeper, a member of CONAM, and convenes the Bethlehem Interfaith Group. She is married to Bill Arnold; together they share five children and eight grandchildren.