In 1935, the view across America was bleak. The nation was in the grip of the Great Depression; families and communities were struggling to stay together. In response to a request from a Sunday school group in Texas, a devotional guide was created by what is now The United Methodist Church. This guide, The Upper Room, was designed to support and encourage families in daily Bible study and prayer in their homes.

These many years later The Upper Room remains a great tool for outreach and evangelism. Each day more than 2.5 million people use the devotional guide. The writers of the daily meditations for The Upper Room are both lay and clergy from around the world. There are no requirements regarding denominational affiliation for writers. The Upper Room welcomes the witness of believers from diverse perspectives recognizing that each of us has something to share about our experience of the grace of God.

More than 5,000 meditations are evaluated each year during the process of selecting 365 for publication in the magazine. The criterion for evaluation is this: Will this meditation be helpful to a reader in a similar situation? The Upper Room seeks meditations that show real people who are struggling to live faithfully in real-life situations. We believe that God wills only good for each of us and that God calls us to lives of love, forgiveness, and service to others, according to the example of Christ.

No example of Christ was more consistent or clear than was his commitment to the least and the lost. Through the intentional outreach of the hospital chaplains' ministry, the prison chaplains' ministry, the military chaplains' ministry, and the Braille editions and cassettes, Upper Room Ministries® seeks to follow Christ by providing The Upper Room magazine to people in significant need. Each year our network of chaplains provides free devotional literature to people in more than 800 institutions and the military, and we reach more than 700 persons who are visually impaired by providing Braille and audiocassette editions.

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