Our Mission

Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Our Vision

Faith United Methodist Church is a congregation committed to leading people to become, and helping to form them as, disciples of Jesus Christ through ministry and service that encourages each person to grow to their full intellectual, physical, and spiritual potential in a nurturing community of Christian faith. We seek to embody classic Christian values, virtues, and beliefs in an open, welcoming, challenging, and progressive atmosphere founded on Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason.

Our Values

With Jesus at our center, these are the values upon which our mission rests:

• Because each person is precious and important to God, we imitate Christ by meeting people in their cultural context.
• Because God cares for us more than we can imagine, we celebrate God's real presence, love and power.
• Because we are invited to become reflections of Jesus, we equip believers of all ages to an ever-deepening Christian spiritual life.
• Because the surest mark of faith is to offer God's love, forgiveness, and life-changing presence, we serve the forgotten and powerless.

We are a weekly Eucharistic Community

A weekly Eucharistic Community means that we celebrate Holy Communion every week as a part of our worship service. This pattern of worship is a new pattern for the congregation but emerged from over twenty people studying our United Methodist statement of Holy Communion, This Holy Mystery, adopted at our General Conference in 2004. Part of the recommendation of our General Conference is that every United Methodist congregation celebrate Holy Communion every week. Here is the manner in which God's Spirit led this congregation and the reasons as to why we celebrate Holy Communion weekly:

A movement of the Laity: After studying This Holy Mystery as part of a Lenten Study Series, the members of the group asked the Committee on Worship & Worship Arts then the Church Council to adopt the practice of weekly Holy Communion.

Foundation in History: The founder of Methodism envisioned a community of faith in which preaching was vibrant and Holy Communion was celebrated and received by all each week.

Foundation in Scripture: The Biblical witness is that the ancient church celebrated communion every week on the "first day of the week" -- which is Sunday. The Book of Acts has numerous references to the ancient community (the church) gathering for instruction (preaching), prayer, and the breaking of bread (communion). This is our pattern of worship.

We are shaped by God by both Word and Action: Worship without Holy Communion is like driving a car without all four tires! "As we encounter Christ in Holy Communion and are repeatedly touched by divine grace [through Holy Communion], we are progressively shaped into Christ's image. All of this work is not done in a moment, no matter how dramatic an experience [of converting or transforming faith] we may enjoy. It is, instead, a lifelong process through which God intends to shape us into people motivated by love, empowered and impassioned to do Christ's work in the world. The identity and ministry that God bestows on us in our baptism are fulfilled as we continue to be transformed into disciples who can respond to God's love by loving God and others (Romans 12:1-2)." from This Holy Mystery (c) 2005 Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources, page 19.

Do I always have to receive? No, just because we celebrate Holy Communion every week and a large majority of those present receive does not mean you must receive. Pastor announces God's invitation is this way: "This is the Lord's Table not our Table and all are welcome and invited to receive." You are invited to receive, but you are not compelled to receive. You must do as your conscious dictates and we respect each person making the choices necessary for their spiritual lives.

What about children? Baptized children of all ages are invited to receive from infant onward. (Although it might not be wise of very young children to receive wheat products; You should speak with your family physician about such matters.) We believe Holy Communion is about celebrating God's activity and announcing God's activity in the world. The ability to "understand" is not required. God is present to all people regardless of their developmental and/or cognitive ability. However, some parents have decided that they would prefer their children to receive later in childhood. We respect that family decision. For those families that make this choice, we invite the children to come forward with their parents and receive a prayer of blessing with pastor. We do not, however, celebrate "first communion" or give specific classes for "first communion." We do include instruction concerning Holy Communion in our Sunday School program and our confirmation program. This is the balance we have struck between a fully "open table" and a desire for "understanding."

Our Principles

We commit ourselves to:

Holy Scripture as the foundational and primary source of our individual and corporate identity, perspective and vision. God's gifts of tradition, reason, and experience, guided by the Holy Spirit, help us hear more clearly how the words of the Bible connect with our modern world.

Our Ancestors and their expressions of the Christian faith in the words of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.

The Global Community of over 40 million Christians called Wesleyan to which we belong and through which we connect to people around the world in service and fellowship.

Transparency to God and each other that is possible through relationships both centered in prayer and open to transformation through belonging to a small community with the congregation and the larger church.

A Life-long Journey in which "the greatest gifts are placed in the smallest hands" and during which all people, children, teens, and adults, can wrestle with their faith in order to more faithfully become Jesus' presence to God's beloved world.

Interactive Engagement of all ages in every aspect of our common life in which the experience of the community is more important than one's individual preferences.

An Entreprenurial Spirit where the reality that the baptized are gifted by the Holy Spirit for ministry and service is realized in the freedom of each person to perceive, obey, and implement the message and vision God places in their lives.

Quality in all that we say and do, believing that excellence honors God and lavish generosity reflects God's abundant love for the world.

Indigenous Worship in order to experience the timelessness of Jesus' gift of Baptism and Holy Communion by drawing from both the breadth of music, language, architecture, and art forms found in the 21st century and the rich worship heritage of the early unified Christian Church.

Integrity in our mission, values, principles, and in our commitments to God and one another.

Our Foundations

As United Methodist Christian, we build our beliefs on four foundations. Our foundations are:

Scripture: We believe that the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, the Bible, contain all things necessary for salvation. Whatever is not read in the Bible, nor able to be proven by Scripture, is not necessary for salvation or belief. We make no claim concerning the inerrancy of Scripture.

We do believe each Christian needs to develop a relationship with God through constant study, prayer, and reflection on Scripture. When we engage Scripture, and allow Scripture to engage us, the Bible becomes a "living and breathing" book for our life and faith.

Tradition: We believe that the history of the Church and Christian faith continues to be relevant and useful in understanding our present situation. We look to those who have gone before us in the faith -- whether our grandparents or faithful Christian writers of 2,000 years ago -- to help us think about and wrestle with contemporary issues.

Experience: We believe Christian faith is an experienced faith. The experience of each individual, each community of faith, and the Church as a whole helps us to understand God and God's leading in this world. We, as a congregation, work to find ways to help each individual experience the presence of God and to be God's presence in the world. We invite and celebrate individuals and groups to witness to how God has been, and is, active in their lives today.

Reason: We believe Christian faith is a faith that is lived in a reflective manner. Often when we hear the word "reason" or "reasonable" we think this means "logical." Christian faith, is from the inside logical, but from the outside seemingly illogical. However, when we speak of a foundation of our faith being reason, we mean that we take seriously "logical" reflection on Scripture, Tradition, and Experience from both those who are "inside" and "outside" the Christian faith. In other words, it is important to us the engage and be engaged by Scripture, to know the history of Christian throught, to have experience of God through the Risen Christ, and then to take these three dimensions, and as individuals and as a community of faith, to think about these things so we can see and understand God's activity in our lives, our community, and our world. This is, very often, how God show's us the direction we are to go in our individual and corporate lives pointing us toward God's peaceable realm which is the subject of Jesus' teaching and preaching.