Sunday afternoon, 6-14-09: We arrived back home all safe and sound from our both successfull and enjoyable youth mission trip to Chicago. Click "read more" below to view some of our trip photos and read about our daily mission and fun activities.
Mike and Janice Humble portraying the Rev. Valentine Cook and Muddy River Camp Meeting. *CLICK PHOTOS* to view church historian Ms Evelyn Richardson's Bicentennial PowerPoint Presentation (special thanks to Mike & Melinda Riley for preparing the .ppt.)
In this final installation of the series "What Do Methodists
Believe?" I hope to address briefly and more specifically the way in which we
live our faith together as Methodists. This concluding characteristic of
Wesleyan theology and practice is that whatever we do as Wesleyans in the life
and practice of the church we do with the
whole people of God. In fact early Methodism had more lay leaders than
clergy leaders, and many of these leaders were women.
In Part 8 of our series on What Methodists Believe we will discuss just how Methodists, in the Wesleyan tradition, view the Church. Let it be said
right at the start that Methodists reject any idea of "independent Christianity."
We seek instead to be called into Christian community that unites us with the
great cloud of witnesses in the Church
of Heaven, and forms us
into a Great-Commission connection in the Church on earth.
John Wesley, when denied a pulpit
by the Anglican Church of England, was asked by a colleague, "But where will
your parish be?" Wesley showed himself unconcerned and stated, "The world is my
parish." His response has been the Methodist mission challenge down through the
centuries. We've not always lived up to it well, but nevertheless it is who we
are. Wesleyan Methodists agree with John Wesley that the world is our parish.
Our sending companion is the Lord Jesus Christ who unquestionably was
mission-minded.
