What We Believe

Our United Methodist heritage is rooted in a deep and profound understanding of God’s grace. This grace is sufficient for all of our needs (2 Corinthians 12:9). In Living Our Beliefs: The United Methodist Way by Bishop Kenneth L. Carter, we read, “Grace is God’s presence and power to create, heal, forgive, reconcile, and transform persons, communities, nations, and the entire cosmos.” Where God is present there is grace. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, described God’s grace as threefold: prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying.

We believe:

● In the Triune God, the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
● The Bible is God’s revealed Word. It is the primary source for understanding the nature and purposes of God.
● Every person is a beloved child of God whom God created in God’s divine image. In the church, all people are welcomed and nurtured as God’s sons and daughters.
● In the Church, as the community called to be instruments of God’s presence and coming reign in Jesus Christ, where people proclaim God’s Word faithfully and share the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.
● All people are initiated into Christ’s body and nurtured toward Christian maturity through worship, prayer, study, giving, fellowship and service.
● God has reconciled his children in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, defeating the powers of sin and death. God seeks to make us holy and whole, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, transforming us into Christlikeness.
● God’s light, justice, and peace exposes and overrules evil, injustice, and sin.
● In the final triumph of God’s reign of compassion, justice, generosity, and peace in the world, where God’s Victory is complete.
● In a renewed creation where sin, suffering, and death are overcome through the Sacrifice and Blood of Jesus Christ.
● God, the Holy Spirit, who comforts the hurting places in God’s people, sustains, guides, and empowers us to participate in God’s life and mission in the world. The power of the Holy Spirit is present among the community of faith and is shown in their acts of kindness to mankind.
● The people of God in the life of the church are extending God’s power of love to the whole creation, with God’s mercy redeeming all of God’s works for the salvation of the whole world through Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.