As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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The past few weeks, Pat and I have been joining some incoming members of our church in conversation about who we are as United Methodists.  In the past decade or two there has been a resurgence of interest in John Wesley and in what makes the United Methodist tradition different from others.

So what makes a United Methodist?  That’s way too big of a topic to go into here…  We agree with most Christians on most of what we believe, things like Jesus and the resurrection or how God works in the world.  The differences are in what we choose to emphasize.  For instance, we emphasize the fact that God is working in people’s hearts and lives even before they are aware of it.  We also emphasize that it is God’s grace that saves us—but that grace continues to work in us afterwards, too, making us a better person.

We also emphasize that faith isn’t just something that happens in a church building—faith is something we live out in every day of our lives.  John Wesley wasn’t happy just preaching to the people who came to church every Sunday; he realized that the people that really needed to feel God’s love were the ones who weren’t there.  And so he took the gospel out to the coal miners and the field workers.  Talking about this made me wonder if maybe that isn’t a lesson we need to learn again today.

If you’re interested in learning more about Methodism; I’d be happy to talk your ear off sometime.  Or, there are some great resources on the internet.   It’s hard to print long web links in the newsletter, so if you find this article on my blog, http://ministrygeek.net, I will add some good links there.  May you experience ALL types of God’s grace this week!

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Here are the links:

For more on United Methodists beliefs…

For more on United Methodist history…

For more on how we are organized…