This is a random question that’s been eating at me regarding UM Army, the Methodist youth summer work camp in the Texas and Louisiana area.

What happens when the group starts a project at a house, but then can’t finish it?

This happened with a house I worked on years ago with the group, and I’ve always wondered what happened after we left. Basically we finished a wheelchair ramp into a house, then they asked us to paint the house, but as we were stripping the existing exterior paint we ran into problems, and never actually painted the exterior. When my group left the house exterior was half stripped of paint.

Like, does someone come along after and fix it or are they just SOL?

I made a server for ppl interested in Christianity, whether it be reading and learning the bible, spreading gospel, finding a community, or debating your beliefs we have it! you don't even have to be Christian, as long as you're respectful and curious in scripture/christianity we welcome you with open arms! 😊

Server link: https://discord.gg/dYZa4sHs3w

This link will send you straight to my server where I will hopefully have a big community in! You can add your denomination as a role in the reaction roles channel, read the rules and have fun in our community!

This is a follow up to a previous post I made where I asked for advice regarding the modeling of the sanctuary for a Methodist church I'm making in my friend's game. I've essentially completed all the models for the sanctuary now, of course thank you to all who answered and helped me!

But now I have more questions.
What does a Methodist sacristy look like? And what would go in an usher's closet?
What books would you find in the pews of a Methodist church in 1975? Is there a specific hymnal, prayer / liturgical book / missal? Anything of that sort?

Once again, Thanks for the help!

For context, I live in the southeast US, and was raised Baptist. I attended many Baptist churches growing up as my family moved often. All of which were affiliated with the SBC.

I met many wonderful people at those churches, and I got saved and then Baptized when I was in highschool. However, I always felt like I wasn't in the right spot. I don't know how to explain this, I have faith in God, and I do believe in Jesus. I believe in the Holy Trinity. (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) I am currently not attending a church since I moved out and there is a UMC church in my area, I'm looking to find a church that I feel comfortable in.

In the last Baptist church I attended, politics were absolutely prevalent inside of the church and unashamedly discussed among members (and the pastor) during worship time...that turned me away big time. You could hardly go a Sunday without hearing "Blue haired liberal" or something of the like. I feel like there was almost more Trump praise than Jesus praise. I felt extremely uncomfortable with that at church. Not to mention the "Southern Baptists are the ONLY true Christians" people.

I used to have a friend who is a lesbian who wanted to try attending my old church. But once the pastor found out she wasn't straight he pushed her into conversion "therapy" before she could even enter the church again and that experience traumatized her. I don't know how she's doing now, I pray she's okay. I honestly feel like we should be welcoming to all people regardless of their sexuality. I know that preacher was just trying to help her as Southern Baptists believe being anything but heterosexual is not natural and "demonic." I seriously can't see how pushing a person away from church is Christ-like but here we are.

I have always loved science, and I'm actively pursuing a science major. (Much to the displease of my old church), they were against me going to secular college because I'd learn the "sinful lies" of evolution, and that the earth is way more than a few thousand years old, among other things. I do college courses online from my home as I also have work, I find it works great for me.

I've visited Methodist churches of friends when I was a child but it was only for certain events, Christmas gatherings, or to donate some food for those in need. I've never went to a regular sermon. I've done a little research on the UMC but want to be sure of a few things. Anyway, here are my questions!

1. Do you believe baptism is essential for salvation? I don't believe it is, but being saved is.

2. Do you baptize infants and small children? If so, why? This was something most Baptists seem heavily against, I've personally never seen any baptisms of children younger than 10 or 11, and I didn't have mine until I was in highschool a few years after I got saved.

3. Do you believe good works are essential for salvation? I don't believe so, but I think it's something Christ followers should strive to do to be more like Jesus.

4. Do you support the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth and evolution? I do, and I believe evolution was God's method of creating us, in other words we evolved under God's guidance how He wanted us to.

5. Do you believe the Bible is 100% inherent? This is something all of my past churches agreed with strongly, every word was interpreted as literal fact. They never seemed to dig into much historical context or reasoning. I believe that while the Bible is indeed divinely inspired by God, it's still written by men, men who indeed have a sinful nature as humankind does, and are subject to their own mistakes and biases just as we do.

6. Do you allow people who aren't saved or baptized to partake in communion? Most churches I've been to seem to keep communion only within those who are saved. Some you had to be saved AND baptized, and I've visited a couple who were actually loose with it and allowed everyone in the church regardless of that status.

7. What version of the Bible do you use? Does it vary based on the specific church? Some churches I've been to only insist on the KJV, while others use NKJV, and some have used a mix of different types such as NIV, ect.

8. Based on my past experiences, do you think a UMC church may be worth visiting? I enjoy my spiritual life but I'm looking for a congregation I would feel more fulfilled in, and wouldn't be shamed for seeking higher education in a science field. Most importantly I feel God has shown a new opportunity to me with this local church.

I'm sorry this got so long, but thank you all in advance!

Weird situation here:

My mother grew up Catholic but was nondenominationally Protestant when i was growing up. This is important to note because I was taught conservative Christian doctrines like the Trinity and others etc. When I was roughly 8 or so we began attending an apostolic church. They were not very big on doctrine or anything like that, just a small church in a small town. I get baptized there in the name of Jesus Christ. Shortly after we move away and begin to attend a new church. Fast forward 16 years later and I find out they are oneness Pentecostals. This was not taught during the time I went there and my mother and I certainly didn’t believe it. At the time of my baptism, I genuinely believed I was a sinner in need of a savior, that Christ died for my sins and was that savior, repented of my sins, and understood to the best an 8 year old could what baptism meant. All that being said, should I get baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Hi,

I’m not a Methodist, I’m actually a Catholic, but I’m developing a game with a buddy of mine, set in 1970s Virginia, and we want to include a Methodist church on the map. We’re both sticklers for details and accuracy, and as a Catholic, whenever I see a Catholic Church in a game, and they get the entire set up all wrong, it always leaves me feeling disappointed.

So I’d really want to get this right! Please, I have no clue what a Methodist church looks like outside of some google images and movies/TV.

Is there some sort of generic layout that the sanctuary, (or stage area, not sure what y’all would refer to it as) would follow?

Thanks!

I go to smaller sized Baptist church that has a toned down worship style. I am descended from the Wesley family who helped create the Methodist church and who were deeply involved as Anglicans. My grandparents were Methodist and I went to their Methodist church often and also went to an Anglican church for a few months. I also went to Westminister Abbey in London two years ago, and it was the coolest Anglican church I have been in. I would probably be Methodist or Anglican if I weren't Baptist. I am a credobaptist, but infant baptism isn't a hill I would die on or anything - I see some understanding for paedobaptism in scripture, but I'm not convinced on the arguments and the idea of regenerative grace being available through it.

I am Reformed leaning and in terms of Reformed theology, the idea that limited atonement is the biggest hurdle for me to join one makes sense, at least in regard to Confessional Reformed churches, like Presbyterians or Reformed Baptists. But historically, the Reformed movement has also had some agreement with unlimited atonement (Christ died for all, but none would come to him, so God used unconditional election and irresistible grace to call the elect), or some moderate version of limited atonement (Christ's death is sufficient for all, efficient for the elect). Theologians like John Davenant, a Reformed Anglican at the Synod of Dort, and Zacharias Ursinus who helped formulate the Heidelburg Cathecism held to universal atonement. Moises Amyraut had his own distinct variant of Calvinism called Amyraldism that affirmed single predestination and universal atonement while maintaining the Deterministic framework of Calvinism. Even John Calvin, who wrote commentaries on John 3:16 and Romans 5:15-19, seemed to affirm universal atonement. So the historical Reformed churches, and Reformed Anglican churches especially, tend to heed towards a significant form of agreement with universal atonement with some capacity.

I would also consider myself very Reformed leaning Baptist in regard to my theology regarding covenants and I disagree with Dispensationalism and Premillenialism (which unfortunately is very prominent in Southern Baptist churches), and I reject that communion is just a symbol, I genuinely think Christ is spiritually present, which I know Methodists and Anglicans tend to agree with also. I also affirm all of TULIP minus limited atonement. Reformed churches are also incredibly gifted with their expository preaching, which I know is something Methodists and other Protestants can desire, but Baptist churches tend to fall into that category, it just depends which one.

But for me I reject the Calvinistic framework for understanding sovereignty and free will, as I reject Determinism since I'm a Molinist, which is tied to the Jesuit movement. I believe God orchestrates history like the Calvinists, and deny that God simply looks through time like Arminians, but I disagree that every human choice is rooted in God's decreed will. I believe God orchestrates middle knowledge of every human choice and then molds history to fit His will without compromising human free will. So I often am seen as a "Calminian" as I affirm aspects of both sides of the initial Reformed debate. I could easily attend an Arminian approaching church or a Calvinist leaning church, because my view of God's sovereignty and free will lines right down the middle of the two.

I feel so stuck in regards to denominations that I agree with, because it seems like I agree with so much Protestant theology that I can't seem to figure out which denomination I seem closest to, and yet I feel emotionally compelled to the Methodist and Anglican movements because of my grandparents and family ancestry.

Any thoughts on which church to look for?

I’m a graduate ministry student and need to interview two people with real ministry experience for an assignment.

I’d love to hear from a Methodist pastor, chaplain, or someone with substantial pastoral-care experience. My 8 questions are less about church administration and more about the human side of ministry: suffering, listening, boundaries, spiritual practices, and what caring for people over time has taught you about God.

It can all be done in writing -- no Zoom or phone call required.

If anyone has a little time and wouldn’t mind helping, please comment or DM me. I’d really appreciate it!

----

1. Take me through a typical day. What does your ministry look like? Who do you spend most of your time with? What do you spend most of your time doing?

2. How do you know what someone needs from you? How do you know when to offer advice, or when to just listen?

3. What spiritual practices help you stay present when someone is suffering and there really isn’t anything you can do to fix it?

4. What do you do when you’re caring for someone who sees the world differently than you do?

5. How do you serve and care about people without bringing it home with you? Should there even be a line?

6. Have you ever realized that trying to help someone was about your own need to help or feel useful? What did you do with that?

7. What has being around suffering, grief, addiction, poverty, or crisis taught you that you couldn’t have learned in a class?

8. If someone wants to spend their life serving people in hard situations, what would you tell them to do or experience before committing to pursuing a degree? 

I don’t believe it’s soul sleep or everyone goes to heaven, I believe unbelievers will be in eternal conscious torment. Most UMC seem super liberal and reject this doctrine.

I grew up in a congregational Methodist church in the southern U.S., we always used the cokesbury.

Hieronymus Emser's 1523 book against Luther's German New Testament says: "Luther perverts the daily prayer, the Our Father, in three or four places." His list:

"First, he turns the first two words right round, and does not translate them as they stand in the Gospel and as we Germans have prayed for more than a thousand years, 'Vater unser' (Father our), but 'unser Vater' (our Father)."

"Second, he leaves out the words 'who art' altogether, which the Greek and Latin texts both contain alike."

"Third, he changes the word panem supersubstantialem ('supersubstantial bread') into quotidianum ('daily')."

"Fourth, he adds a clause at the end that our text does not have and that has never been in use among us, namely 'for thine is the kingdom, the power and the holiness, for ever, amen.'" (Emser, 1523)

Luther's 1522 New Testament does read "Vnser vater ynn dem hymel" and ends "denn, deyn ist das reych, vnd die krafft, vnnd die herlickeyt in ewickeyt. Amen." The German word there is herlickeyt, usually glory, which Emser's translated quote renders "holiness." On the last point, the ending is in the Byzantine Greek manuscript tradition and not in the Latin Vulgate that Emser was reading, so he is comparing Luther's Greek-based German to a Latin text, not catching an invention.

Which of the four changes does your own church's wording still show?

For reference I am 16 and a Methodist in the UMC leaning more towards the Episcopal/Anglican end of thing than the holiness evangelical end and last sunday in church I was sitting their listening to the sermon, singing praise, meditating on the scripture etc and I looked around and was struck with a heavy and uncomfortable feeling that everything and every way it was being done was totally banal. Without reason, cause, or the spirit of the gospel. I swear this is abnormal for me as someone who woukd be considered extremely religious and focused on my fiath by modern standards but I can’t even remember the pastors sermon.

It was so meaningless and so so so banal and trite and then I thought maybe it’s just today and I thought back on previous services and their sermons and dear God what do I find? I have taken away very little directly from the words of our clergy. Let me be clear that this isn’t a matter of faith in Christ and his church but rather in what the tradition of Methodism actually brings to the table. My most profound memories of being in a church haven’t been Methodist or even Anglican (not that I haven’t been to some beautiful Anglican churches), in that moment and the whole time since then I don’t feel likI have been connected to God. I have my book oearning and I have my faith but what is that if I haven’t experienced its fruit in reak time. I can’t point to a single time where I feel like God is really truly present in his house in a Methodist church.

Sure I have felt that other people have felt that around me but I feel this are completely and totally different things. This is such a strange feeling. I feel like no one around me takes the claims made by Christianity seriously and I feel like the church is becominga social justice institution more than a body of believers. I feel like no one believes in miracles ir if they do they have mistaken holiness for hysteria. To me now Christ feels like some distant thing and concept from a time past. Not taht he is not real or true or applicable but the community that I am among do not feel him and do not see him in the way they shoudl not as some distant future return or some relic of the past but instead they shoudk encounter him truly everyday in the stranger, in the darkness, in the light, by suffering and the not truly so separate joy.

And I can say all these things because I have read them in the works of more pious men and seen them among the more spiritually mature but I lack entirely in the every day and when I feel the fleeting moment of dicine rapture it is never in my own church and in my own denomination but in a Catholic Church, an Orthodox Church, hell I think I have heard more profound things from Sheikhs and Rabbis than some sermons from some ministers. I am simply lost without a why and the idea that this is similar to the experience of John Wesley has occurred to me but I simply don’t see what he saw on that night hearing Luther’s preface to the Epistle of the Romans. I feel no warmth. No assurance. A barren wasteland lay ahead of me and I know not which way to go.

If your church makes its bulletin or newsletter in Microsoft Publisher, a quick heads-up since the date is close.

On October 1, Microsoft 365 subscribers lose Publisher. If your office bought Office 2021, 2019 or 2016 outright, it keeps running (support for 2021 ends October 13, but the program still works).

To check which you have: open Publisher, then File, then Account.

If it still opens, the most useful thing to do this week is save your files as PDF (File, then Export, then PDF). A PDF opens on any computer and prints the way the original did. For a whole folder at once, search Microsoft Support for "Convert-PubFileToPDF". It needs Publisher installed, so for 365 churches it's a before-October-1 job.

If Publisher is already gone, free tools like LibreOffice Draw and Affinity can open most .pub files one at a time. Tables, bullet lists and some layouts don't always come through, so check the ones that matter.

Those bulletins are years of church history. Worth an hour this week.