Our church visits officially began yesterday at the Chelsea Free Methodist Church. We are thankful for the long-term partnership that we have enjoyed with this congregation. The church meets in a community center near downtown Chelsea, but it also owns 80 acres of property where they hope some day to build a facility of their own. The church's website, which can be found here, appears to be under construction but does contain a lot of information about the congregation.
The church's mission coordinator, Susan Bowen, and her husband Mike served as our hosts for the visit, along with Pastor Jeff Ford and his wife, Tamra. We immediately felt welcomed and appreciated. Following the service we enjoyed having lunch with them at a local restaurant, along with Joyce Bradley and a young man named Martin.
The worship service takes place in an auditorium in the community center. The church has a wonderful worship team, and we enjoyed the selection of songs that were sung. "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)" particularly spoke to us.
The theme of our church visits is "Healing our disordered souls" and the inspiration for this title came from a sermon that John Wesley preached in 1733. The quote from that sermon is, "This is indeed the design of his dwelling in us to heal our disordered souls and to restore that image of his upon our nature." This healing and restoration is really another way of speaking about salvation, for salvation means creation healed. During the course of our presentation we discuss three fundamental questions that most people have, and which often serve as entry points into discussions about a life of faith.
- Who is God?
- Who am I?
- Who are we together?
We've created a brochure to go along with our presentation. You can download a pdf copy of it here. We are told that a recording of our presentation will appear on the church's website in the near future.
Comments