In November 2004, following months of diligent work by the NCD Team, Church Council approved the purpose and mission for Harrisville United Methodist Church.
The Purpose of
Harrisville United Methodist Church
Did you know that we now have a new church motto – something we never had before – as well as a church mission statement? If you check out your Sunday Bulletin near the top of the first page and below our church name you will find our motto: “Fostering God’s Love for All”. You will also see our motto on our website, stationery and other materials.
Now, if you go to page 2 of the Sunday Bulletin near the bottom of the page you will see our new mission statement: To celebrate God’s presence and magnify His Name; to bring Jesus to the people and to incorporate them into God’s family; to build discipleship by teaching God’s Word and Christ-like behavior fostering God’s love for all .
You might wonder, how did our church come up with these documents? It began last June when the Natural Church Development Committee (NCD) with new members on board tackled its new task as part of the larger goal of improving the health of our church.
This time the NCD efforts were to be focused on improving the Functional Structures of our church. This involved examining the present committee structure, and recommending changes to make it more effective; improving communication between committees and all church members; updating or creating committee and volunteer job descriptions; and revising our current church mission statement.
Before undertaking the task of dealing with how we might improve how we are organized and how we communicate, we reviewed relevant materials including the Bible and Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church and agreed that we first had to consider and to come to a consensus on why we exist and what is it that we do in our Harrisville United Methodist Church (HUMC) . Therefore, after much discussion and many changes, we finally agreed on a new document entitled the Purposes of the
Worship The foremost purpose of the
Ministry Ministry is demonstrating God’s love to others through meeting their needs and healing their hurts in the name of Jesus. Our church is intended to minister to all kinds of needs: spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical.
Evangelism We have been commanded to share our belief in Christ’s coming, His death on the cross, His resurrection, His promise to return, and our salvation through faith in Him. We are expected to bring unbelievers into God’s eternal family and to make them disciples.
Fellowship As Christians we are called to belong, not just to believe. We are meant to belong to Christ’s family and to be members of his body. Baptism symbolizes our new life in Christ and incorporates us into the body of Christ. Fellowship provides mutual support, care, and love among church members. Fellowship is noted in all facets of our church.
Discipleship Discipleship is the process of helping members become more knowledgeable, spiritually mature, and effective as practicing Christians. It is intended to help members become more like Jesus in thoughts, feelings, and actions.
After drafting a statement of the Purposes of The Harrisville United Methodist Church to our satisfaction, we took the five purposes and used them as the basis for our new Church Mission Statement. Then, we finally created the Church Motto.
Culminating the work of the NCD, on
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