Tilehurst Methodist Church
Mission Statement
The current Tilehurst Methodist Church mission statement was adopted by Church Council on June 23rd 2020. We are still considering the best way of presenting it in an engaging and imaginative way, but we expect the text of it to remain as it is here.
The mission statement is expressed at three levels of detail. First, our core statement:
Actively celebrating and sharing God’s unconditional love
Next we unpack each part of that core statement:
- Actively: we are a church alive in our community, spiritually and practically
- Celebrating: we acknowledge the depth of God’s love for us, and rejoice in it together
- Sharing: we learn more of God from each other, take the message of God’s love to others, and demonstrate that love in practical ways
- God’s unconditional love: God loves each of us, regardless of past or circumstances. God demonstrates this through the life and example of Jesus, the Bible, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, some detail about how that mission is worked out in our church and community, in four sections, which are a very slight variation of the Methodist Church "Our Calling" headings:
Worship
We celebrate and explore our relationships with God and each other.
God brings us together in worship, encouraging participation and embracing diversity.
Learning
We welcome the opportunity to learn from God’s Word and from each other throughout our lives. Everyone has something to offer from their experience, and we all have room to grow in faith. Each individual journey is different, but we travel and learn together.
We encourage discovering more about God from diverse viewpoints. We recognise that this will sometimes lead to change that we may find difficult, but in God’s name we are willing to risk our comfort.
Service and Caring
Following the example of Jesus, we demonstrate God’s love for everyone through service and caring. Like God’s love, our service does not stop at physical, social, or cultural boundaries.
We work within our local community to discover and respond to individual and shared needs in practical, prayerful ways. We live out God’s call in the global Kingdom, for the Earth and all who share it.
God’s story and our story (evangelism)
We rejoice in the Good News of God’s love for us, shown in Jesus Christ.
In all our worship, learning, service and caring we confidently share our experiences of God’s love, so that our personal stories may help others to experience and respond to that love themselves.
