*Ministries – serving Jesus

Youth ministries – Our young people are the future of our community; so we invest in their lives in several ways, all of which lift up Jesus and seek to draw them to the Savior. 1) Our Sunday School and Nursery help them get started right. 2) Our church playground gives them a place of their own to enjoy after church. 3) Our Vacation Bible School each summer offers the message of Jesus to our community young people through songs, crafts, snacks, outdoor activities, Bible stories and missionary stories. With extensive help from church volunteers (including our teens) to complement the help we receive from Child Evangelism Fellowship, this week is a special time of ministry and a lively week at church. 4) Our monthly Good News Club continues our VBS ministry through the school year, following a similar format and message. 5) We offer college scholarships to our high school graduates who do a book report on a book which helps prepare them for life.

Community ministries – Since we are the only church in town, we take the responsibility of community ministry seriously. We host both the Memorial Day and Labor Day observances in our community, offering lunch on Memorial Day and working with the fire department to offer lunch on Labor Day, as well as providing a place to watch the parades.

Our church is available to anyone from our community for special events, weddings or funerals. For funerals, our church not only does its best to support families in their time of loss, they also provide food and a place to gather after the service. We understand grief and are ready to help.

We are quick to help a community member in emergency financial need, and our church building is a state-registered and supplied emergency center, with a trained emergency management person in our congregation.

Outreach ministries – We are ready to minister in Jesus’ name in our community and around the world. When a community member had a need for improved housing, we hosted and participated in a committee to address those needs and raised money to fund the solution. We have been active with Operation Christmas Child for about fifteen years, packing and shipping over 1000 shoe boxes to children in need around the world. When, through Operation Christmas Child, two preteens in our church learned of a housing need for a family in Africa, they set out to raise the $5000 needed. With the help of our church, they reached their goal and made a difference for that family. Serving Jesus has some very practical applications for our church.

Ministries to missionaries and ministry organizations – On a wider scale, we help support two missionary couples. One couple were aviation missionaries in Africa, presently serving as missionary coordinators in the US. Theother couple works with a campus ministry in Memphis, TN. Through the years, we have also actively supported the ministry of Teen Challenge, as they work with recovering addicts in our region. We take the Great Commission seriously.

Our philosophy of ministry and giving:

We focus on people, rather than church. We want our church services to be warm, stress-free, helpful places for people to be encouraged in their personal lives. We have blended worship, offering familiar hymns, as well as contemporary songs, in an effort to uplift hearts in worship. We have practical, understandable Bible messages which address human needs as well as call us to service. We focus on supporting you with your life, knowing that the needed support for the church will be a natural result, as we learn and minister together.

We work together to meet the financial needs of the church through our weekly offerings; so we have no pledge drives. Since we each seek to do our part, we have quarterly financial reports on the back of the bulletin; so we each can know how the church is doing. As we each have been faithful in prayer and in giving as we are able, the Lord has been faithful to provide for our church and for its ministry. We also have occasional dinners throughout the year as a ministry to our community and as a way to raise money for particular ministries of the church.

We want you to feel welcome, relaxed and comfortable to enter into worship and service here. We are committed to Jesus, His life and ministry in our lives, and we are committed to being real. If that is your interest, and you come with an open heart, you will find a home at Albany Methodist Church.

We are not trying to get people away from other churches, but if you have a need and don’t have a church home, check us out.

The Church as the Communion of Saints

“From the very beginning of God’s dealing with his people, the Bible has stressed community. In fact, biblical discussion of godly living is almost always set in the context of growing together, in community, as God’s people. For Christians today, and for the last 2,000 years, God has established the local church as the vehicle for that community. Some current movements seek to replace more traditional understandings of the local church, seeing a group of friends meeting together, for instance, as church. That’s not quite the picture that we see in the NT.

In the NT, we see young and old mixing, as older women and men are to teach younger women and men. We see people coming together to worship who come from different stages in life, different occupations, and different backgrounds. Paul stressed that the social divides typical of most groups in society have no place in the church. The church should be a place of diversity, where each person can contribute to the whole. Limiting oneself to a circle of peers is not sanctioned by Scripture and does not promote spiritual growth.

Sadly, in our day there are churches in which leaders try to dominate their congregations rather than shepherd them in the model of the selfless love of Jesus. But those bad examples do not take away the biblical command to gather and worship as a church. Local churches undoubtedly have their flaws, because they are made up of flawed, sinful people. The Apostles’ Creed refers to the church as a “communion of saints.”

As we come into the church we sometimes imagine that there will be no problems, no conflicts, and no frustrations among our community of saints. But we forget that we are a community of flawed people, still burdened by our imperfections and failures and sins. It is precisely because of our flaws and faults that we need each other.”

• Excerpt from “Why the Church is Vitally Important for Every Christian” by Stephen Nichols.