Category: Blog

Calling New Bus Drivers!

Have you ever wondered about those buses in our parking lot? Well, as a vibrant family who cares and supports one another, we travel locally to Westminster Winter Park and the Mayflower Retirement Community to provide rides to our Sunday services.

We are in need of a few more bus drivers to drive the success of this ministry! If you are interested in becoming one of our drivers, please contact Pastor Gary at garyr@fumcwp.org for more information.

Last weekend we celebrated Scout Sunday! And with the help of our Scouts, we handed out 100’s of Annual Reports in the Fellowship Hall. 

Stop by the church office over the next week to pick up your copy if you haven’t already! 

Flip through your annual report:

• to learn more about the ministries that fall within each pillar
• to read notes from leaders within our vibrant family
• to find ways to connect with First UMC of Winter Park further

As our Reveal series closed with a message from Jon, our Pastor of Kinfolk (Young Adults), we are excited to live into our new vision! If you missed Jon’s message, listen to here.

weServe Mission Trip Luncheon

We serve.  Our church family is a beautiful example of lives transformed when people with a passion step away from the comfort of familiar surroundings to go serve others.  At our recent Mission Trip Luncheon, more than 75 luncheon attendees celebrated 2017 trips to Dalton, Georgia, Baldwin, Louisiana, Los Chiles, Costa Rica and Naivasha, Kenya.  We heard from church members Rick Baldocchi and Katie Cornelius about why they serve in Costa Rica and Kenya, seeing God’s hand in the important work that they do through Agua Viva Serves and Panua Partners in Hope.

We heard from trip leaders about the 11 mission trips planned for the 2018 mission season and heard leaders share about all the ways God commands us to go and love others…in Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.  Attendees were moved and those who missed this chance to hear about opportunities to be in service to others are welcome to learn more at fumcwp.org/serve.

More opportunities to learn about church-wide missions will follow the 9:30 service in MFLC gym in March.  Join us to learn more and find how you can serve more like Christ, whether in our community, our country or across the globe.

 

Equipping, Caring, and Supporting. 

Methodist School for Early Education embodies these actions daily! And, as a recent recipient of the 2018 Ovations Awards presented by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce and Winter Park/Maitland Observer, this is one ministry that certainly is living into the call of being a Vibrant Family.  

About the Award

Community members voted this November and December on the ‘best of’ awards for a variety of services in our local area. This January, MSEE accepted the award for Best Childcare/Preschool! “This is the first year we’ve won this award! It’s all due to the hard work of our teachers, staff, and the support of our wonderful families who are part of MSEE” says Rosemary Ubinger, Director of Methodist School for Early Education.

Impact of MSEE

Selena Fetting, one of our MSEE parents speaks to the importance of the work of our teachers. “It’s so impactful how MSEE pours into the life of my child. The importance of the personal relationships we have through this ministry cannot be overstated.”

“Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray” (Proverbs 22:6, NRSV).

Hey church family! If you’ve read one of my previous blog posts, I hope you can tell that I am really really passionate about student connect groups. There are so many reasons, but the strongest reason is that I believe student connect groups are the future of our church and for our student ministry. Here are a few reasons why:

Growth

As schedules become more and more saturated with sports, school, and extracurriculars, it becomes harder and harder for families to make Sunday morning or evening church a priority. Student connect groups meet at any time and on any day and also give a huge opportunity for students to grow in their faith. This gives our sphere of influence as a church a massive opportunity for growth.

Sometimes it can feel weird talking about growth when it comes to the church. But we aren’t selling widgets, we are spreading the love of God. We should always hope for that to grow. There are students who are being ministered to by Elevate who will never darken the door of our sanctuary. I think that’s a pretty cool thing. The message of Jesus will never change, even if when we hear it does.

New leaders and hosts

What is hard to understand is that the “work,” of the church is a real faith formative process. Even if I am the student ministries director, I am also charged with ministering to families and volunteers. The best way we get to do that is through giving varying and plentiful leadership opportunities. As our student connect groups grow, so will our chance to have more people serve and in different capacities. God will call us, as a church, to find new people to serve; people who never thought they could serve, to make an enormous Kingdom impact.

As our base of leaders and hosts grow, so does our opportunity to give the gift of growth and development in the spiritual lives of our people.

Let me be specific- if you’re reading this and think you could never ever be a leader or a host… I’m probably talking about you. I have enough people who feel confident that they can lead. Jesus is calling those who think they couldn’t in a million years.

You can’t lead in a million years: the need is much more immediate.

Faith that is owned

Too many students are going to college with their parents’ faith in their backpack, thinking it will survive to adulthood. They learned about Jesus in the way their parents knew him and they hope that this context will apply to their lives as independent adults. Time and time again, this proves to be false.

You see, we need a faith that makes sense for us, personally. Our faith needs to be something that we own- something that we work on ourselves. When hard times come, we have to be able to take our faith apart, examine the different aspects, and put it back together. We can’t do that if we didn’t build the faith ourselves in the first place. Third-grade bibles are not enough. Confirmation is not enough. Only the intense and powerful work of a small group community will do this work.

When our students were baptized into the church, we pledged that we would live a life according to the example of Christ, so that they would walk in the way that leads to life. Would you join us in student connect groups? Would you fulfill your vows in a way that will lead to a radical faith, formed by young people that will lead to their walking in the way that leads to life?

I hope you do.

Michael LeBlanc, Director of Student Ministry

Commissioned to Serve 

We are halfway through our sermon series Reveal. As you know, in this series we are discussing our new vision. In this series, Pastor David shared: 

• Our mission as the church to make disciples
• Conveyed what it means to be a vibrant family
• Shared the necessity of us being gracious hosts.

Last Saturday morning, all our ministry teams and lay leaders joined on campus for a morning of vision-thinking, passion, and commissioning as we prepare for the great work that the Lord is doing in the life of our church.

In this setting, our ministry leaders joined together for the first time as pillars. This was a time of collaboration and relationship building. We determined which ministries fit within each pillar based on a series of conversations, feedback, and understandings from the ministry teams themselves, Leadership Council and the pastors. Along with that feedback, we looked at the breadth of the Long Range Planning goals and how our pillars support the specific goals we have for our church’s future. Finally, we looked at our strategic initiatives and opportunities for our ministries to cross-collaborate for a fresh perspective.

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As we live into this vision, we’re often asked – “Well, what does success look like?” With our new structure, success ‘looks’ like:

• Deeper and broader lay ownership
• Greater collaboration
• NOT perfection
• NOT speed

With our ultimate mission of making disciples of all people, we look to a future where we live into the vision of being – “a vibrant family built on God’s grace, who share a passion for the Word of God, living and serving in the image of Jesus the Christ.”

Join us this Sunday as we discuss what it means to be Passionate Seekers!

Hey church family! Last Monday, we talked about what a student connect group is and what it is not. This is all apart of my four part blog series on student connect groups. I wanted to write this series not only because our groups are growing so fast, but also because we have a great and massive need for more leaders and more hosts.

This Monday I wanted to share some of the best tips for making a connect group effective. But first, some definitions:

Host: The one who opens the door to the home where the group meets. The host is in charge of coordinating a hosting schedule with other hosts and sharing that information, however often the group meets, with everyone in the group. This is usually a simple text saying “we are meeting tomorrow night at this place and at this time. Also, pick up is at this time.” Vacuum if you want, but you would be amazed how comfortable our kids can get, regardless of the setting. You don’t lead a discussion, you merely set the stage.

Leader: You are the heart and soul of student connect groups. You lead a discussion, sure, but you also shepherd the group through fun time and onto the big work of growing spiritually. You communicate with Elevate staff and make sure they know what is missing and what is needed for your group: curriculum, guidance, covenant help, etc..You might be a high school student leading with another high school student. Maybe you’re a mom or a dad or just a church member who wants to make a huge impact on the students of this church.

Now that we have those definitions out of the way, let’s work through some of the best practices we have found for our student connect group.

Warm spaces

This looks different for each group. For our middle school guys, this is comfortable chairs and enough space to play games every week. A warm space for middle school girls looks like candles and soft music. Even more important than the physical setting of the groups, is the air of welcome our host can offer. Meeting and getting to know parents as they drop off, supporting hosts, and voicing needs to Elevate staff is all ways hosts can make a warm space. Having clear and consistent communication about when and where groups are meeting is a great way to make sure people feel like they belong to these students connect groups.

Leaders make warm spaces by being prepared to lead: whether that’s by writing curriculum well ahead of the time together or remembering prayer requests week to week. Leaders have a unique opportunity to make students feel like their connect group is a family by including everyone in the space.

Open circles

There may come a time when your connect group has people in it who you do not know.

In fact, your group is not effective if your group doesn’t have a few students you never met before. That is because our groups need to be open circles, constantly welcoming people to join.

Now, a special caveat: eventually, our groups close. At 12 consistent students, our group must split and start another group. This is harsh and it will not be popular when it happens. But here’s the thing: these groups exist to grow and create more groups. If these groups were just social, then they would just continue to balloon. But these groups were made, first and foremost for spiritual growth. Splitting groups allows people space to join, without leaving space for students to disappear into a crowd. It allows new leaders and new hosts to step in.

So we provide open circles, over and over again.

Food

I cannot overstate the importance of food. We have had many test connect groups here at church and there is one common denominator with the most successful groups: food. This food can be provided by the host and can be homemade or storebought. One of the many wonderful advantages about working with students is that their palette is not incredibly developed. Make something with love, and it doesn’t matter if it is an old family recipe or frozen taquitos.

Ultimately, groups succeed when they are prayed over and cared about. Join us in prayer if you host or lead a group and partner with us in caring after these groups. In my next post, I can’t wait to tell you about the exciting future for student connect groups.

-Michael LeBlanc, Director of Student Ministry