Who We Are
Our mission is simple: We Love, Grow and Go. When a Church decides to take Jesus’ mandate to “love one another” seriously, there’s really no limit to what we can do. We worship together and then attempt to do our part to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth the other 167 hours a week we are gifted with. We are proud to be a part of the Mississippi Gulf Coast community loving and serving our friends and neighbors.
Gospel love is grounded in gospel soil and produces gospel fruit. This shapes our teaching & our ministry movement. GFUMC is grounded in the conviction that all we have is a sacred gift from God who has been generous with us. And when we decide to offer Christ-like sacrificial love we run the the good risk of transforming our communities! We invite you to take the next step and experience the Love of Jesus through worshipping with us.
Where is gospel love get nurtured? First, we have to commit to personal growth. In addition, discipleship happens best in circles, not rows. GFUMC is committed to growing disciples through small groups and circles that will continue to lead the Next Generation into faith-filled relationships with Jesus Christ.
We are called to love, grow and then GO! GFUMC is a community who welcomes all, worships together, huddles around the great gospel love of Jesus Christ and then sends that love on mission out into our community and beyond.
The United Methodist Church is a global denomination that opens hearts, opens minds, and opens doors through active engagement with our world. The mission of The United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
A United Methodist is someone who joins in that mission by putting faith and love into action. We believe that God loves all people, and that we share in expressing that love. So the United Methodist tradition emphasizes God’s grace and in serving others. We believe that Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of God’s love–showing us the fullness of God’s care through Jesus’ teachings, death and resurrection.
John Wesley started the Methodist movement in 18th-century England. His teachings on practical divinity (living out our faith) and appeals to reason and experience form important aspects of United Methodist practice today.
Baptism and Holy Communion are the chief means of grace and the sacraments recognized by the United Methodist Church. You cannot get much more significant than that. Sacrament, coming from the Latin “sacramentum” is a military term used to mean an oath of enlistment. Sacraments are thus permanent, binding, and suggest a deep level of commitment. The sacraments mirror God’s saving covenant with God’s people. God offers aid and strength through an inward saving grace. God’s people are called to hand their lives over through the outward expressions of the inward grace they have received. In this exchange we find the intersection of God’s grace shaping the lives of God’s covenant people. For Wesley, our foremost thinking about God is framed by this “creator-responsive love” partnership. Wesleyan theology weighs heavily our human interactions with the divine. As covenant people we are called to be “response-able” to the loving God that reaches out to us first through prevenient grace. In this humble, receiving manner we approach the baptismal fount and the table.