Sugarloaf United Methodist Church: Purpose

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We know a lot of people are interested in the nuts and bolts of what a church believes. If that describes you, the following information might be helpful.

What's The Point at Sugarloaf? (Our Purpose)
We want to help people discover the joy of:

Believing in Jesus
Belonging to his family
Becoming mature Christians
Bringing Christ to others

What It's Going To Take? (Our Mission Tasks)
When we first started out, it didn't take us long to see that there were some essential things we needed to be doing.
We needed to be:

Inviting
Connecting
Growing
Sending

How Do We Do It? (Our Mission Plan)
We needed a plan to describe what we wanted to accomplish and how to go about doing it. It came down to this - We wanted to:

Invite people to experience God through an excellent Sunday worship experience combining positive and practical biblical teaching with an upbeat blend of contemporary and traditional worship styles.
Connect people to other believers through providing an informal and friendly atmosphere of love and acceptance, and opportunities for building relationships in small groups.
Grow people to spiritual maturity through providing a practical plan and process for spiritual growth. We call it Worship + 2!
Send people into the mission of Jesus through encouragement, training and practical opportunities for giving and serving.

The End Result (Our Mission Goal)
Our goal hasn’t changed from the beginning. We want to be known beyond our walls as a place of:

Community
Compassion
Celebration
Hope

If these goals make sense to you, you may be on your way to a new church home.

Basic Beliefs
We believe in the basic historic doctrines of the Christian Faith. We sum them up like this:

God created us for LIFE.
We believe God is the all-powerful and all knowing one who created everything from nothing. God created both woman and man in his image and designed them to experience close personal fellowship with Him and one another.
Through SIN, we forfeited the life God intended.
We define the word "sin" as a willful transgression of a known law. Put another way, when we choose to do what's wrong and opt to neglect to do what's right, we alienate ourselves from God and others.
Jesus came to offer NEW LIFE.
There's hope! We believe that Jesus came to earth to pay the price for our wrongs. He died and then came alive again so that we could know God and have life even after we physically die.
We can have the new life God offers.
It's God's compassion and forgiveness that gives us the freedom to say yes to that offer. In order to have that new life, we have to turn in the old ways of doing things and pick up the new ways.
We believe those who have experienced this new life should seek to worship, grow and serve in the fellowship of a local church. Church is God's idea and we think it's a good one.
We believe that experiencing the new life we're talking about will really change the way we see church, what we want out of life and what we want to do with our time. This new life causes change and change is good!

This is a brief summary of the most practical aspects of what we believe. If you want to know more about the United Methodist Church, you can visit www.umc.org.

Our Structure
Sugarloaf is divided into 7 ministry areas:

Sugarloaf Kids (birth through 5th grade)
Student Life (6th grade through 12th grade)
Community Life (adult education, recreation and fellowship)
Worship Arts (all aspects of adult worship experiences)
Beyond the Walls (our missions ministries in the community and beyond)
Congregational Care (prayer, crisis care, recovery, counseling and support)
Administration (finance, facilities and staff)

You are invited to contact the lead staff person of any ministry area with any questions or suggestions you have. Please take some time and check out the ministry areas.