We believe that God calls us to represent Christ in the world today. As we strive to see everyone through God’s lens of unconditional love, we seek to show compassion to our neighbors both near and far. We are highly engaged in local and global mission work, joining God’s mission to restore God’s image in all things.
About Us
Our Mission & Values
With open hearts and minds, we WELCOME people for Christ, GROW people in Christ, and SERVE people with Christ.
Each aspect of our mission—welcoming, growing, serving—is shaped by our aspirational core values. We recognize that we often fall short of being the church God has called us to be. Yet, with our eyes fixed on CHRIST, we see the following six values as goals for our local church family:
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Compassion
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Humility
When we recognize that the greatness of God far exceeds our human ability to comprehend or accurately articulate, we are humbled. Our response to this recognition of God’s incredible nature and unbelievable love is worship.
From a posture of humility, we gather to worship our Creator on Sunday mornings. Likewise, we seek to know God better and to serve God on a daily basis throughout the week. This journey of growth may look different for each member of our church family, but we recognize that God’s grace calls us and empowers us to become more and more like Christ each day. -
Respect
We believe that God calls us to be a community of diversity in all aspects of life. In a world that is constantly creating and reinforcing the perceived differences between us, we seek the Holy Spirit’s power to unite us. While we may not always agree with one another politically, philosophically, or even theologically, we focus on our unity in Christ as we all worship the same God whose grace is at work within us. Our goal is to model an alternative narrative to the divisiveness of the world by respecting one another in the ways we speak, the ways we listen, and particularly in the ways we act.
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Inclusion
Scripture tells us that humans were created in the image of God. Each person on the face of this earth is deeply loved by the Creator of the entire universe. With this as our starting point, we strive to love the world as God loves the world.
Our goal and prayer are that all people would feel welcome to be a part of our church family. In line with our heritage, our communion table is open to everyone, regardless of church membership. We believe that because our lives have been changed by the power of God’s grace, it is now our responsibility to extend that grace to every person around us. -
Servanthood
As we seek to model our lives after Christ, we try to serve those around us in ways that embody Christ’s humble love. We may find ourselves serving in ways that don’t make sense to a world that honors power and prestige, but we do so because we know we are called to serve the “least of these.” We encourage our members to become regularly involved in acts of service in order to extend our worship beyond the formal Sunday morning gatherings and become a lifestyle and an orientation of the heart. Our emphasis on servanthood is not to bring attention to ourselves, but to point beyond ourselves to the One who enables us to serve.
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Teamwork
We recognize that we are stronger and more effective as a church family than we are as individuals. Combining the resources with which God has blessed us allows us to multiply the collective impact on our community.
God equips each person with unique gifts and calls us all to use those gifts for good. We believe that God has chosen both women and men to lead God’s church. The role of the pastor, however, is not to take on all the work herself, but to equip and encourage the members of our church family to work together to make a difference.
Read about the United Methodist Church's support for women at all levels of leadership in the Church.
First United Methodist Church Richardson belongs to a larger church family called The United Methodist Church. For more information on the doctrine and beliefs of our denominational family, visit www.umc.org.
