Looking Back, Year 1
Can you believe it’s been 12 whole months since I moved into the Decatur community and began serving at First United Methodist Church? This dawned on me the other day – it feels like just yesterday I was pulling the moving van across the country. Time has flown by this past year – yet, looking back, I’m amazed, humbled, and grateful for just how much God has done in and through us these past twelve months!
In the last year:
- We’ve seen incredible growth as a church in our outreach serving in the community. From handing out water to bicyclers with Raquel’s Wings for Life to serving hungry neighbors with the Decatur Cares Mobile Food Pantry to assembling Thanksgiving Boxes for families to giving away mountains of sunscreen, this congregation has been hard at work serving our neighbors!
- Stronger bonds of love and fellowship have been built within the congregation, especially as new families have come to join FUMC Decatur. New friendships have formed as Dinner Groups traveled from home to home throughout the year, incoming 6th graders found a home in the Youth Group, and we met so many new people at our All Church Birthday Bash!
- Families and young people have been continuously lifted up and supported in countless ways. We saw 68 children recently at Vacation Bible School, are sending over a dozen children and youth to Camp this summer, continue to see new young families and children in Kidz Worship each Sunday, confirmed 8 bright young people this spring, and packed out our new facility and parking lot for Trunk-or-Treat and 5th-Quarter last fall!
In the last year, the budding sprouts of Pecan Street Mission have also begun to appear. We packed out the Courthouse Lawn with 130+ people from across the community on Easter Morning, celebrated all those women who serve as mothers in our lives at the Community Mother’s Day Celebration, and are beginning to meet even more new neighbors at our summer experiments in Dinner Church. As we look even further into the future — we are on the verge of bringing a gifted young musician on staff to help lead worship for Pecan Street Mission, Preview Worship services are set to begin this fall, and the “big launch” is not far off in Advent!
Seeing how far God has brought us this past year only makes me so much more excited for where God will continue to take us in the year and years to come! God has been moving in powerful ways through the faithful witness of the people called Methodists in Decatur. It is such a gift to serve in ministry together, and I so look forward to all the great God-sized things still to come!
In Christ,
Ricky Harrison
