Loving God - Serving Others - Building Christian Community
During this year’s Homecoming, Ayden UMC will welcome our district superintendent, Rev. Linda Taylor, as guest speaker. The 10:55 worship service will be followed by a potluck lunch. Bring your favorite dish to share and join us as we fellowship together.
The 8:45 early service is canceled for Homecoming and will resume the following week at 9 a.m.
The Ayden Minister’s Alliance, in cooperation with the Town of Ayden and the local school district is proud to sponsor the first annual Ayden Community Day of Caring.
The event will take place this Saturday, August 17th starting at 7:00am, and its primary purpose is to invest in the lives of our students, teachers and administrators by coming together to help prepare our local elementary and middle schools for the first day of school.
Those who have previously volunteered to participate or those still considering should plan to arrive a little before 7:00am. Parking will be directed by an Ayden Police Officer. Initial parking will take place at the Ayden Elementary School parking lot with overflow parking at the open green space to the right of the entrance of the Ayden Middle School campus.
Members that have volunteered to participate are to check-in at the “sign-in” tables in front of Ayden Elementary School. There you will be assigned to a work station. Also, please bring work gloves and any other hand yard tools that you may own to assist with the day’s work (e.g. rakes, shovels, pitch forks, etc…).
Additionally, lunch will be provided for participants (catered by Skylight Inn BBQ) following the completion of work at the Ayden Middle School cafeteria.
According to our Town Manager Adam Mitchell, it looks like things are shaping up for a great day of community service. We have approximately 100 people committed to volunteer and participate which meets our goal of 100 strong! This is a great way to take on the improvements at both Ayden Elementary School and Ayden Middle School as a community, and a wonderful way to make connections and work alongside others to share the light of Christ in our community.
Ayden United Methodist Church invites kids ages 2 to 12 to learn more about God at our Vacation Bible School! VBS will start on Sunday, July 21, and will run through Thursday, July 25. Our theme this year is “Everywhere Fun Fair: Where God’s World Comes Together.” Kids will explore God’s Word through Bible stories, songs, crafts, games and food.
There is no cost to attend, and all children ages 2 -12 are welcomed and encouraged to join us for a great week of fun at the fair! This year we will be serving dinner each night to all participants at 5:30. The program will begin at 6 p.m. with opening worship and will end at 8 p.m.
You can help by spreading the word to friends, family and neighbors. If you have a child who would like to attend, please register them by visiting 2013.cokesburyvbs.com/AydenUnitedMethodist or by calling the church office at (252) 746-6524. Paper registration forms are available in the church Narthex or in the church office.
Volunteers are still needed. Contact the church office to get involved today!
Here at Ayden UMC we’ve been in the midst of discerning God’s unfolding vision for us as the community of God active in the community around us. We’ve been praying, listening, asking questions and compiling the answers in search of what it might look like for our church to faithfully grow over the next five to ten years.
The question at the core of this discernment has been this:
“What is God calling Ayden United Methodist Church to do and to be in this next season of ministry?”
The answers have been exciting to hear. God has given us some amazing visions and dreams and as a way of helping us to visualize the interconnectedness of those visions and dreams I’ve collected all of the responses and fashioned them into a word cloud.
The image that you see above represents the things that we have identified as the most important parts of our identity and calling in this community. In fact, you’ll notice that at they very center are the words “God” and “community.” All of the other hopes and dreams revolve around our love of God and our commitment to seeking the peace and prosperity of the community in which we find ourselves.
This has lead us to the next phase of our visioning process and that is the formulation of a mission statement. The greatest commandment, as laid out by Jesus in scripture, is to love God with all of our heart and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It seemed pretty clear that loving God and serving others were important to us, but as the church leadership discussed that further, the reason that those two things were important was that they were the building blocks of something more. These two ideas at the core of our faith are also the key to living into the kingdom of God and the foundations upon which authentic Christian community is built, and so we thought it only proper to add that as well.
Our new mission statement at Ayden UMC then, is this:
“Loving God, Serving Others, Building Christian Community.”
I’m so excited that our church council has adopted this vision for our church and I can’t wait to see how this bears fruit as we begin to plan some specific, measurable goals for this next season of ministry.
