This is Us

This is Us - Summer Worship Series

What stories have helped mold you into the human being that you are? I think about standing next to my grandpa in a worship service as we both held the hymnal and sang a hymn praising God. I realized that my grandpa wasn’t singing and he turned to me and said he wanted to listen to me. When I sing songs to praise God today, I often think of my grandpa and the way that he encouraged me to use my voice.

I grew up in a large United Methodist church in Houston, Texas.  I sang in the youth choir every Sunday at the 8:30am worship service and participated in youth mission trips and youth summer camps. However, all of these activities were only with people from my home church. When I was in sixth grade, I participated in Confirmation class and to be honest, I don’t remember anything that I learned. For unknown reasons, I have a vivid memory of learning about the ten plagues, but that memory may have been from a Sunday School class. When I went to college, I was a Religion major but I don’t remember learning anything about the history of the United Methodist church until I was in seminary at Perkins School of Theology at SMU.  That’s doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn about United Methodism before, I just don’t remember it.  

In my United Methodist history class at Perkins I heard the stories of our United Methodist faith, and my faith came alive. I wanted to learn more!

As we talked in our staff meeting about a summer worship series, we wanted to share the stories that help make our United Methodist faith come alive. They are the stories that mold us as United Methodist Christians. I hope telling these stories of our faith will help us to grow more in love with God, more in love with one another, and more in love with our neighbors. Telling our story is so important because we share the transformative love and grace of God. I look forward to telling the story with you.

Blessed to be in ministry with you,

Rev. Kerry Smith