Prospect Park United Methodist Church
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Christine Kliesen Wehrman (Pastor Chris)


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[Read this month's "Pastor's Corner"] 

Greetings!

Welcome all who seek the divine! Our hope is that you have found this Web site because you have felt a stirring in your heart to connect with God and are looking for a community of faith that will support you in your journey. 
 
How would we describe what we're all about? You'd probably get as many answers as you would people in this community. Yet at our core, we are a community seeking to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, as taught by Jesus (Luke 10:25-28).
 
Love of God: 
Prospect Park United Methodist Church (PPUMC) is a place of spiritual exploration and growth.  We seek to be a community where all people, whatever their spiritual understanding may be, can come and feel welcomed.  We strive to create a place where authentic relationship with God can be experienced and nurtured.
 
We seek to know and to dwell with that which we love.  Loving God is about finding expressions and practices that authentically lead to interaction with the divine.  Come and explore with us the mystery of the spiritual and find food and rest for your soul.
 
Love of Neighbor:
PPUMC is a place of action and transformation.  We recognize and take seriously the challenges of this world and work actively to overcome injustice wherever it is found.  By participating in local community organizations as well as larger social justice initiatives, PPUMC strives to engage every member to help change the world.
 
We seek to embrace and lift up those around us.  Loving neighbor is about recognizing injustice in the world and working to end it.  We actively engage in overcoming poverty, homelessness and inequality wherever it is found.  Come and help change our community and our world for the better.

Pastor's Corner for April

The more Easters I celebrate the more the truth resonates with me: Seek and you will find! Knock and the door will be opened to you!! In my life, it looks like this: I see what I look for.

When I wanted a child and conception was not simple, I saw babies everywhere.  When my father suffered a series of strokes, I suddenly had eyes for the asymmetrical smiles of others who had recovered from similar experiences. When my heart was broken, I noticed every person alone on the bus with empty eyes, and when I fell in love late in life, the world was full of "older folks" holding hands.

Does it work that way for you?

Resurrection is on my mind: Everywhere I look I see it peeking out from behind obstables with its impish green pointed smile.

  • A classmate's shattered jade plant, repotted, is sprouting baby jade shoots out of broken leaves.
  • A friend - struggling to find footing after a devastating professional blow that left her marriage fragile - returns from a second honeymoon in the tropics aglow with love and confidence that outshines her sunburn.
  • Reverend Bradley Schmelling, once removed from the clergy roster of the ELCA, will lead Gloria Dei, the largest Lutheran congregation in St. Paul.
  • In small churches much like ours across the cities a group of laity and clergy - joined by a strong, committed, hopeful bundle of folks from PPUMC - are meeting under the umbrella of The Healthy Church Initiative, learning and questioning and collecting ideas for conversations to bring back to our congregation and community in a yearning for an ever fresher sense of vision and identity to lead us forward!

The Easter story is playing out on every stage I see. Preceded by doubt, fear, pain, death, hate, injustice, sorrow, and evil comes the glimmer of hope, joy, forgiveness, growth, transformation, equity, trust, and sacred beauty. Resurrection! The culture we live in -- that we perpetuate unless we make constant conscious decisions to resist -- will have us look for all we lack, because consumerism feeds on need. We will look for brokenness and defeat and we will see it.  However, when we claim the promise of our faith, the promise of Easter, we will see something different. Brokenness is not the last word. If all is not well, all is not finished. We will seek hope and we will find it. We will knock and knock and knock again ... until the door is opened to all!

Let's do so together.

Wild blessings,
Pastor Chris


Contacting PPUMC:

Send e-mail to Prospect Park UMC (ProspectParkUMC@gmail.com)

Last modified: April 1, 2012 -- JO

Please contact the church office at ProspectParkUMC@gmail.com with any comments or corrections to this Web page. The URL for this website is http://www.prospectparkchurch.org