What Does Love Look Like?

Love looks like the faces of First UMC across the 140 years of our life in Santa Monica. The Rev. Joseph Crum, our first pastor, led the congregation to start a church way out west in Santa Monica and persevere through an economic recession, the move to a new site, a drought (some things don’t change!), smallpox, unemployment, and a downturn in shipping and railroad traffic.

It hasn’t always been easy or self-evident that the church here would thrive. Yet, thrive we have, across 140 years of mission and ministry.

What does love look like? 140 years of faithfully following Christ Jesus — putting down deep roots, abiding through seasons of ease and of challenge, and spreading out new branches to embrace the present moment and stretch forward to God’s future.

Each of you reading this is a key player in this abiding story. Our 2016 Financial Pledge Campaign encourages YOU to give gratefully and generously to live the story forward. This year your Finance Committee and Staff-Parish Relations Committee are asking you to do two things. First is to search your heart and make a pledge that reflects the value of what love looks like through the ministries and mission of this congregation. And secondly, to go beyond that and make a stretch gift for 2016 that will not only continue all that’s here now but move us towards our pre-2008 staffing levels. To grow into the future God is making possible for us, we need a full-time Director or Pastor of Children, Youth and Family Ministries. We need a Health Ministry Parish Nurse. And we need more administrative support in our church office.

What Does Love Look Like? Look around. Look within. Give thanks to God—and do your part to show love to all who are here and all yet to come.