Category Archives: United Methodist Church

Why religious education has an important role to play in our society

Religious Education is important for the development of understanding and knowledge about religions in the young minds. It provides an individual with insight into different religious practices, faiths, beliefs and helps people know and familiarize with different cultures around the world. It builds tolerance among people with different background and religious beliefs. Overall, it serves to build a better society, community, and culture of the human being. Hope this article will help you understand the question and will serve you like an essay writing help.

Religious education is vital to democracy

Religious belief and norms still remain the living force of the moral spirit of society. Religious education not only teaches virtue, but it also catalyzes moral action. Thus, it plays a vital role in society, enabling the individual having special considerations for different people with different needs. It teaches individuals to abide by the law voluntarily and respect others (and their properties). It teaches you how to give value to the human relationships and that money cannot buy you love and peace.

The multidiscipline nature

Due to the multidisciplinary nature of religious studies which include analytical and reasoning skills, social insight, theoretical knowledge, ethics, and philosophical thinking, it helps to develop core literacy skills.

Makes people understand the value of religious freedom

Indeed, preserving religious freedom in society is of great importance and has key advantages. Religious freedom amplifies socioeconomic progress in society and reduces violent conflict. Common people can only understand the importance of religious freedom through religious education. This will allow them to respect the different religious beliefs of their neighbor. Thus, societies are better developed when citizens have the freedom to express their religious beliefs and ideologies. So, religious education contributes to a more peaceful, stable and charitable society.

Improves the ability to think critically

The religious study itself is a demanding subject requiring rigorous efforts to understand its principle. Therefore, religious education also enables to empower your critical thinking ability as you go through the courses.

You will understand your heritage

Irrespective of the religious education you are receiving, it will enlighten you with your heritage, values, and future understanding. For young people, it offers a great opportunity to develop consciousness of society, philosophy, history, politics, and culture.

Individuals will know their own identity

With the help of religious education, individuals get to know about their identity and start to respect themselves. It also teaches to know your rights and key responsibilities towards society and mankind at large. There is a growing need for religious education in a time when we need a more tolerant society with increasing diversity among communities. Religious education will play a vital part in establishing social bonding and building a true understanding among different societies, reducing social unrest, intolerance, and friction between communities.
Unfortunately, the religious space is more and more reduced by the idea that religion is a purely private matter. This prevents the study of religion at a larger scale at a community level and circulating the true essence of religion. This trend is disconcerting, especially for believers.

The current world, even more so need the religious education as we can clearly notice the dip in religious tolerance across the globe. No religion teaches us to hate human beings and nature or disrespect other religions. The role of religion in society remains indispensable. Religion must remain a very precious heritage. Preserving this legacy carefully through religious education will help to develop a renewed respect for religious freedom and the democratic principles that support it. This respect will come with religious education, and people will understand and recognize the vital place of religion in society.

Why Faith is Important in our Life

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where things don’t go according to our plan? These results in an individual losing faith not only in our life’s but also in any other positive outcome in our life. Once you experience life failures it becomes easy to lose faith and hope in life. Faith keeps us going and losing faith in one’s life that means lack of interest to life and can result into devastating actions and outcomes including suicide.

Faith Goes Beyond Hope

Faith goes beyond hope and is deeply attached to our belief of good things to come in life. Once faith is lost life stop having meaning and terminating it becomes an option. Faith is rooted in an individual’s heart and spirit and not much can be explained by logic. Faith is the hope that things will get better with time. It is simply stepping on a staircase without seeing the next step. Just like a driver on a highway, we all have the faith that no driver will crash on our driveway. Without faith we cannot expect that things will be positive.

Faith Is as important as night and daylight.

To make it more vivid faith is just like the air we breathe, we cannot do anything without it we cannot even survive. The power of faith can never be ignored even when things seem impossible we put our trust on faith that everything will be okay.

Faith carries our deepest wishes and desires that is the homestead of faith. It is hard for some people to see the power of faith. Especially those who don’t believe in what they do not see and do not recognize the scenarios where faith has worked in their favor.

Many believe that faith is just something that people hold on to feel comfortable. They fail to recognize it as a precise element in life. Failure to have faith can make an individual’s life remarkably hard since without faith you cannot have any hope in life. Without faith doom is on our side during our darkest moments.

Once our mind is focused on hope and positivity our deeds are focused towards achieving the positive thoughts but once we focus our minds on the negative things such as the problems someone is facing without the thought of a better end result then our life’s will become meaningless and our minds adopt to living with such problems.

When our mind is trained to think of better things to come we automatically attract the better things to come and hence live a life of abundance. Your mind is crucial when it comes to deciding the type of life you want to have.

The story in the bible of job

For the believers the story in the bible of job is a good example when it comes to faith. Job believed highly in God and knew that under no circumstance would the almighty let him succumb to the devil’s evil doings in his life. The devil thought that Job was faithful because the almighty had blessed him abundantly and God decided to take everything from Job.

To the devil’s disappointment Job kept his faith in God and hoped for a better tomorrow even when all seemed impossible. Afterwards God restored all the things Job, had if he had lost faith would he have recovered all that had been taken from him?

What is United Methodist Church

United Methodist Church was founded in 1968 in Dallas, Texas. It’s one of the largest denominations in USA and has member churches in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The church traces its roots to the revival movement of Charles Wesley in England. Because the church’s theological orientation is Wesleyan, it embraces both evangelical and liturgical elements. It’s worth mentioning that the UMC is a member of the world council of churches.

Church origin

The church started as a movement that involved a small group of students including Charles Wesley, John Wesley, and George Whitefield who met at Oxford Campus. They focused on living a holy life through bible studies despite being mocked by other students. In 1735, Charles and Wesley moved to America to teach the gospel. Unfortunately, the congregation rejected them. Two years later, they returned to England and spent a lot of time with Peter Böhler (a German Moravia). Peter believed in salvation and had a lengthy conversation with John.

In 1738, John listened to a reading by Martin Luther to Romans where he realized that his good works could not save him. He later met with a group of clergy and received a complete assurance of salvation. The clergy became popular and attracted large congregation. After unsuccessful attempts to start a church in new colonies, John appointed Thomas coke (fellow priest) as a bishop.

The church started growing rapidly and employed more circuit riders to preach the gospel. In 1968, United Methodist Church was created after merging with The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren church.

Beliefs

The church strives to create Disciples of Christ through evangelism, outreach and seeking holiness. It recognizes Nicene Creed, Apostles Creed, and historical ecumenical creeds. Even if the official creed holds differing political and social views, it still reflects a diversified society.

Apart from that, UMC holds the concept of `Church Visible’ where the world of God is preached and sacraments are administered. It strongly believes in Triune God (God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

Worship and liturgy

The church includes a variety of approaches to public worship. Just like other historical churches, UMC has other liturgies for services of wedding, baptism, Holy Communion, funerals, ordination, and anointing of the sick.

Typical worship services include singing from hymns to contemporary music. Secondly, there’s a biblical message which involves
reading and listening to scripture. After the reading, a player follows where people share their concerns or pray with ministers. This may also include celebrations like confirmations, baptism, or profession of faith.

The Holy Communion is celebrated the first Sunday of the month or quarterly. It’s accompanied by sharing testimonies, hymn singing and partaking of bread and water. Lastly, the congregation gives tithes and offerings. UMC also incorporates contemporary styles of music.

General conference

The church is organized into conferences which speak officially for the church. Normally, the general conference meets every four years – though it’s revised after every conference. Secondly, non-legislative solutions are published after each general conference. This event is rotated between different US jurisdictions of the church. The session is presided over by an active bishop who is selected by a committee of delegates. Besides that, an annual conference (similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church) is held annually.

Church giving

The contributions to the church not only benefit the local congregation but also have a national and regional impact. It’s through collective giving that the church encourages cooperation with other faith communions.

https://www.youtube.com/umcvideos

From the above videos, the church empathizes on preventing world hunger, peace with justice, and family evangelism.