Please stay home, stay warm, stay safe. 

And please reach out to Pastor Kelsey if you need any help or support to do those things! 

Here are our upcoming important dates. Keep an eye out for any updates for the events this week due to weather. 

Jan 15 - UMW Meeting 5pm, Ad Board Meeting 6:30pm 

Jan 17 - Family Winter Party 5-7pm ☃️

Jan 21 - First Sunday worshiping together 11am at HUMC

If you weren't in worship with us last week or in a while, we have some other big updates, so I have included those below as well. 

Hopkins United Methodist and South Monterey United Methodist have officially merged! This means there are some changes coming and we have some decisions to make all together. We are heading into a season in which we will all need to be a bit more flexible, hold a bit more space for grace with each other, and trust that God will show up in our midst as we make decisions and changes. 

We will have our final Sunday of separate worship services on Jan 14* and come together for worship at the HUMC building on Jan 21 at 11am. 

*With the snow day, we will continue with this schedule

We have some work to do to merge and fill in our church leadership roles. Anyone interested in helping out our church with some form of leadership, please come to the Jan 15th Ad Board Meeting* OR tell Pastor Kelsey what you are interested in helping with. 

*Keep an eye and ear out, we may have to reschedule due to weather. That will be decided on Monday

April 27th we will host a celebration of life for the South Monterey United Methodist Church. We don’t have a plan for what might come with that property yet, but we know that this chapter of active worship has come to a close. We will celebrate the ministry and impact of its worship together on that Saturday. 

Good question! Short answer: Permanent Worship Time TBD. 

This is something our new Ad Board will discuss and decide on promptly. There are a lot of opinions and there are a lot of factors to consider as we remember we are aiming to serve our community. 

We will announce the plan of if/when we change after Jan 15. For now, we will continue with HUMC time at 11am. 

It’s not going anywhere and we aren’t tossing it away! For now, we will keep the heat on enough to keep the pipes happy and winterize the building some. Some items used in worship or in the sanctuary will be brought to Hopkins UMC. We will discuss ideas for how to proceed with the building in Ad Board meetings. 

The merger paperwork was turned in as our name will temporarily remain consistent with the building we are worshiping in: Hopkins UMC. We have committed to taking a more proper amount of time to brainstorm, discern, and decide what we would like our name to be going forward with a deadline of our 2024 Charge Conference.

The denomination strongly encourages merging churches to consider a new name to acknowledge that this is a new chapter in ministry for both merging churches as a new congregation. Yes, our congregations have been a paired charge for many years. Yes, we are used to worshiping together. This is still a new chapter for us and a new start in a lot of ways. Changing our name is a way to recognize that we are going forward as both previous congregations, and not just one church taking over the other. In our case, as we will continue to worship in the HUMC building, it is a way for us to honor South Monterey and to take on this transition together. 

Weather. We all know how fickle Michigan weather is. We have had a mild winter so far, but the many rescheduled events of the last year has shown us how easy the weather can change and get in the way of our best laid plans. So, to give us a better chance to avoid winter weather that would particularly keep folks from gathering safely, we are pushing the celebration into the Spring. This also gives us time to plan something meaningful!