Munholland Methodist Church

09/09/2026

You are invited to Pearl River Methodist Church for GODSEND: The Story of Answered Prayers 🙏
For more information and to reserve your spot [email protected] or 985.863.7452.
Pearl River Methodist Church, 65480 Highway 41, Pearl River, LA, 70452

09/09/2026

Good News!

The Global Methodist Church General Conference in South Africa finished on Saturday. Highlights include passing the Articles of Faith and electing bishops for this next term beginning in November. Our new Bishop will be Dr. Luther Oconer. Dr. Oconer is originally from the Philippines and has served both in the Philippines and in the United States. You will hear more about the General Conference from Sarah Kreutziger - The Trinity Conference Lay Leader and Lay Delegate to General Conference - when she speaks at worship in the next couple of weeks. Here are two articles that describe the Conference and what the delegates accomplished: Reflections from Johannesburg and Holy Conferencing in South Africa.

Grow Groups kicked off this week. Over 70 people are part of these life-giving groups. 5 Groups have room for YOU while the 6th is full.

Midweek Meal is back on the menu! Thanks to Malcom and Vicky Munster for the delicious food they provide each Wednesday.

Jonathan

09/08/2026

Midweek Meal resumes this week! 🍽️

Malcom is cooking his delicious roasted Pork Loin with mashed potatoes, along with corn, salad, and dessert.

Bring your family, invite a friend, and come enjoy a meal together.

We’d love to see you there!

1201 Metairie Road, Metairie, LA 70005

09/06/2026

Sunday Service 11am

09/05/2026

No patient going into surgery to remove a tumor thinks of the surgeon as an enemy, even though what's about to happen involves a scalpel, real pain, and a body being cut open. The relief isn't in avoiding the surgery. It's in someone finally being willing to go after the thing that's actually killing you, instead of leaving it alone because touching it seems too harsh.

Psalm 98 ends with a line that can sound like the same kind of harsh news: "he comes to judge the earth... he will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity" (Psalm 98:9). Judgment sounds like a diagnosis nobody wants — until you remember what a diagnosis is actually for. The theologian N.T. Wright describes this kind of judgment as God "setting the world to rights" — not settling scores, but going after everything in it that's actually killing us: injustice, cruelty, the sin we've learned to live with instead of going to Him to set it right.

That includes what's living in you, not only what's wrong with everyone else. The parts of your life you've learned to manage instead of heal — the resentment, the habit, the lie you tell so often it stopped feeling like one — aren't things God is coming to punish. They're the tumor He's finally willing to go after, because He would rather you survive than stay comfortable with sin.

Judgment is not about settling scores but setting things right. What's one thing in your life you've been managing instead of asking God to actually heal?

Blessings,
Rev. Jonathan Beck

09/04/2026

09/04/2026

Strike a tuning fork and hold a second one nearby that has been formed to produce the same pitch, and something strange will happen. Without the two ever touching, the second one begins to hum. Physicists call it sympathetic vibration. The second fork isn't choosing to respond — it's simply built to that exact frequency, and something tuned that precisely cannot stay silent when the right note is struck.

Psalm 98 says something similar about creation itself: "let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy" (Psalm 98:7-8) — because everything God made is tuned to respond to him. Centuries later, the apostle Paul stood in Athens, a city so hungry for the divine that its altars honored a different god for nearly every part of life, plus one dedicated simply "to an unknown god," in case the Athenians had missed someone. Paul recognized their desire to be in tune with God: "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Their longing, their searching were proof they were created by God. Their souls had been vibrating even though they couldn’t quite name that tune.

The restlessness that sends people chasing career, romance, causes, and substances in search of something solid isn't a design flaw but a longing for something deeper, bigger, satisfying to the soul. They are trying to find the right note in all the wrong ways. But they hear it. Do you hear it? Athens had a hundred altars and still hadn't found the one that answered their most profound questions. The image of God in us resonates with the Song He sings.

What have you been chasing that might actually be your soul's way of reaching for God?

Blessings,

Rev. Jonathan Beck

09/03/2026

A young woman at our church grew up in the pews — baptized as an infant, confirmed as a teenager, present most Sundays without much drama attached to any of it. Then something happened in her that had nothing to do with rules or routine, and about two months ago she stood in front of the congregation to tell us about it. She didn't come forward to be baptized for the first time. She came forward to renew the vows she had once made and she asked for water — real water, poured generously over her head — so she could feel, physically, what had already happened invisibly: she'd been washed clean and filled with the Spirit all over again.

Psalm 98 doesn't ask for a polite response to that kind of moment. "Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth... shout for joy before the LORD, the King" (Psalm 98:4, 6) uses the same word the ancient world used for a coronation crowd — the sound Israel made the day they crowned their first king. Centuries later, when a crowd shouted that exact kind of praise over Jesus riding into Jerusalem, religious leaders in the crowd asked him to quiet them down. He refused (Luke 19:37-40). A king arriving deserves noise, whether it's the first time you've welcomed him or the fiftieth.

You don't have to have wandered far, or fallen hard, to need a moment like hers. Plenty of the most faithful-looking people are quietly running on the fumes of vows made long ago. Renewing them isn't admitting failure. It's coming into the presence of The King who has been patiently waiting for you to notice he's still on the throne.

Renewing our relationship with the King is a celebration. Is there a vow you made to Jesus a long time ago that's ready to be said again, out loud, today?

Blessings,
Rev. Jonathan Beck

09/02/2026

General Conference 2026 is underway now — August 30 to September 5, in Johannesburg, South Africa! The main business this week: electing eight full-time bishops, one for each episcopal area, to six-year terms starting November 5. Trinity Conference's own delegation — 13 clergy and 13 lay delegates — elected last September are representing you and the Pelican Area. We are proud and praying for our Munholland member, Sarah Kreutziger, who is one of those representatives. Sessions are long: 8 AM to 8 PM most days, focused on how the Holy Spirit is leading us to make disciples and spread scriptural holiness around the globe. Find out more and watch the livestream here: https://www.beautyofholiness2026.org/

Ronda Knox, who is studying to become a Deacon in the GMC, is speaking this Sunday on Connecting with God in life-changing ways.

68 people have jumped into 6 Grow Groups and there is room for you! Each group has their own meeting times but they are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. They meet in Metairie, Lakeview, and Munholland. Their first meetings begin next week!

Can you believe 120+ pictures have been taken of our Munholland mugs! They represent over 200 members and attenders. Be counted in that number by going to munhollandchurch.org or calling the church office to book a time.

Jonathan

09/02/2026

Jeremiah watched Jerusalem burn. The walls were broken, the temple was gone, and everything he had warned his people about for decades had finally arrived. Sitting in that wreckage, he wrote some of the most quoted words in the Old Testament: "Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). He wasn't describing a good season. He was describing the worst day of his life, and finding, somehow, a mercy in it that hadn't been there the day before.

The psalmist behind Psalm 98 was reaching for the same idea with a melody attached. "Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him" (Psalm 98:1). In Hebrew poetry, "new song" is never decorative. Every time that exact phrase shows up in the Psalms, it's attached to something that had just happened — an event large enough that none of the old songs had room for it. That's Jeremiah's new mercy with music underneath it: a new mercy calls for a new song, because the old ones weren't written for what God just did.

You may not be sitting in Jerusalem's wreckage, but you know what it is to need something today that yesterday couldn't supply — the phone call that went differently than you feared, the diagnosis that came back better than expected, the apology you weren't sure you'd get. That's not a rerun of an old blessing. That's God doing something today for you.

God's presence inspires a new song. His mercies are new every morning. What has God done for you this week that deserves a song you haven't sung yet?

Blessings,

Jonathan