We find that by following Jesus Christ in the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition. All are welcome to join us on this journey. Welcome to 1st United Methodist Church of Rolla, Missouri. We’re part of the Methodist Movement that started in England in the 1730s and now spans the globe, enacting the words of our Founder, John Wesley, “The world is my parish.”
The Methodist way of following Jesus came to Rol
la in 1861 when the pastor and congregation from Maramec Spring began their missional and congregation-establishing work here toward what became Rolla’s first Christian church. Our original building at the corner of Main and 9th Streets was built shortly thereafter and served the congregation and community well during that tumultuous time in American history, providing shelter and work for Union Soldiers, and help for recently emancipated African Americans. Since then, generations of people dedicated to cultivating holiness of heart and life in their apprenticeship to the Lord Jesus Christ have called this congregation their faith home. We believe that loving God and loving Neighbor, what Jesus declares to be the two greatest Commandments, must be enacted in very practical ways. We show our love of God by providing Spirit-led, Christ-centered, and heartfelt worship that glorifies God and helps people recognize God’s activity in their lives and in the world God loves. We show our love of Neighbor through concrete and ongoing actions that help them flourish, such as our work through the Greater Rolla Area Charitable Enterprise, our Sewing Endeavors group, our Prayer Shawl Ministry, our small groups, our youth group, our Preschool Ministry – and much more. In short, we believe that when we pray the part of the Lord’s Prayer where Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” – those aren’t mere words or nice thoughts. They’re a God-ordained mission to live out: We prayerfully hope that God’s love will be refracted through us, and that God’s will might be done through us, as we bear witness now to God’s emerging – and ultimate – New Creation. Absolutely everyone is welcome to join us in this Christ-centered, soul-saving, life-changing, God-glorifying, Neighbor-serving work. One of the stained-glass windows in our original 1864 building captures all of this quite well: “We Work Because We Believe.” God, Who is Love, loves you. And we’d love to have you join us in whatever ways you are led and comfortable in this holy, dare we say “Methodical,” way of being God’s people serving a dissipated and hurting world that God loves.
