Mill Plain UMC

05/31/2026

"The Dance of the Trinity Mill Plain" at Mill Plain United Methodist Church, May 31, 2026

05/31/2026

This Sunday, we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Pastor Sue will explore this sometimes confusing doctrine and why it matters to us as the Church.

We will also hear an update from the Leadership Board regarding Mill Plain's finances for the first quarter of 2026.

We invite you to join us for worship and fellowship as we continue to grow together in faith.

05/30/2026

"Arla Olsen Memorial Service" at Mill Plain United Methodist Church, May 30, 2026

05/30/2026

05/29/2026

E-Devotion by Pastor Sue

The Leadership Board has gotten some feedback regarding the 140th Anniversary Celebration on May 17. While I am not a voting member of the Leadership Board, I do meet with them, as will Pastor Laura. I want to respond to this feedback.

1. The Leadership Board is responsible for the Administrative Functions of the church (what formerly was handled by Trustees, Finance, Staff Parish Relations and Church Council.) They have their hands full these days with a pastoral transition, safety concerns around the church, working to help our Preschool Board thrive, and much more. They are NOT responsible for programmatic things. We still have functioning Mission, Worship/Education, and Social Justice Teams, in addition to the Scholarship Committee and the Preschool Support Team. This means the Leadership Board had no responsibility for the History Celebration. That was handled primarily by the Worship/Education Team, the ad hoc History Team, and me as your pastor.

2. The History Team formed to write an updated history of the church. When I suggested an anniversary celebration, they said “Great idea, we don’t have the energy to organize or oversee such a celebration.”

3. When I suggested the idea to the Worship/Education Team, they said, “Great idea, we have a lot going on this spring, we don’t have the energy to make a big deal out of it.”

4. Given the feedback from the above two teams, perhaps I should have picked up that the timing for this celebration was not great. I saw it as a fun focus for the Sundays after Easter. Because this was 140 (a nice round number) but not 150 (a more traditional time to have a big deal celebration) I agreed this could be a fairly simple observance that would focus on some educational themes (the history of Christianity from Jesus to the founding of Mill Plain United Methodist Church). Thus was born a Tuesday evening class and a simple anniversary celebration.

5. I think the problem we’ve faced is a matter of expectations. When I announced we would have an anniversary celebration, it laid the groundwork for expecting a huge celebration. Inviting former pastors fed into those expectations. I take full responsibility for creating false expectations. Please understand the Leadership Board was not responsible for this event and both the Worship/Education Team and the History Team were clear with me about their level of participation and I was fine with that.

In the end, I think we had a meaningful time to reflect on our history and a fun celebration. It will be up to future leaders in ten years to decide how to celebrate 150. I’ve had feedback from the three retired pastors who attended, each of them delighted to have been here and to have heard of the vitality and life at Mill Plain.

Pastor Sue

05/24/2026

"The Languages of Grace, Mill Plain" at Mill Plain United Methodist Church, May 24, 2026

05/24/2026

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday! 🔥

To celebrate, we invite you to wear red if you have it.

As we reflect on the story of Pentecost and the ways the Holy Spirit enabled people to speak many languages, our worship will include a variety of spoken languages — and even one that we will SEE through American Sign Language during the Call to Worship.

Join us as we learn about “the many languages of grace.”

05/23/2026

E-Devotion by Pastor Sue

This year, Pentecost Sunday also falls on two days significant for Methodists: Aldersgate Day and Heritage Day. They blend together well.

This really would have been the most fitting day to celebrate our 140th anniversary except it is also Memorial Day weekend and I figured many people will be out of town.

Pentecost (fifty days after Easter) celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples gathered in an upper room. They speak in many languages and are touched by tongues of fire. Pentecost was also a Jewish Festival in which they celebrated the gift of the law to Moses, so the coming of the Holy Spirit blends well.

Aldersgate Day (always on May 24) is the day when John Wesley went to a meeting on Aldersgate Street. He was newly home from a failed mission trip to Georgia. He doubted his faith. At that meeting, as he listened to someone read from Martin Luther's preface to the Book of Romans, Wesley felt his heart "strangely warmed" and that God had forgiven his sins. I look back on the stories of that day and think the Spirit must have been present to him in a special way on that day. It didn't instantly transform his life. He still had moments of doubt and lack of clarity. And yet it has become for Methodists a paradigm of spiritual assurance. Wesley began to find his way after that experience and the Methodist movement was born.

Faith, for the vast majority of us, is not a magical cure for every doubt. Many Christian leaders and teachers tell of their struggles. After her death, we learned that Mother Theresa, famed for her ministry among the dying in Calcutta, struggled to believe and feel God's presence. Yet she persisted and we now honor her as a role model of charity and faith. St. John of the Cross experienced what he called dark nights of the soul when he could not feel God's presence at all. On the cross, Jesus himself wondered if God had abandoned him.

It's tempting to think that other people have it all together as Christians, that the Spirit makes God's presence so real to them that they never doubt, while we look into our own faith and find it wanting in so many ways. While there are times when the Spirit works in big dramatic ways like on Pentecost Sunday, far more often the Spirit comes to us in more subtle and quieter ways. Just like many people are called to behind the scenes work rather than public ways, so the Spirit works so gently that most people don't even notice. Happy Pentecost.