Welcome from Pastor Coleman

Dear first-time worshipers and guests,

Thanks for coming to First United Lutheran Church today. We are glad that we could worship God together today. We do hope that you will return often.

Our mission statement is “we are called by God to study his word, and through worship and prayer, we grow in Christian faith so that we willingly share our gifts and serve our church and community as Christ’s disciples.” The mission reminder is Pray, Grow, Share, and Serve.”

Our vision statement for a preferred future, revised 10/05, is “First United Lutheran Church is a healthy, growing community of disciples on a spiritual journey, DISCERNING our gifts and calling, GROWING deeper together in small groups, SERVING humbly in and beyond the church, LIVING for Christ in our work and world, and DRAWING friends to Jesus.” We participate in mission for Christ in our community through sponsoring Red Cross Blood Drives and sharing our facilities with Campus Crusade for Christ and various community action groups. Beyond the metro area, we sponsor Amanda Olson, an ELCA missionary to Guatemala, and are involved in activities in Guatemala and in Appalachia.

As a Christian congregation, we are intentionally moving beyond a membership culture to a discipleship culture. That is, we expect our congregants to see themselves not just as “church members” but as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. As a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), we are a pastoral-size congregation moving toward the dynamic of a program-size congregation. Our leading congregational programs include Via de Cristo weekends and teams, ChristCare groups, Stephen Ministry caregivers and care-receivers, and a Head2Heart confirmation program. We participate in the Changing Church network as a PoWeR SuRGe congregation, asking our leaders to practice the six marks of Christian discipleship (pray daily, worship weekly, read the Bible daily, serve at and beyond First United, relate to others in a small group or with a spiritual friend, and give generously to the Lord’s work, working towards giving a tithe and beyond).

In our strategic planning mindset, we are a 12 Keys church (Kennon Callahan), have participated in Easum Bandy ministry audits and consultations, have reviewed and revised our mission and vision statements in the last ten years, defined our core values and bedrock beliefs, and most recently have used the Natural Church Development tool to measure our 8 key quality characteristics. We are trying several strategies to discover how we can best be involved in campus ministry to our next door neighbor, Kennesaw State University.

So, if you are in the north Atlanta metro area or moving soon to Atlanta, we hope that you will take the next step and worship God with us regularly. We invite you to participate in one of our two Sunday services of worship. See our website www.fulc.org for worship times.

God’s Grace to you,

Pastor Ted Coleman