Who We Are
Our Core Values at Chatham UMC
All are welcome – Our invitational spirit is behind everything we do. You are welcome, just as you are, but we will challenge you to grow. CUMC is a growing congregation in a changing and vibrant community. We know what it means to find a place where you belong that’s meaningful for our lives. We want you to connect with Jesus Christ and to find belonging at CUMC.
Meaningful Worship – You will experience meaningful worship at Chatham United Methodist Church. We strive to offer a worship experience (Sundays at 9:00 am) with meaningful music, relevant preaching and frequent communion. We believe communal worship is essential to our vision and mission because worship is forming us to be the disciples we are called to be in our community and world. God is shaping us through the stories of Scripture, through the sacraments and through the sharing in one another’s lives.
Children – Children are not only welcome at CUMC, children are valued members of the CUMC church community. Children and youth participate in worship. Children and youth participate in Discipleship classes. Children and youth are actively engaging in service and mission as essential members of the CUMC community. Children mean a lot to our faith community because they are not only the church of the future, but they are vital to the church of today. We love kids and youth at CUMC and our desire is for them to become the people God is calling each of them to be. All are welcome!
Formation Through Study & Christian Conversation – Spiritual formation is an essential practice of the CUMC community. Community members find community and support for their faith journeys as well as the tools and resources for growing into the deep people God calls us to be. All of CUMC’s Sunday discipleship classes as well as other small group Bible and book studies, seasonal studies, and ministry teams encourage spiritual and personal growth. We believe wholeheartedly that the stories we read in the Bible have the power to shape our lives as we seek to live as disciples. God is forming us into the people God needs us to be through study and the Christian conversation that happens in small group settings.
Friendship – We’ve committed ourselves to being holy friends at CUMC. In the Bible Jesus referred to his disciples as his friends. We believe we are friends of God and that God calls us to grow in friendship with others. At CUMC we don’t always agree. We are a diverse community, but we respect our differences and choose to live in love with one another.
We hold up the apostle Paul’s vision of love in I Corinthians 13 as a model for our communal life together and our desire to find holy friendship in the church. Paul says, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Generosity – At the center of our ministry and mission is a desire to be as generous with our neighbors as God is with us. This means we choose to give ourselves away in mission and outreach. We seek to be generous with our time, our prayers, our presence and our financial gifts. To do the vital ministry we are called to, we need to be generous. To be the kind of people we desire to be and the kind of neighbors we are needed to be, generosity is an essential practice for our lives and our witness.
Service – We long for others to know the transformative love of Jesus Christ and so service is an essential practice at CUMC. Our neighbors are important to us and so CUMC community members are committed to serving meals through several mission organizations throughout the greater Springfield area. We are committed to meeting the needs of children and youth in our area schools. CUMC works hard to get free school supplies into the backpack of every child that needs an extra dose of love in order to excel in school.