All Are Welcome.
No Exceptions.
You are a
Child of God!
First United Methodist Church in Lindstrom is a welcoming, accepting, and authentic community of faith.
Together at First UMC we grow as disciples of Jesus trusting in His forgiving grace and endless mercy. Our goal is to always strive to stay faithful to the three scriptural imperatives of the United Methodist Church: 1.) To Grow in Love toward God and Neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40), 2.) To Reach New People (Matt. 28:19-20), and 3.) To Heal a Broken World (Luke 4:16-21).
To stay true to these, is to stay true to Jesus and his life and ministry.
God loves all people.
So do we.
Please take a look around our website and Facebook page. We hope you will contact us if you have any questions.
Bigger Than A Math Problem
Dear Friends,
Let’s suppose that I bought a horse from a man, and for that horse I had to pay, in cold hard cash, a grand total of six dollars. When I get home with the horse, everyone’s excited. My kids think I’m a hero. My frugal spouse thinks I’m a great bargainer. The horse is definitely a hit with the family. But after a while, problems arise. The horse is too big for the house, even though I’ve told the kids, “no galloping in the living room.” It’s getting expensive to feed this animal, too. Finally my spouse declares, “that horse has got to go.” I take the horse back to the man who originally sold it to me, and he’s gracious enough to buy the horse back for eight dollars. But I miss that old horse. A lot of times at night, after the kids have gone to bed, I can be found staring up at the moon and playing my harmonica, singing cowboy songs. My spouse, bless her heart, can’t stand to see me mope over old Calico, so she finally gives in and says, “Oh all right, go back and buy that horse again.” This time I buy the horse from the same man for ten dollars. You can guess what happened. No sooner did we get the horse back to the house that we began to face all the old problems again. The kids were still horsing around and horse was doing a major number on the carpet. I could see the handwriting on the stall. I was going to have to get rid of old Calico. So, I took the horse back to the same guy and sold him my horse for twelve dollars. I no longer have the horse, but I do have a question. After all my wheeling and dealing on that horse, did I make money or lose money? Not counting feed, or gas back and forth to the farm – did I come out ahead? Did I go in the hole? Or did I break even? And if I did gain or lose – how much did I gain or lose?
Take a moment to come up with an answer to that question. The answer I come up with is that the man made a four dollar profit. (He spent six dollars and ten dollars = sixteen dollars; He received eight dollars and twelve dollars = twenty dollars; subtract sixteen dollars from twenty dollars and you get a four dollar profit.)
I’m expecting a variety of different answers to the posed questions because of the nature of the story and the sequence of events within the story. I’m guessing coming up with an answer will be confusing, difficult, and maybe even frustrating for some as you struggle with what seems like an algebraic equation that it calls for.
This word problem was originally printed in a second-grade math book. Knowing that, the answer to this problem should have been easy to arrive at. But was it? If your math skills are like mine, then the answer is definitely no.
I share this classic word problem with you this month as a metaphor to the position our denomination finds itself in right now. The United Methodist Church, its Annual Conferences, and individual congregations (including ours) within them, are trying to solve a problem surrounding the matter of whether or not to fully include the LGBTQIA+ community.
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