What We Believe
Edmond First United Methodist Church is truly an authentic intergenerational faith community that is rooted in Christ and living into our mission to Connect People with God and Neighbor at every age and stage of life.
Our 2025 vision is
Better Together!
“Let mutual love continue”
(Hebrews 13:1).
We are a church in The United Methodist Church, a global denomination with over 8 million members. Our connection with other United Methodists is a strength that allows us to serve people all over the world. Our beliefs are Trinitarian, meaning we believe in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Methodism was founded by John Wesley, an Anglican priest in the 18th century.
Our faith is rooted in John Wesley’s three-fold emphasis on grace:
- Prevenient Grace is the belief that God seeks after us before we are aware of God.
- Justifying Grace is the belief that we are made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
- Sanctifying Grace is the belief that the above faith leads us to seek to become more Christ-like in our daily living.
We seek to become more Christ-like through following Wesley’s three General Rules:
- Do no harm.
- Do all the good one can.
- Continue to work on our relationship with God.
“To continue on the way of salvation, that is living in harmony with God, we should begin by doing no harm…” ~John Wesley
By practicing these three rules in our daily lives, we can create spaces and places where love, justice, and wholeness can be realized because it can (and does) guide us to be Christlike.
Wesleyan Quadrilateral
As we try to discern God’s will for our lives, we do so prayerfully, using a disciplined approach we refer to as the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” This fourfold method begins with Scripture:
- Scripture – Scripture is considered the primary source and standard for Christian doctrine.
- Tradition – Tradition is experience and the witness of development and growth of the faith through the past centuries and in many nations and cultures. Church traditions and writings such as the Apostles’ Creed but also recent church writings such as our United Methodist Book of Discipline or Book of Resolutions.
- Reason – Reason helps Christians think carefully and critically about their faith. God has given us minds with which to use. Our reason allows us to interpret scripture or life issues utilizing other scripture, tradition and experience. We don’t believe in checking our brains at the door when we enter the sanctuary.
- Experience – Experience is the individual’s understanding and appropriating of the faith in the light of his or her own life. Our religious experiences of what we believe God is calling us to do. As we believe that God permeates our lives, we may often broaden what we tend to think of as religious experiences.
These four elements taken together bring the individual Christian to a mature and fulfilling understanding of the Christian faith and the required response of worship and service. Our denominational beliefs are found more thoroughly Below.