Grace isn’t just the name of an historic building on the corner of Carrera and Cordova in St Augustine. Grace is a beautiful gift of God for everyone. God’s gift of grace allows us to recognize that God is not afraid or ashamed of us. God sees us as human beings, with all our hurts, habits and hang ups, and God moves close. Like a first responder running toward the wounded and wrecked with hope to restore and save, we understand that God has turned toward our wounded and wrecked world with hope to restore and save. We understand that God hasn’t picked some and not others to offer this gift of grace. God’s grace is a beautiful gift for everyone.

Awakening to this gift of God and receiving it in all its mystery gives us peace with God and moves us toward peace with one another. Grace doesn’t fix all our problems, but it turns them all into opportunities for beauty to erupt. The reason for that is we begin attending to where God is present in our “problems,” and trusting that God has something to say if we will listen.

Encountering and awakening to God’s gift of grace comes with an invitation to follow and be formed by grace. While not pontificating or shaming, grace is demanding. Like the potter’s hand on a lump of clay, grace wants to lead to something. Recently, our Bishop Ken Carter put it this way. “Grace wants to lead us to more opportunity, more equality, more flourishing, more patience, more justice, more covenant-keeping, more hope, more and deeper followers of Jesus; and said differently, less unfairness, less judgmentalism, less prejudice, less violence, less despair, less hunger, less racism, less sexual harassment, less mimicking of unhealthy patterns of behavior that we see in the world.”

This way of grace through Jesus is something that shapes the personality of Grace United Methodist Church and is woven into God’s future story for our life together. By God's grace we are a community of people learning to follow Jesus by doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. Our longing is to become beloved community (across generations and other differences) that brings the hope of heaven to the realities of earth. Our ministries provide education, support and leader development for people to do this good work wherever they may be.

We are convinced that God really wants to teach us and our community something wonderful by recognizing, understanding and appreciating our own culture and that of others when serving, worshipping and praying together. We’d love for you to come be a part of this adventurous, unfolding story of God’s great gift of grace!