Our Mission
Loving the city with the heart of Christ.
Our Core Values
Love: We love God and others because God loved us first.
Discipleship: We are committed to growing as followers of Jesus by learning and practicing our faith in God.
Service: We love this city and are committed to doing all we can so that every person in Beaumont experiences the love of God.
Our Beliefs
United Methodists profess the historic Christian faith in God as Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We experience God as Creator/Provider, Redeemer/Savior, Sustainer/Comforter. We affirm that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and the Lord of all.
The Mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbor in all that we do. In carrying out this mission, we are seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign in the world.
We make disciples as we:
Proclaim the gospel by seeking, welcoming, and gathering persons into the body of Christ.
Lead persons to commit their lives to God through baptism by water and the Holy Spirit, and through a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
Nurture persons in Christian faith and living through active participation in worship, the sacraments, spiritual disciplines, as well as other means of grace such as fellowship, Bible study and prayer.
Send persons out into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ.
As United Methodists, we believe it is critical to live out our Christian faith in our personal lives, in our communities, and in the world. In order to bear a faithful Christian witness to Jesus Christ, we believe we must reflect critically on our biblical and theological inheritance, striving to express faithfully the witness we make in our own time. The way we reflect critically on matters of faith is somewhat unique. Our primary source for encountering God and understanding faith is Scripture. If our beliefs or understandings of God’s activity in the world run counter to Scripture, they cannot be sustained. Although Scripture is primary and authoritative, it is not the only way to encounter God or to come to an understanding of faith. We begin with Scripture and also use the Christian tradition (creeds, affirmations of faith, belief statements, hymns), our own experience (personal and collective), as well as our ability to reason (think). All of these sources work together to help us decide matters of faith.
Scripture, tradition, reason and experience also serve as ways we can encounter and know the living God. Through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, we can encounter the Risen Christ in so many ways—worship, the sacraments, bible study, prayer and Christian fellowship, to name a few.
Grace pervades our understanding of Christian faith and life. By grace we mean the undeserved, unmerited, and loving action of God in human existence through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
United Methodists believe that we are saved by God’s grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation is both a moment and a process. We are saved from our sins and given the assurance of eternal life when we profess our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior. This moment begins a lifetime of growing more Christ-like and becoming more and more able to truly love God with our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbor as we love ourselves.
OUR Downtown campus
We are located in the heart of the city of downtown Beaumont. The history of the First United Methodist Church Beaumont begins with the first “officially recorded” worship service in 1840. A Methodist missionary, Rev. Henry Stephenson preached in Beaumont somewhere on Corn Street, now Calder Avenue. It was this group of early Beaumonters who later formed the first Methodist church in the new town of Beaumont. For a number of years, these Methodists gathered for worship services in brush arbors or private homes.
The discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901 caused a tremendous surge in the population of Beaumont, and an increase in the membership of the Methodist Church. The congregation of five hundred and five members decided to build a new church on the corner of Broadway and Pearl Streets. This building, known as the Dome Church, completed in 1906 and served the congregation for sixty years.
Under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. John Wesley Hardt, the congregation acquired some adjoining property, and built the building we still worship in today on the same site as the Dome Church. Known as the Spire Church, it is the fifth home of the First United Methodist Church Beaumont. This building has served the congregation since 1968.
As Charlsie E. Berly wrote in With a Dome More Vast: The History of The First United Methodist Church, 1968-1985: “From the beginning, the First Methodists of Beaumont have located their church buildings in the heart of downtown area.”