Our Vision and Values
Our vision statement – "Our vision is that our congregation be disciples of Jesus Christ sharing God’s love with others in our community to transform the world."
- We value the one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and good; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible.
- We value every person believing that they are of sacred worth, created in God’s image.
- We value the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God, creation’s redeemer and savior.
- We value the Holy Spirit who empowers us for ministry.
- We believe the Word of God, the Holy Bible was incarnated in the living Jesus the Christ.
- We believe that God is revealed through Scripture and that we are informed by reason, experience and tradition.
- We value the call of each person to share the good news of Jesus Christ and make disciples.
- We value Wesleyan heritage’s community covenant to live out both social holiness and personal piety.
- We value the ministry of all believers, lay and clergy, to serve in transforming the world.
Multi Site Ministry
At St. James United Methodist Church we are utilizing a church model called "Multi Site Ministry". Basically this is similar to having more than one location to do business – in our case, church business. We offer Sunday morning worship services at both our St. James East location at 1501 Franklin Street as well as our St. James West location at 3005 Golden Hills Boulevard. We are able to offer four worship services with a choice of three different styles of worship every week. Each site and service is unique. We invite you to try various services to find the one that is just right for you. At St. James we are "One Congregation... Two Locations".
History of St. James
St. James United Methodist Church is a fairly young congregation in comparison to other churches in the Bellevue area. St. James began as a storefront church in downtown Bellevue in 1957 and moved into their Franklin Street location in 1959 with a charter of 100 members. Additions were made to the building in the late 1970’s and the mid 1980’s. The congregation grew to over 500 members during this time. In the 1990’s the congregation continued to grow and the contemporary service was started. The sanctuary was renovated in 2005 and discussions were underway at that time for a new location to begin a second site. In September of 2006 the second site was launched and dubbed “St. James West”. Currently we have over 750 members between the two locations with our worship attendance averaging over 400 each week.
Plans for St. James West
St. James West currently averages about 150 per week for two worship services with many young children and families. We have around 65 families participating at West. The associate pastor at St. James, Jason Kennedy, leads this new congregation as they grow together with St. James East. The style of worship is a contemporary blend of music and Sunday School is offered for children through the 8th grade and for adults. We worship in a Seventh Day Adventist Church that we are renting monthly until we build up enough people to do a capital fund campaign to purchase 13 acres of ground at 45th and Capehart. The plans are to build a new church facility there and keep our building at 15th and Franklin. We are more than halfway to our goal and believe we will reach our goal by 2013 or 2014.
Plans for St. James East
We currently have two traditional style worship services at East. St. James East continues to grow and add new ministries. In the spring of 2010 the congregation voted
overwhelmingly to offer a child care center that opened in
September of 2010. The St. James Warm Hearts Child Care and Learning Center serves children from infants to age 5 and is an exciting new outreach ministry of the church. St. James also began offering Hispanic ministries in January of 2011 and we now offer an Hispanic worship service, Bible Studies, and other fellowship activities and events.. We continue to thrive as a mission oriented congregation serving over 750 meals monthly at various locations. St. James proudly makes it a point to "Live a Life that Matters".
A Long Range Planning Committee is working to help with our future plans.
Safe Sanctuaries
Security Matters. We take the safety of your children seriously and have taken precautions by following the Safe Sanctuaries Policy. This policy requires all volunteers complete the Safe Sanctuaries training, have a thorough background check, and abide by the policies and procedures set by the church. In addition, responsible adults are required to sign in and sign out children nursery age through sixth grade.
