Reverend Tim Craig has been pastoring churches in the Virginia Annual Conference for 28 years. He has degrees from Loyola University and Duke University.
Tim is married to Ann and is the father of four grown children: Keriann, Courtney, Brendan, and Meghan. Tim and Ann have two pets, Solomon a Bengal cat and Gracie a Siberian Husky.
Tim's favorite hobbies are roasting coffee and enjoying life to the fullest. His favorite Bible verse is Psalm 37:4
"Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart."
For United Methodists, membership requires our active participation in a local congregation. When we become members, we profess our faith in God, our desire to live as disciples of Jesus Christ, and commit to join with our church community to keep the vows made at baptism. The vows we make include promises to faithfully participate in the life and ministries of our local congregation through our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.
"Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. Christ invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another."
We use these words of assurance in the communion preparation. Communion has been called a means of grace, Grace is the undeserved, unmerited and loving action of God. Communion is one of the ways in which we encounter God's freely-given love. We observe communion as a remembrance of Jesus’ final dinner with his friends the night before his crucifixion. On that night, he gave them bread and wine saying that these parcels of food were his body and his blood, and that whenever they partook in them they should remember him..
At Great Bridge United Methodist Church communion is celebrated once a month, on the first Sunday.
A service of Christian marriage is a celebration of love, but not simply the romantic love of the couple. It also celebrates the love of God for us, and the love Jesus calls us Christians to share with the world.
The Bible teaches that God made human beings in the image of God, and all of creation to be good. Sin caused a "distortion of the image of God in us and the degrading of the whole of creation," In baptism, we reject the power of sin and begin our journey as disciples of Jesus Christ. Through the waters of baptism, we are cleansed of our sin and born into a new way of living. Whether an infant or adult, this is just the beginning.
"To be disciples of Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world, so that no one misses out on the grace of God.”
