Finding Our Faith Family When We Weren’t Even Looking by Jo Beth Hawkins
My husband, Mark, and I met in Dallas in 1984 after graduating from college at Texas A&M University. We were engaged the following year and began the process of planning a wedding and joining our families and our lives. Mark was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I was raised Lutheran. We both experienced the tradition of church on Sundays, every Sunday. Our families were entrenched in the lives of their respective churches, as were we. Choosing a church home was a challenge for us because we were loyal to our previous denominations, and we were loyal to our family traditions. However, after hours of impassioned discussion, multiple visits to our respective ministers, and significant investigation into other Christian denominations, we decided to become Methodists. As United Methodists, we were not required to be reconfirmed or rebaptized. We just had to come to the [...]
Celebrating our 49 years at St. Luke’s by Janet Knight
As newlyweds, we visited St. Luke’s in 1971. It did not take long to decide that this was the right place for us. We were impressed by the number of young families. Through the years, we have been involved in numerous areas of the church which has given us opportunity to grow spiritually and to get to know so many people from a variety of age groups. When we talk with potential new members of St. Luke’s at Coffee with the Pastor, we tell them how we could have just gone to worship on Sunday and walked out the door, but that our connections with the church community would not have fostered the friendships we have found. When our first child, Amy, was born, we knew we wanted her to feel comfortable in the nursery on Sunday mornings. At 3 months old, she met Mrs. Nance. It was so easy [...]
My Wonderful Reality by Jennifer Gould
Early in my marriage, my husband and I moved to Houston from Southern California. We knew finding a church home was important and in 1991, after seeing Dr. Moore preach on TV, we decided to try St. Luke's. We immediately loved the church's contagious, vibrant energy. Its large size initially provided us some comforting anonymity. It didn’t take long, however, before we were ready for more--we soon joined the Genesis Sunday school class, signed up for Disciple Bible Study, enrolled our daughters at the day school and got them involved in children’s Sunday School and choirs. One of my first memories of volunteering was when the mother of one of my daughter's pre-school friends invited me to teach with her at Vacation Bible School--the first of many rewarding experiences in Children's Ministries. When Tom Pace arrived in 2006 I rejoined the Church's Executive Committee (I had been on the committee when [...]