About Us
Who we are and what it’s like to worship here…
Thank you for visiting our website, we are glad you’re here!
Mountain Home UMC is a rural church surrounded by vineyards, Christmas tree farms, orchards, and country landscapes. Our members literally come from miles around – from just up the road to several communities away.
We are a small but very busy congregation. One day you might find us filling school backpacks for houseless students, the next serving community meals at the Shared Table ministry of the Sherwood UMC, another day contacting our state representatives to encourage them to support affordable housing legislation, and the next cleaning up branches from the latest mountain storm. We are always up to something good!
We find joyful ways to connect both on Sundays and as we strive to shine God’s light of hope, peace, and love in the world. We value each other for our strengths and for our idiosyncrasies. We laugh a lot.
On our Home page you’ll find the words “We Welcome…”, and we do! We also firmly believe that being “welcoming” is only a beginning. We are intentional in our work to make sure that what we do and how we do it supports full inclusion for all in the life of our church.
Sunday mornings worship begins at 11:00 am, or as soon as our pastor can get everyone to stop visiting. Join us and experience a relaxed and uplifting atmosphere, a service filled with music, and an inspiring, thought-provoking sermon.
Mountain Home UMC is one of the almost fifty churches in the Cascadia District of the Oregon Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church. The mission of The United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
The UMC is a connectional church, defined not by formal structures, but by connections between people: pastor and pastor, pastor and laity, and laity and laity. We understand these interpersonal connections as the essence of the church.
The Land We’re On
We humbly acknowledge that Mountain Home UMC is located on the ancestral and unceded land of the Atfalati and Kalapuya. We honor their stewardship of the land and grieve their displacement.
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can”
~ John Wesley
Staff
Pastor: Reverend Aric Clark
Rev. Aric Clark is pastor of Mt. Home and Sherwood United Methodist Churches. He is also a writer, a speaker, and an activist who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the co-author of Never Pray Again: Lift Your Head, Unfold Your Hands, and Get To Work, a book which challenges readers to embrace a concrete other-centered spirituality, and editor of Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire. When not pastoring, writing, or protesting he is parenting two teenagers and indulging a love of tabletop gaming.
History
It all started when…
In 1878 thirteen people felt the calling to begin a church in the Mountain Home area, and so Mountain Home Church– then called East Chehalem –was born.
The first church, about the size of a one-room schoolhouse was built in 1883, and the first service was held on Easter Sunday. The cornerstone gave the name of Zion Evangelical Church. The cost of that building including furnishings was $763.50. In about 1917 the Evangelical Association merged with the United Evangelical Churches. The church was quite isolated and pastors had to come from other communities to serve so in 1929-30 the faithful people built a “well appointed” parsonage.
The membership continued to grow and the tiny church was bursting at the seams so in 1936 the members built a larger church. That first little church was the oldest Evangelical Church west of the Rocky Mountains to have never closed its doors. It had served the community well for 53 years. The new church included beautiful stained-glass windows and a basement with kitchen, dining room and a fireplace room. Much of the work was done by volunteers as it had been with the first church and parsonage.
In 1946 with another merger, our church name became a real mouthful–the Mountain Home Evangelical United Brethren Church. It was much easier to say we were EUB!
Tragedy came on January 4, 1955 when the church burned during a snowstorm while the pastor was away. Only the bell was saved. The second church lasted only 19 years. However, the Mt. Home people rallied quickly and on that very day plans were made for a new church building and an additional acre of land.
In 1968 the EUB and Methodist Churches merged so we became Mountain Home United Methodist Church.
In the early morning of July 27, 1984 the third church burned, the result of arson. Again, the bell was saved.
The present church building was dedicated in 1986.