The Great 50 Day Challenge Pentecost Report
The Holy Spirit still moves! As churches across the connection in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church gathered to celebrate Pentecost on June 5th they had a Pentecost miracle to celebrate—791 new members with 29 churches participating!
Many churches set the goal to add 50 new members during the 50 days of Easter and many churches reached that goal! First UMC Mariana is one such example. They rarely add more than 20 new members in a given year and wondered if such an aggressive goal could be reached. But on Pentecost they announced that they had miraculously made their goal of 50 new members!
St. Paul in Midway, FL added 30 new members, which is record-breaking for their church. FUMC Montgomery, Shalimar UMC, Fairhope UMC, Christ UMC, and Dauphin Way all added more than 50 new members.
Even some small-membership churches saw huge growth. Sneads added 8 new members which is four times their normal yearly average.
Every church that participated experienced a huge transformation in congregational life, with surging attendance and programs.
The ancient church set aside the fifty days of Easter as the most important season in the church year. Yet, the church today has largely forgotten the season, often doing more for Lent than Easter.
The Great 50 Day Challenge is a UMC movement to bring back Easter practices of abundant life and especially the making of new disciples of Jesus Christ.
We invite others to make plans to join us next year in the The Great 50 Day Challenge!