The plain version, minus the churchy words — and with the part that actually matters up front: Methodists have always believed a faith you cannot live, especially among the poor, is not worth much.

Reviewed by the Beaverton First UMC editorial team · Fact-checked July 2026

Ask ten Methodists what they believe and you will get warmth before you get a lecture — and, sooner than you might expect, you will get a to-do list. This is a hands-on tradition. At its center is a conviction about grace that leads, almost immediately, to a bag of groceries, a fair wage, a friend in prison. Here is the heart of it, in everyday language.

It all starts with grace

Grace is a small word for a big idea: God’s love, freely given, that you do not have to earn. John Wesley, the movement’s founder, pictured it in three stages, like moving through a house.¹ Prevenient grace is the porch — God already at work in your life before you notice or ask. Justifying grace is the door — forgiveness and a genuine fresh start. Sanctifying grace is everything inside — the slow, lifelong way love reshapes a person.¹ It is a gift, start to finish, “not by works, so that no one can boast.”⁴ And here is the Methodist twist: grace received almost always becomes grace given. Love that costs you nothing tends to spill toward people who have nothing.

At the center is grace you did not earn — which is exactly why it does not stay put.

Faith you can actually live: do no harm, do good

Wesley distrusted religion that stayed in your head. So he gave his people three plain rules to live by: do no harm, do good, and stay close to God.⁵ “Do good” was not vague niceness — he meant feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, and practicing “acts of kindness, charity, love, and justice” as ordinary Christian habit.⁵ For Methodists, holiness has never been a private, solitary thing; it is worked out in public, in the company of your neighbors and for their good.

A faith with the poor at the center

This is not a modern add-on. Wesley spent his life among the poor on purpose: he wrote a plain-language medical guide and gave free treatment to people who could not afford a doctor, opened schools, set up a lending fund for the struggling, and kept visiting people in prison. And he refused to keep quiet about injustice — he attacked the slave trade as “the execrable sum of all villainies,” and six days before he died, at 88, he wrote to encourage William Wilberforce to keep fighting until slavery “shall vanish away.”⁶ That instinct — that the gospel has to be good news for the poor and the oppressed, or it is not the gospel — runs straight through the Wesleyan tradition to now.

A gospel that is not good news for the poor is not, for Methodists, the gospel.

“For the transformation of the world”

The church even writes its purpose this way: “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”² Note the second half. Discipleship is not meant to end at personal comfort; it is meant to change neighborhoods. At Beaverton First that looks concrete and local — a free food market, free English classes, and standing with people on the margins — because for us, that is the theology, lived out loud.

How Methodists sort things out

On working out what is true, Methodists lean on Scripture first — read alongside the wisdom of the church through the ages, our God-given reason, and honest experience.³ You are not asked to switch off your brain to belong here, which is why honest questions are welcome rather than feared.

A big tent and an open table

Methodists baptize and share Communion — and our Communion table is open, so everyone seeking God is invited, member or not. This is also a tradition with room to disagree. There is no long checklist of beliefs to sign before you belong: a shared center, and a wide, welcoming circle around it — including an openly affirming welcome for people of every background.

Questions people ask

Do Methodists believe in the Bible?

Yes — Scripture is our first and primary source, read thoughtfully rather than woodenly.³

Is this a “social justice” church?

Caring for the poor and working for justice is not a trend we adopted; it has been in the DNA since Wesley fed the hungry and fought slavery.⁶ We would just call it following Jesus.

Do I have to believe all of this to come?

No. Grace comes first, so you are welcome to show up curious, unsure, or still deciding.

If a grace-first faith with its sleeves rolled up sounds like something you would like to see up close, you would be welcome to visit us on a Sunday.