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Emergency Prayer Line

Trinity has a week-end pastor on call emergency phone line. If you have a family emergency, death or other crisis situation, dial 352-416-3055 and leave a message. The pastor on call will get back with you as soon as possible.

Trinity Town Center Registration Open!

Trinity town Center "Stirs the Pot" - Sept 1 - 29, 2010

Family Dinner Served - 5:30 to 6:30 pm

A Variety of Classes - 6:30 to 7:30 pm

The Trinity Town Center Class list and registration is HERE

Statement on Peace and Understanding from Dan Johnson

Dear Friends in the Gainesville Community and beyond,

“There is a time to be silent and a time to speak,” so says the writer of Ecclesiastes (3:7). Normally, when a very small fringe group acts or plans to act in disturbing or hateful ways, I am inclined to “ignore it and it will go away,” and wish that the news media would do the same. That was my thought when the Westboro Baptist group who gained infamy by picketing military funerals picketed our church, along with St. Augustine Catholic Church and the Hillel synagogue downtown a few months ago for no apparent reason. At that time they were joined by The Dove World Outreach Center. Again, we adhered to the wisdom that it was a time to be silent and not add fuel to their fire. And such was our position when The Dove World Outreach Center announced plans that they would host an International Day of Burning the Qur’an on September 11.

But, because this sinister action has been picked up by the international news media, the time for silence has passed, and the time for Christians to speak has come. There should be no doubt around the globe that the Christian Church does not condone or support such an action. To remain silent would mean complicity to a terrible wrong. As the Senior Minister and Church Council of Trinity United Methodist Church, we feel compelled to raise our voices to proclaim that the action the Dove World Outreach Center is proposing is absolutely wrong and counter to the Life and Teaching of the Jesus whom we love, follow and call Savior and Lord. The Jesus that the vast majority of Christians know is a person of extraordinary love and compassion. He extended grace to persons of other faiths and treated them with respect and understanding.

Since the Dove group began its campaign against Muslims over a year ago with signs and t-shirts, several of us have come together to create the Gainesville Interfaith Forum, which is made up of persons from the Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faith. Our goal is to foster understanding, mutual respect and peace, while recognizing and appreciating our own particular faith understandings. In times like we find ourselves now, we see how tremendously important such an Interfaith Forum is.

We at Trinity, along with the support of the Gainesville Interfaith Forum, would like to invite the entire Gainesville Community to a very different kind of event on Friday evening, Sept. 10. We invite you to a Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. We are opening our entire worship center and campus for a time to embrace our unity as members of the human family. We will have activities for children of our different faiths to play together, arts and educational crafts, cultural displays, foods from various regions of the world, and a time of prayer for peace, understanding and hope.

We will also be opening our chapel the next morning, Saturday, Sept. 11 from 8:30–10:30 for a time of prayer and remembrance, as we honor the memory of those who perished on 9/11, 2001, and pray for their families and all who have been and are in harm’s way since that day. We will light candles and pray also for all those who have been placed in harm’s way since that day. Believing that prayer is the mightiest force in the world, we invite you to join us.

We call upon the news media to give this as much attention (or more) than the attention they have given to the disturbing actions planned by the Dove World Outreach Center, so that around the globe, all people will know that the Gainesville community, made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and more, can be both deeply committed to their respective faiths and at the same time, live in harmony and peace with one another. We dare to believe and hope that this disturbing action by a very small and misguided group might become the catalyst for one community, Gainesville, to model a way of living in harmony, mutual respect and peace. The God I know is in the habit of taking “what was intended for evil and turning it into good (Genesis 50:20), and I believe God will do it again.

Please come, Gainesville, to A Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope: Friday, September 10, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church, 4000 NW 53rd Avenue, on 53rd Avenue next to 43rd St.

Very Sincerely,
Dr. Dan Johnson,
Senior Minister
And The Church Council of Trinity United Methodist Church

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