Having started her position as pastor at Eden Prairie United Methodist Church (EPUMC) less than a month ago, Pastor Linda McCollough says that the church “is very good at welcome.”
That, she said, lines up well with her strength at building personal relationships. Within the United Methodist Church, pastors are appointed to congregations by a bishop and the bishop’s cabinet, “based on both skills and gifts and talents of the pastor, as well as what the church’s needs are,” McCollough said. McCollough received the appointment to the Eden Prairie church after the previous pastor, Becky Jo Messenbrink, departed to become a district supervisor within the wider United Methodist Church.
Other areas where her strengths and EPUMC’s align, McCollough said, are passions for food and housing insecurity, as well as inclusivity. “I’m very passionate about ‘God’s love is for everyone.’ And this church is very big into inclusivity,” she said. “Having experienced rejection when it comes to Christian faith in my life, one of the things I think is really important is that all people know that they’re loved by God.”
McCollough previously served churches in Red Wing, Columbia Heights, and Excelsior, where she was active in local community and ministerial groups, including being a part of the committee that formed the first Columbia Heights Pride celebration in 2019.
Votes in wider Methodist church ‘open doors’
“I had come out to my congregation from the pulpit in 2019 after the Conference that they had in St. Louis,” McCollough said. At a 2019 special session of the General Conference, the top policy-making body for the international United Methodist Church, delegates voted 438-384 to keep language that banned ordaining LGBTQ clergy.
The General Conference did not meet in person again until May 2024, when delegates voted by a 93% margin to reverse that decision and overturn the ban on LGBTQ clergy. Additional votes at the 2024 conference also removed official condemnations of homosexuality and bans on same-sex marriages within the United Methodist Church.
“Having that stuff removed is huge,” McCollough said. “That just opens the door more for us in being welcoming and inclusive, which they already were. This church (EPUMC) has for years been an inclusive congregation and made the determination that they were willing and open to have a LGBT pastor a few years ago.”
A contingent of congregation members, she said, helped staff the booth for Minnesota Reconciling Congregations of the United Methodist Church at the Twin Cities Pride Festival the last weekend of June, the same weekend McCollough began her ministry at EPUMC. (Many Christian churches have adopted the term “reconciling” to indicate their support for people of all sexual orientations.)
“So many families have LGBTQIA people in them; it’s not an unusual thing anymore for people to be able to come out and be with their families. And so this church, being so accepting of that, it’s a great place for families to land,” McCollough said.
Welcoming ministries include Adaptive Bible Camp
“The welcome here goes in lots of different directions and ways,” McCollough said, including the Sunday school’s incorporation of lots of kinesthetics and the presence of a quiet room to meet the needs of children with a range of different abilities. On July 29, the church will also begin its third year of Adaptive Bible Camp for children with social, communication and sensory needs.
One nonverbal child, McCollough said, comes from Bird Island, a city 80 miles west of Eden Prairie on Highway 212, to attend Adaptive Bible Camp. “He’ll be able to come here and just fit in and be with the kids,” McCollough said. “I haven’t been a pastor at a church that took that so seriously, so I’m really excited about that as well.”
EPUMC also already has ministries aimed at supporting those dealing with food insecurity or homelessness, such as a Crops for PROP garden that donates fresh vegetables to the PROP Food Shelf and a regular commitment to providing meals at the shelter run by Simpson Housing Services.
“Those justice issues are really central to my values and beliefs, so being in a church where that’s already happening and being able to step into ministries already taking place is great because it’s not like I have to come and reinvent the wheel,” McCollough said.
Instead, McCollough said, she wants to get to know the community more before potentially pushing the church’s ministries to become more than their current iterations. She pointed to EPUMC’s vision statement, which concludes with the sentence, “We seek to be a beacon of love, compassion and justice radiating God’s grace to all.”
McCollough finds Methodism, Eden Prairie the ‘right place’ for her
As for her own faith journey, McCollough said that she came to adult faith a little later in life. She worked for several years in retail management and for nonprofit organizations before attending seminary. “I knew I had a call to ministry and had to negotiate on what that was going to look like for God’s call on my life,” she said.
Raised Presbyterian and previously a member of the United Church of Christ, McCollough came to be a Methodist through the appeal of John Wesley. Wesley, an Anglican (Church of England) priest in the 1700s, founded the Methodist movement within that denomination.
“John Wesley is about three simple rules: do no harm, do good, stay in love with God,” McCollough said. She also cited what has come to be known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, “which is that we look at Scripture, reason, experience, and tradition when we look at our Scripture passages. So we take Scripture very seriously, but not literally,” she said.
“Those things all fit with what my value system and belief system was,” McCollough said. “So it was sort of like, ‘Oh, this is the right place for me.’ And so that was when I became a United Methodist.”
As for her place at Eden Prairie United Methodist Church, McCollough said, “I’m excited to be here.”
As she began the job on Sunday, June 30, McCollough preached on her call both to ministry and to EPUMC, using Bible passages that she says were formative for her when she started in ministry. She described those passages as, “Philippians 4, prayer and supplication to God, don’t be anxious for anything; a 1 Peter passage that talks about ‘cast all your anxiety on God because God cares for you.’ And then the Matthew 22 passage talking about the greatest commands: loving God with your heart, mind and soul and then loving your neighbor as yourself.”
Because a portion of the church community has worshiped online since the COVID-19 pandemic, the service is available on EPUMC’s YouTube channel, with the sermon starting at the 21:33 timestamp and its conclusion beginning at 34:11.
Drawing on the passage from Matthew 22, McCollough concluded the sermon with, “I’m here to serve you, to lead you, and to walk with you. And most of all, I am here to love you, growing more in love with God and neighbor.”
Although not physically a neighbor within Eden Prairie – McCollough and her wife live in south Minneapolis – she finds it an easy 20-minute commute to the new job, where, McCollough said, “I want to stay here until I retire.”
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