Learn about Cypress United Methodist Church located in Cypress Texas on Cypress North Houston Rd near the corner of Huffmeister. Our Sunday morning worship services include: Traditional, Contemporary and Traditional Praise and Worship. At Cypress United Methodist Church you will find that we have Open Hearts, Open Minds and Open Doors.We look forward to seeing you in worship this Sunday!

SEEKING GOD'S PATH - OUR CHURCH

We are Seeking God’s Path as we plan the future for Cypress United Methodist Church.  Psalm 23 tells us – “The Lord is our shepherd...He leads us in right paths for His name's sake”.

TOWN HALL MEETING    printable brochure

We had over 130 people come to the Town Hall Meeting.  We reviewed the goals, calling, strategy, as well as the initiatives.  Click here for the information.

TO VIEW PICTURES OF THE RETREAT, CLICK HERE.

COMMUNIATION #7 - August 24, 2009

With your prayers and the hard work of many of our members, the long-range plan, Seeking God’s Path, is beginning to take shape.  We have involved over 300 people from all parts of our church – youth, adults, seniors, staff, and pastors – in charting our course to 2015.  We are working toward a church-wide, two-day retreat this fall to finalize the plan.  During the past couple of months we have been “socializing” progress with many groups throughout CUMC to gain feedback on the current state of the plan and to prepare members to participate in the retreat.

Seeking God’s Path can be illustrated by the following: 

It begins with our ”Calling” – What role does God want CUMC to take in his Kingdom?  Once we understand the role, we define the strategy to achieve our calling.  Initiatives are the specific actions we will undertake to execute the strategy.

Our current understanding of what God wants for us is: 

 

 

The three parts of the strategy are linked around the circle.  We grow God’s kingdom by attracting people to CUMC.  Concentrating on children and youth and on worship are the key elements of “Attracting In”.  “Growing Spiritually” reaches all of our people and is based on Bible study and small groups.  Armed with our knowledge of God’s plan for His people, we enter the “Sending Out” phase.  This has us serving CUMC and our community with the added step of inviting newcomers to our church.  This last step completes the circle.

While there are many elements of the long-range plan, this framework highlights those areas where we concentrate our efforts in meeting God’s plan for CUMC.

We need your continuing prayers and your involvement in the upcoming retreat.  The two-day retreat will be a prayer-based event whose objective is to confirm a plan that is in “action” when we close our time together.  The format of the retreat will be Share-Critique-Act.  Share – all the work done on the long-range plan will be shared by each of the 9 teams who worked on the Initiatives – Children, Youth, Adults, Seniors, Worship, Missions, Prayer & Generosity, Hospitality & Communications, and Administration.  Critique – small teams will delve into the specific initiatives with a critical eye toward to making sure they are linked to our Calling and are representative of our church into the future.  Act – as a group we will prioritize the initiatives, decide what are the most important, and plan the work we will do to accomplish the ambitious plan we lay out.
 

COMMUNICATION #6 - July 2009

We are in the process of communicating the findings of our group meetings and individual interviews along with our data gathered.  We have 45 initiatives that we are sharing with different groups of the church and some Sunday school classes.  We are looking for feedback and prayer to make sure we have covered all the bases.  So far we have talked to SPRC, Finance, Trustees, Senior Council, Jubilee, Fellowship of Believers, Footprints, Compass, UMM Roundtable, and Crusaders.  In the fall 2009 we will have a weekend retreat with about 75 or so leaders and lay people to finalize our plans.

COMMUNICATION #5 - March 19, 2009

We have completed seven of our nine group meetings and have identified many initiatives to put forth and consider as we look to Cypress UMC’s future. 

The initiatives are actions we could take that could help meet the goals Rev. Jerome has set for CUMC.  We concentrated on actions we are not doing today.  Group meetings will be completed in early April.  Following completing of the prioritized initiatives, the groups will conduct an analysis of each initiative that will determine: capital costs, operating costs, resource requirements, community conditions, organizational requirements, technology requirements, risks, and a next steps map.

Examples of initiatives include:
• Create new welcoming area with library, store, coffee bar, and gathering place that is convenient for members and visitors.
• Increase advertising.
• Create a spiritual growth plan.
• Develop a long-range missions plan.
• Create on-line bible study and devotional resources.
• Establish an annual regenerative process for Faith Forming Relationships – Adult.
• Develop a dedicated children’s space.
• Create a youth center.
• Establish a Sunday night youth service.
• Hold a summer revival.
• Enhance worship arts in both the Sanctuary and Ministry Activity Center.
• Develop a Sunday evening service.
• Establish a senior adult council.
• Adopt local hospital/school/retirement community.

As we move forward, all members and staff are encouraged to feed your ideas for Seeking God’s Plan to Sarah Holbrook or Calvin Cobb (sgp2015@cypress-umc.org) and they will be included in the deliberations and analysis.

-Calvin Cobb, Chairperson of SGP 2015

COMMUNICATION #4 - February 25, 2009

The first two of our group meetings, Youth and Worship, met on Saturday February 21 for four hours each.  Each group examined all the data we have collected on Cypress UMC, other churches in our area, and the community.

A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) was conducted then each group brainstormed a list of initiatives.  The initiatives are actions we could take that could help meet the goals Rev. Brimmage has set for Cypress UMC.  We concentrated on actions we are not doing today.  Each group developed 11 initiatives that were prioritized into 6 items to be fed forward for consideration.

Examples of these initiatives:

Youth:
• Create a youth center
• Establish a Sunday night youth service

Worship
• Hold a summer revival
• Enhance worship arts in both the sanctuary and MAC
• Develop a Sunday evening service

For the prioritized initiatives, an analysis was conducted to screen the benefits versus costs, benefits versus difficulty of implementation, fit to goals versus Cypress UMC strengths, and fit to goals versus fit to values.  Each initiative was assigned to a group member for evaluation with respect to costs, resources required, risks, etc.  A “next steps” plan will be developed for each.

COMMUNICATION #3 - February 19, 2009

As we work on Seeking God’s Path our analysis effort has examined our community.  As we strive to understand Cypress and other churches, we also need to understand our community and the changes taking place around us.

Click below to see several charts showing key statistics of the areas surrounding Cypress:

Part of our work on Seeking God’s Path includes analyzing the final report of Rev. Dave Herman of DNA Consulting who is the Transformation consultant for 140 Methodist churches.  You may remember we surveyed our membership last year in February and produced the Ministry Performance Review and with that information Rev. Herman prepared a report of his findings.

An important characteristic of Rev. Herman’s work is his vantage point as a former pastor and district superintendent.  In addition, he has a perspective gained by analyzing a huge number of churches.  That perspective gives us insights we can’t have for ourselves because we don’t have his breadth and depth of experience analyzing churches.

Here are some of Rev. Herman’s conclusions about Cypress UMC:
• Cypress is on the verge of becoming a great church
• We are a “corporate” church, meaning our size needs a certain leadership capability and structure to be successful.
• Our “Seeking God’s Path” effort is well conceived and should enable us to prepare a good plan for reaching the goals Rev. Brimmage has established for 2015.

Rev. Herman told us an interesting story...  Nineteen Cypress UMC members, leaders, and staff attended a Transformation training session on January 10, 2009 called “Making Peace with Change” held at St. Paul’s UMC in the museum district.  Cypress made an impressive showing at the meeting attended by 68 people with more than a quarter of the attendees.  Someone who attended told Rev. Herman about our “Taking It to the Streets” service and said, “We would never think about doing something like that; that Cypress UMC church is something!”  It was heartwarming to hear that someone from another congregation thought our efforts were creative.

We are analyzing all that Rev. Herman has shared with us and incorporating his advice into Seeking God’s Path for 2015.

COMMUNICATION #1 - February 5, 2009

Under the leadership of Rev. Jerome Brimmage we are charting our path to the year 2015 and involving a large group of our members and staff in the process.  As we dig into every aspect of Cypress and our ministries, we are gathering information about other Methodist churches, our community, and us.  We will begin sharing this information to keep you abreast of progress in Seeking God’s Path.

Rev. Brimmage has set goals for Cypress so we will know we are successful when we arrive at 2015.  Two of those goals concern worship attendance and having active members.  Active members are defined as those of us who:
- Attend worship 2 times per month.
- Are active in small groups
- Participate in at least one mission or service per year.
- Financially support Cypress and are moving toward tithing.

We have collected membership and worship attendance data from a number of churches in our area and of our size.

Note that our growth in membership is similar or greater than several of the churches shown in the Membership chart.  Worship attendance is a positive for Cypress; we are growing at a steady rate compared to some of the others.  2008 membership numbers were 2492 and worship attendance was 838.

We will be sharing more information over the next few weeks.

 

 

 

 

2015 LRP Steering Committee:

 

Rev. Jerome Brimmage, Rev. Stephanie Hughes, Rev. Harold Knolls, Rev. Marilyn Wadkins, Dave Noethlich, Ray Sims, Dave Warren, Brian Smith, Steve Hinchman, Chuck Dewees, Tod Mitchell, John Clough, Pam Wells, Sarah Holbrook, Tamara Mayne, and Calvin Cobb (consultant)