Pastor Dwayne's Page!
email: pastor@tumcfl.org

A Message from Our Senior Pastor 

Tuskawilla United Methodist Church is a very exciting place to Belong, Grow, and Serve.  We are an open and inclusive church.  We are an ever-becoming heterogeneous, polychromatic community of faith.  We are intentional in our efforts to invite and welcome people across the socially constructed boundaries of race, class, sexual orientation, and religious backgrounds.  We are a church that cares deeply about our environment and human life, and our ultimate aim is the transformation of life in the name of Jesus Christ.  

We embody a commitment to be in service to others through local, regional, and global missions and, therefore, we welcome persons to celebrate the rich diversity of gifts and talents as given by God for the purpose of disclosing God’s love in Jesus Christ. 

From the Pastor's Study

"A Most Real Event"

"The Answer is in the Question"

Expectations 

1)      Belong: That through a vital worship experience and genuine fellowship you may connect with a community of faith, become immersed in God’s love and forgiveness offered to all people, and experience God’s dynamic, life-altering Presence and grace in your life.

2)      Grow: That through small groups, bible study, and short-term studies you may experience a deepening in your connection with Jesus Christ and fellow people of the Way. The small group setting provides an opportunity to experience sanctified growth in Christ Jesus.

3)      Serve: That through service to others we embody concretely the life of Jesus as we seek to make a real, life-changing difference in the lives of others. We “go into the world in the strength of the Holy Spirit, and give ourselves on behalf of others under the Lordship of Christ.”

4)      Life in Christ: That through the empowering and loving Presence of the Holy Spirit, we live our lives to the glory of God in Jesus Christ as we strive towards Christian perfection: love of God and love of neighbor.   

Invitation 

I invite you to join Tuskawilla United Methodist Church.  I welcome you to come and connect with one of the most dynamic churches in the Central Florida area.  God’s Holy Church is for all people and our hearts, minds, and doors are open to you and your family.  Come, my friend, and Belong, Grow, and Serve!

Welcome to Tuskawilla 

Come and Belong, Grow, and Serve!

There are three easy ways to explore or commit to joining with us: 

• Make an appointment to see the pastor. I am available to meet with persons interested in exploring membership at Tuskawilla United Methodist Church and joining with us in a life of dynamic discipleship. Simply contact the church office at 407-699-8155 and ask for my administrative assistant, Lynn Campbell.
• Sign up for our Membership Orientation Class. Around every couple of months we have a group of people who would like to join the church. Many of these persons also see me personally. Once again, simply call the church office and get on the list for the next class.
• Sign in on the Sunday worship attendance registration pads that you would wish to join. When you do this, we will be in touch within the week. Usually we will get you into both the orientation class and a time with me as your pastor. Dwayne Craig, Senior Pastor

Vision Statement  

A place to Belong, a place to Grow, a place to Serve. There’s a place for You

Mission Statement

 Tuskawilla UMC is committed to providing a place to Belong, to a community of faith, a place to Grow in the faith, and a place to Serve in the faith.

Mission in Motion

Missions and ministry at Tuskawilla happens in a variety of ways.  We show ourselves to be not only a passionate worshiping community, but we are also a congregation that is ever intentional in providing opportunities for Christian formation and growth.  Sunday school classes, bible study classes and small group studies are offered for each age group, and such studies and fellowship opportunities have as there primary aim the making of disciples of Jesus Christ.  Additionally, the church has a strong and growing youth ministry, an emerging children’s ministry, a dynamic 50+ Senior’s Ministry, and a vibrant mission’s ministry that reaches beyond the Casselberry community. 

Here at TUMC, ministry is ever-occurring; it is salty service unto others as orchestrated by a deep and abiding faith in the One who is the DEEP TOMORROW (God).  Such gestures of service are witnessed to as we bring, each first Sunday, can goods and other items to be donated to the SafeHouse of Seminole, a place for battered and abused women; the opening up of our doors to boys and girls scouts and neighborhood associations, NAMI, and our youth ministry joining in service with our Choctaw friends in Mississippi.  Ministry in motion, grounded in the NORMATIVE GAZE of our EXISTENCE (Jesus Christ), is expressed not only as the trustees lead in a workday but, also, as over thirty-five people respond to a worship ministry training session, as over seventy-five people join in service as we offer a free car wash to the community (a sign of God’s grace), the opening up of our grounds to host, on a weekly basis, the learning of the Way of Methodism and, finally, the annual pumpkin patch, which is another mainstay ministry at Tuskawilla intended to reach out to the community and communicate God’s way of saving grace and extravagant generosity found in Jesus Christ as we are led by the LOVING PRESENCE (Holy Spirit). So come, and join with us in ministry and mission at TUMC!!!

Aphorisms by Pastor Craig

You are free to think, but you are not free to think what you want to think

Truth-telling is an enterprise of making enemies

You are no longer who you thought you were

There was a time when you were not, and there will come a time when you will no longer be

Walking with Jesus is a radical reorientation of the self

The Church is only the Church when she provides a viable alternative to the interaction of human bodies

We must be ever-suspicious of homogeneous churches

You cannot walk with Jesus and remain the same person

God calls us away from all other gods

By the way, there is only One God

The Church is a polychromatic community grounded in God’s Agape

The Church is not called to assist the secular state in making a better world: we are called to follow Jesus

The art of living is learning how to die

The Church’s main political task is the formation of disciples

The Church is a most subversive community for it worships the Holy Trinity and not Caesar

The Christian life is a life of radical questioning

We know that we are Christian when only Christian we are

Christian existence is lived by determined speech

Want for nothing, but only Christ

Out of silence does God's future come to us

Ignore Detractors and Minimize Distractions

To pretend to know and not know is ridiculous, but to talk like one knows when in fact one does not know is a most wretched commentary

It’s not what one says that matters most, but why one says what one says

Only the Son of God could have done what the Son of God did: die for the sins of the world

The contemporary church is like a ship without a rudder