An Eastside Congregation Built Around Radical Welcome
Bellevue First United Methodist Church sits at 1934 108th Avenue NE in Bellevue, Washington, a small, progressive, intergenerational community with a long history on the Eastside. The motto painted across the top of the church's home page - "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" - is not a slogan but a working description of how this congregation tries to live. Members describe themselves as a melting pot of different identities, expressions, spiritualities and orientations, bound together by a shared conviction that striving for love and peace together is going to change the world. For more than twenty years the church has been what Methodists call a Reconciling Congregation, formally welcoming LGBTQ+ people into the full life of the church, and it has built much of its identity around social justice, creation care and small-group community.
Reconciling for Twenty Years and Counting
Long before the welcome was printed on a banner, the church made a public commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion. The congregation honors and affirms all people's expressions of gender identity and sexuality, celebrates love between people, and makes its support public. The church marries same-sex couples, supports the ordination of openly gay pastors, and believes that God's love is truly for everyone. Members march in the Seattle Pride parade, host an annual Transgender Day of Remembrance event in partnership with Emerald City Social Club, stock the lobby library with books of interest to the LGBTQ+ community and their allies, and engage in ministry to homeless LGBTQ+ youth. The church is a member of the Greater Seattle Business Association, the LGBTQ and allied chamber of commerce.
The church's LGBTQ+ ministry is more than welcome statements. PFLAG Bellevue Eastside has met at the church on the third Thursday of each month at 6 pm for many years, gathering for peer-to-peer support groups led by trained facilitators followed by a guest speaker. The lobby carries a curated cheat sheet of Bible passages that are unfairly used to attack or "clobber" the LGBTQ+ community, a list of ten passages that are pro-LGBTQ+, and a printout of the Gender Unicorn to help explain gender identity. Parents and guardians of trans and gender-diverse children can find links to Gender Diversity, the longest-running network of support groups for such families in the country. A separate, LGBTQ-led Lectio Divina group meets virtually for contemplative Bible reading and prayer.
ACT Sundays: Faith as a Verb on the Fourth Sunday
On the fourth Sunday of every month, the rhythms of the congregation bend toward the streets. ACT Sundays - the name is short for "Action Changes Things" - set aside the regular sermon for education, workshops and service oriented toward making the world more just. Recent ACT Sunday topics have included anti-racism training, racial inequities in COVID-19 outcomes, the racial wealth gap, police accountability legislation in Washington State, decolonization, monuments, climate change, microplastics and a no-plastic Christmas. Curated reading lists, slide presentations and local partner organizations are gathered on the church's ACT resource pages so that participants can continue learning between meetings.
The Social Action Ministry Team that organizes ACT Sundays works year-round. The team partners with Earth Ministry, PFLAG, the Church Council of Greater Seattle, UMC Justice, the Faith Action Network, Lifewire, Friends of Youth, the Seattle YMCA Host Homes program and a long list of advocacy organizations. The team's stated method is listen, learn and act, and its public resources spell out the difference between being inclusive and being actively anti-racist, including an ongoing Read and Share group for digging into anti-racism literature together.
The Sunday Rhythm: One Service, Four Different Shapes
Worship gathers in the Church Sanctuary at 10:30 am on Sunday mornings, with music, prayer, liturgy, art and a message from worship leaders forming the backbone of the service. Each month brings a new worship series with weekly themes, and a weekly newsletter keeps regular attenders oriented to the scripture and the rhythm of the season. Because the calendar has more than four Sundays, the congregation shapes the month around four distinct practices.
First and third Sundays feature a live virtual worship option alongside the in-person gathering, and video recordings of those services are archived on the sermons page for later viewing. Second Sundays trade the large corporate service for community groups meeting virtually and in homes - a deliberate choice so that the size of the gathering stays small enough for real conversation. Fourth Sundays are ACT Sundays. When a month carries a fifth Sunday, the church calls it a Sabbath Sunday, intentionally taking time off to celebrate the goodness of life through shared meals, hikes and unhurried conversation.
Music Ministries and a Co-op Choir
Music has a particular weight at Bellevue First. The Music Ministries team is a vibrant and diverse community of singers drawn from both Bellevue First United Methodist Church and St. Peter's United Methodist Church, where the lead pastor also serves. Together the two congregations form a co-op choir that lifts up music in worship. The choir is open to singers of all levels and backgrounds, and the congregation welcomes anyone with a passion for music and a desire to worship through song, whether a seasoned vocalist or someone just starting out.
On Sunday mornings, the worship team - a mix of longtime members and newer faces - leads congregational singing and special music. Anyone interested in joining the worship team or the choir is invited to contact the church office.
Care for Creation, From Climate Sundays to a Plastic-Free Christmas
Stewardship of God's world is one of the church's four core values, paired with deep thinking, community building and spiritual practice. Climate Change ACT Sundays focus on taking personal responsibility for the climate crisis, and the church maintains a Climate Care Voter's Pledge that sends reminders for upcoming elections and candidate forums. Members are encouraged to calculate their carbon footprint, eat lower on the food chain, drink tap water instead of bottled water, and reduce single-use plastic.
The no-plastic Christmas initiative is one of the most visible creations of this value. The church's pages track the full holiday footprint - wrapping, decorating, gifting and dinner - and offer practical alternatives: real trees rather than plastic ones, fabric wrapping instead of cellophane, loose tea rather than bagged, beeswax wraps in place of plastic film, and bulk-bin and butcher-counter shopping with reusable containers. A play on Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" rewrites the poem for a plastic-free Christmas. Microplastic education extends beyond December, with a long list of habits - washing on cold, filling the machine, hanging dry, choosing natural fibers - that the church invites members to adopt year-round.
Land Acknowledgment and Right Relations with Native Peoples
At the bottom of the church's home page a permanent acknowledgment reads: "We would like to acknowledge all of the Duwamish People, the ancestral keepers of the land on which we connect and gather. We thank them for their immense contributions to our state and local, history, culture, economy, and identity as Washingtonians." The church supports Real Rent Duwamish, encouraging members to pay voluntary rent to the Duwamish Tribe as a step toward right relationship.
The congregation also follows the journey of the Lummi Nation's House of Tears Carvers as their 24-foot totem pole travels the country calling on the federal government to protect sacred places, lands and waterways. Members have tracked the campaign to place a statue of Nisqually tribal leader Billy Frank Jr. in the National Statuary Hall, replacing a statue of Marcus Whitman, and the church's ACT resources include a fuller retelling of the Whitman story as part of a critical examination of monuments. The "Doables" list from Friends Peace Teams offers concrete steps members can take toward right relations with Native peoples.
Inside the Building: Facility Rental and a Building Shared with Partners
The building at 108th Avenue NE is more than a Sunday-morning home. The church rents space to a variety of partner organizations and community groups, with rates available for one-time, weekly or monthly use of rooms and for parking-lot events. Room-specific information and floor plans are shared with prospective tenants so that the right space can be matched to the right program. Renters and guests are welcomed as part of the church's broader ministry of presence.
Visitors planning to come during the week should call or email the church office in advance to request access into the building. Masks are optional but encouraged for in-person events, and the congregation encourages everyone who is eligible to stay current on COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Kaleidoscope: A Vision for a New Expression of Church
Under the heading "Our Vision," the congregation admits that how it lives into its mission today is not how it lived into it in 1980. The vision that has emerged is called the Kaleidoscope - a metaphor for the way different colors, identities and gifts rotate and reassemble into new patterns while remaining grounded in the same values: deep thinking, community building, spiritual practice and helping others. The Kaleidoscope calls the church to create new pathways of engaging in Christian community that revolve around those values, including smaller community groups, virtual gatherings and shared-practice rhythms like Lectio Divina and Sabbath Sundays.
Online Church and Staying Connected
For those who cannot attend in person, the church's online offerings rotate with the calendar. Live virtual worship is offered on first and third Sundays. Video sermons from those services are archived on the sermons page, and a deeper library of recorded messages stretches back through previous months. A weekly newsletter keeps members informed of upcoming scripture, events and action items, and the church's Facebook page carries additional links and articles about social justice and spirituality. The church's calendar of upcoming events is hosted on its Church Center site, where community groups and classes can also be browsed.
Pastor and Staff
The lead pastor is the Rev. Richard Fuss, who joined Bellevue First in the summer of 2022 and also serves St. Peter's United Methodist Church. A graduate of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University with a Master of Divinity, Rich holds a degree in anthropology and is a former collegiate soccer player who still coaches youth soccer and collects minor league baseball hats and coffee mugs. Before entering ministry he was a zookeeper, and he has a fondness for all things furred, feathered and scaled. The worship team is led in part by Abby Duke, who coordinates the choir and welcomes inquiries from anyone interested in serving in music ministry. A Leadership Council of church members meets monthly to pray, dream and help lead the congregation, and any member can serve on it.
Giving, Beliefs and the United Methodist Connection
The church teaches that giving is a spiritual practice on par with singing, Bible reading and prayer. Donations can be made in person during Sunday worship or through the donation box at any time, by mail, online through the church's Breeze giving page by credit or debit card or through a member's own bank's online bill pay system.
Bellevue First is a member congregation of the United Methodist Church and shares in the denomination's common mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. In 2019 the Leadership Council voted to withhold a portion of the church's apportionments - the shared dues sent to the global denomination - in protest of the United Methodist Book of Discipline's then-current language regarding LGBTQ+ persons, and to direct those funds to inclusive ministries instead. Methodism's long history of standing against the slave trade, for health care for the poor, for the humane treatment of prisoners and for universal education is cited on the church's pages as part of its inheritance. The church's own mission statement, in shorthand, is "transforming the world in the ways of Christ."
First-Time Visitor Notes
Sunday morning worship begins at 10:30 am in the Church Sanctuary. The community is intergenerational, LGBTQ-affirming and intentionally intergenerational. Parking is available on site. Masks are optional but welcomed. Those arriving during the week should contact the church office in advance for building access. The church is located at 1934 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, Washington 98004; the office can be reached at 425-454-2059 or office@fumcbellevue.org.