{"id":4405,"date":"2019-07-25T12:46:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T09:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helsinki.metodistikirkko.net\/?p=4405"},"modified":"2025-07-05T16:59:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T13:59:55","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/?p=4405","title":{"rendered":"About us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Finnish Methodist church of Helsinki was founded in 1894. So far it is the only Finnish-speaking Methodist congregation in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Today, the membership of the church totals 200 members. Our pastor are:  and Freeman Awuah (he serves mainly the English-speaking congregation in Helsinki.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The church building is situated in the Punavuori quarter near the Helsinki city centre. It was designed by the renowned architect Lars Sonck and built in 1929.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have a Worship service in Finnish every Sunday at 11 a.m, followed by church coffee. Since May 2014, an&nbsp;<strong>English-speaking worship service<\/strong>&nbsp;has taken place on on many Sundays at 12.30. If there is no English service, the Finnish worship service is usually interpreted into English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;On the weekdays we meet for Bible study and prayer on several occasions (in Finnish and\/or English).<strong>&nbsp;Meetings for prayer and Bible study in English,&nbsp;<\/strong>called&nbsp;&#8217;community fellowships&#8217;, are currently held biweekly in homes in Espoo and in Helsinki\/Vantaa. During the summer there are fewer activities, but the Worship Services are still held on Sundays, except for one Sunday in end of June or beginning of July; on that weekend the Finnish Methodists gather for their Annual Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2015 we started meetings for&nbsp;<strong>youth and young adults<\/strong>(&#8221;Nuortenilta&#8221;).&nbsp; These are usually held in Finnish but interpretation can be arranged as needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We want to reach more people with the gospel. This goal has been supported by various outreach activities over the years. Our church is active in the mission work: especially the Finnish-speaking congregation collects funds for a Christian School in India as well as for Christian summer camps and Christmas parties held in the Vepsian villages in north-west Russia (Vepsian is a Finno-Ugric language spoken as mother tongue by less than 10 000 people today).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The English-speaking group started to support mission work in Thailand in 2015, after &nbsp;Axel Barbette and Peter Willis from the Pori, Western Finland, had visited our English service, telling about the H2O work among Burmese refugees in Thailand. For more information, please check&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/help2orphans.com\/\">the H20 website.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today (2019) there are altogether 9 Finnish Methodist congregations in Finland (see a list&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/9\">here<\/a>) and 14 Swedish-speaking congregations. (click&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.metodistkyrkan.fi\/node\/7\">here<\/a>). Both the Finnish and the Swedish Methodist Churches in Finland have they own, separate organisations, but both are part of the worldwide United Methodist Church. They both belong to the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.umc-ne.org\/home\/\">UMC Nordic &amp; Baltic Episcopal Area<\/a>. The nearest&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/helsingfors.metodistkyrkan.fi\/\">Swedish-speaking Methodist congregation<\/a>&nbsp;is situated in the T\u00f6\u00f6l\u00f6 quarter of Helsinki. In addition, a&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.silaperemen.fi\/\">Russian Methodist congregation<\/a>&nbsp;was founded in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;If you are looking for a place to worship the Lord, join us on Sunday! You are warmly welcome to both our Finnish-language or English-language services and other meetings, whatever your nationality or denominational background. You can check the upcoming events in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/ajankohtaista\">Tapahtumakalenteri<\/a>(in Finnish and English). The street address of our church is &nbsp;Fredrikintori\/ Punavuorenkatu 2, and it is served by the buses 14, 17 or 18 and tram number 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently there are Methodist activities in English, besides Helsinki, at least in the Finnish-speaking congregations of&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampereenmetodistisrk.fi\/information\">Tampere,<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/porinmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php\/home\">Pori<\/a>&nbsp;and most recently also <a href=\"https:\/\/lahti.metodistikirkko.net\">Lahti<\/a>, as well as in some Swedish-speaking congregations (at least in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/abo.metsku\">Turku\/\u00c5bo<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.karleby.metodistkyrkan.fi\/node\/1\">Kokkola\/Karleby<\/a>, and in the middle of Espoo in the town of&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/grankulla.metodistkyrkan.fi\/\">Kauniainen\/Grankulla<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Finnish Methodist church of Helsinki was founded in 1894. So far it is the only Finnish-speaking Methodist congregation in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Today, the membership of the church<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"blog-btn\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/?p=4405\" class=\"home-blog-btn\">Lue lis\u00e4\u00e4<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/hands-g4308193e1_1920.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4405"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405\/revisions\/6022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.helsinginmetodistiseurakunta.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}