Colemanville United Methodist Church

Meet our pastor

Hi, thanks for visiting our website.

I don't know if you've ever run into any Jewish United Methodist clergy, but now you can say that you have. I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior as a young adult back in 1981.

I became a pastor in 2006. I've been serving as the Senior Pastor here at Colemanville since July 2016. I formerly spent many years working as a professional musician (I started when I was 15).

I worked the pit orchestras in the theaters in Philly, toured with the National Touring Company of "Cats", played at Carnegie Hall multiple times, did numerous performances on network TV, and spent a bunch of years working in the showroom orchestras of the casinos in Atlantic City playing for the "star" acts. As a result, I have worked with, and met, many celebrities.

I also had a non-musical business of my own for several years. I've had quite a few unusual experiences along the way. But I can honestly say that none of it...and I do mean none of it...compares with the joy and the thrill of being a pastor. Not even close.

I’m really looking forward to meeting and getting to know you and your family.

Pastor Walt Unterberger

What to expect

Informal, warm, intimate, friendly...

These are all words that describe what it's like here at Colemanville. It doesn't matter if you're wearing jeans or if you like to dress up. There's a mix of folks of all ages at our worship services. It also doesn't matter whether you've been going to church for many years, or if you've never set foot inside a church before. You can be confident that you're welcome here. We're glad to see you!

8:00 AM Contemporary Worship

Our Contemporary Worship service is a very satisfying blend of modern praise music, testimonies, prayer requests, and getting fed spiritually from the Bible. Get your Sunday off to a beautiful start by joining us at 8:00 AM!

10:30 AM Traditional Worship

When we say "traditional worship" we don't mean "formal and stuffy". No, what we mean is that you get to enjoy our choir and sing well-loved hymns with lyrics that give you something to think about.

What we believe

It's entirely about God.

We believe that God is real. He made us and everything else that there is. He's not just some far-off idea. No, He's alive and active, living among us, very near at all times, and deeply interested in the details of our lives. God has a definite plan for what He wants to do here in the world, and He's chosen to have us take part in that plan. Why did He do that? We really don't know.

No law requires God to love us, or even to like us, especially since we have an inborn tendency to disobey and disappoint Him...but for reasons that we'll never fully understand, He loves us intensely and relentlessly. When we miss the mark of what He's intended for us to be and do, that is called "sin". God hates it when we sin, yet He never stops loving us and having our best interests at heart.

The implications of our sin are not good, which is of great concern to God. He knows that left to our own devices, even the best of us will live a life that leads to self-destruction and death.

Rather than leave things in that unhappy state, God decided to intervene, giving His only Son as a sacrifice to pay the price for our sins, taking upon Himself the punishment that we actually deserve. God's Son, Jesus, was the ideal one to pay that price because He, alone, was totally without sin. And even though God is invisible, Jesus, who we could see, taught us a great deal about what God is like.

Each one of us can receive the benefits that came from Jesus being sacrificed for us by, first, repenting of our sins. Repenting is a matter of feeling truly sorry for our sins and expressing that sorrow to God, admitting our guilt. Then, repentance entails our sincere turning away from those behaviors that got us into trouble in the first place.

Second, we need to give the Lord full and permanent access to our heart and life, allowing Him to make any changes in us that He wants to. We need to allow God to take hold of our life, assume ownership of it, and use it exclusively for His own purposes in any way that He sees fit.

God communicates His love to us, and deepens our relationship to Him, by means of the words of the Bible. The Bible is the very Word of God, and it's our primary source of understanding who God is and what He wants from us. Therefore, we regard the Bible as completely authoritative and effective in what it sets out to do. It's the lifelong job of those of us who seek to follow God to be studying the Bible and applying its teachings to our own lives.

God gives us the ability to learn from the Bible, communicate with Him (through prayer), and have ongoing fellowship with Him by means of His Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit are all equally God. They are three distinct Persons who nonetheless comprise the one, true God.

How We Serve Others

We get our hands dirty for the Kingdom of God.

We are devoted to being a church who does! What that means is this....it's one thing to talk about your faith, and it's another thing entirely to get your hands dirty in living it out. To us, it is extremely important for people who are sincerely trying to follow Christ to do BOTH of those things...all the time. So, we roll up our sleeves and work up a sweat in a number of great ministries to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and heal the sick. But we also look forward to telling you WHY we love Jesus as much as we do.

God's called you to do something for Him. We'll help you find what it is.

Each person who enters into a relationship with Jesus Christ is equipped by God with their own package of talents, capabilities, and gifts. God wants you to use what He's given you to benefit others. So do we...so we'll give you the opportunity to unpack what God's given you and use it well.

We share Christ.

There's a whole lot of pain, suffering, sadness, fear, mistrust, greed, envy, and selfishness in the world. BUT, there's a remedy. It's not guaranteed to make all our problems go away. But it IS most definitely the way for us to cope with those problems and to overcome them. That remedy is for each person to have an active relationship with Jesus Christ. So, we do our best to help people to find that relationship.