When you visit ICON you can expect a vibrant worship experience.  Our worship services are cutting edge, tradition rich, art embracing, and Christ Centered.  If you were raised in any church you will find things that are familiar and you will find some things that are new to you. ICON is a creative convergence of many different styles of worship.

Music: True to our Methodist heritage ICON loves to sing.  Some people that have visited have said that we sing too much and too loud.  We take that as a compliment.  We sing many “contemporary” Christian worship songs as well as revamp traditional Christian hymns.  Our worship band is BANNER, led by Jeb Hunt, and is a progressive rock band that encourages the full congregation to be involve
d in the music.

Preaching: The sermons at ICON are biblically based and culturally relevant.  They build on scriptural themes, usually from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Inspiring sermons are usually provided by the Reverend Geoffrey Lentz with occasional guest preachers including the Rev. Dr. Wesley H. Wachob, Senior Pastor of FUMC and the Rev. Mary Ann Gantt, Associate Pastor of Christian Education at FUMC.

Dress: Most people come to ICON dressed very casual, but you will find a wide continuum of dress from suits to beach attire.  We don’t think God is very concerned about the state of your clothing, but the state of your heart.

Location: ICON meets in the beautifully restored Wesley Abbey of First United Methodist Church on the corner of Palafox and Wright Street.  This building is attached to the Historic Governor Perry Home where congregants gather for fellowship and coffee before and after services in the Perry Home Coffee House.  The two buildings were used as the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple from 1922-2008.  The worship space is modern in design with flexible seating, yet it maintains many of the traditional, Gothic design elements of the main sanctuary.  We are blessed with many parking places and lots surrounding the church and down Palafox St.  Because we are an urban church, there is not one lot but many interconnected places.  The parking lot map maybe helpful in finding a place.

ICON is a new style of worship at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola.  This emerging worship style is created by four guidelines:

• Cutting Edge: We don’t generally use the word “contemporary” because to some people that means 80s and 90s worship choruses.  Our music style is cutting edge in a progressive rock way through the leadership of the worship band, BANNER.  Our service is filled with cutting edge technology with two huge HD screens.  We also use facebook and twitter to keep our community networked.   We are also cutting edge because we believe we represent an emerging movement inside American Christianity that could reshape the way worship looks.
• Tradition Rich: Many “contemporary services” discard our rich Christian heritage in favor of shallow worship experiences.  We, however, use the various traditions of the church—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Charismatic—to help us encounter God in fullness.  We celebrate Holy Communion every Sunday as an “altar call”, a time where we can respond to God’s Word and give our lives to Christ to be transformed.  We also use the church calendar and lectionary to help us live out the story of Jesus in our lives.
• Art Embracing: We are a community that seeks to foster creativity.  God created us to be creative.  We encourage people with various artistic gifts to use them to glorify God trough music, dance, and visual arts.
• Christ Centered: We strive to keep Christ at the center of all we do.  We gather around a cross.  We confess that often worship has been about us and what we like and want.  Our prayer is that our worship will be centered on God and what God has done for us in Christ. ICON’s identity is not set in stone and we are growing and changing daily.  We are in the process of discovering who God is calling us to be.  With each new member, we become something new.  We don’t know what we will look like in the future, but it is our prayer that we will look like the image (icon) of Christ.  We hope that you will join us in worship and consider becoming a part of our family.

What’s with the Name

There is not an individual reason for the name ICON.  It is just who we are.  We were looking for a name that sounded cutting edge, tradition rich, art embracing, and Christ centered, and it seemed to fit.  ICON worship is highly visual and graphic with the large screens, candles, processional cross, banners, etc.  This visually rich way of worship is an heir to the ancient tradition of iconography.  St. John of Damascus argued against the iconoclasts (people that didn’t like icons) that since Jesus had taken on flesh and embraced the physical world, it was okay to have pictures of Jesus and use creative arts in worship.  We couldn’t agree more. ICON is the Greek word for image, and the Bible proclaims that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1), but though our sin we have tarnished and forgotten that image.   We believe that Christ is the true image of God (Hebrews 1) and through him God is restoring us to our true image.  The Bible says (1 John 3:2), “What we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this: that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”    We don’t fully know what ICON is, but we hope you will join us in great expectation to figure out who God is calling us to be.