Portlock United Methodist Church is a deeply rooted church ministering to the neighborhood of South Norfolk, Chesapeake for over 70 years. In the 1950s, a few Christian families, deeply grounded in a Wesleyan faith tradition, gathered to impact their community and share the love of Jesus Christ. Like many church start ups today, they began meeting in a school in Portlock. It was an "all hands on deck" endeavor, fueled by passion, worship, hope and outreach to the community around them. Eventually the budding congregation built a small church on Edgewood Street in South Norfolk. Some of our founding members continue to live right up the street from this quaint, beautiful church house, which still stands today and is used by another congregation. In the early 1970s, the congregation grew enough to build our present building, on a beautiful, inviting piece of property, on the corner or Bainbridge and Red Start, just blocks away from the original church building on Edgewood.
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​Since that time, Portlock has gradually grown and deepened as a community of faith, navigating the changing economic, social and spiritual landscape where we now find ourselves, but with a firm foundation of welcoming all and engaging in ministry, mission and outreach to our community, nation and world because of our faith in Jesus Christ.

Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Discipleship begins with a journey of gradually deepening relationship with God through spiritual practice, understanding and applying the Bible to our lives, regularly meeting together with other Christians and learning a life of love. As this spiritual maturing process unfolds, the natural progression is an outer engagement with each other, community and the world. We are about getting our hands and feet dirty in becoming agents of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world. Agents of hope, peace, love, play, creativity and joy!
We believe that a personal holiness and social holiness combine together in each of our lives on the path towards becoming more and more like Christ.

We are a people who believe that God calls us to understand, as much as humanly possible and with great patience, gentleness and humility, the injustices around us and to learn from our neighbors of the best way to be part of some kind of creative solution, even in some small way, to those problems.
We are playfully and humbly experimenting on how to best be part of those solutions in ways that value the dignity and humanity of those around us, as well as in ways that contribute to long term, foundational solutions to problems we find in the world.
​We don't want to perpetuate racial, economic, environmental or social injustice through our ignorance or unwillingness to understand.
We want to find ways to use our resources - our building, our property, our social, economic and relational resources to be good neighbors and do all the good we can in this world.

We have much to learn & we invite you to join us on this adventure!