Key points:
- Legacy Black churches are seeking new ways to remain vital and reach communities, including inclusion initiatives and merging with other congregations.
- Several United Methodist annual conferences have offices, programs and committees devoted to resourcing Black churches and leaders in particular.
- Congregations continue to minister to rural and urban areas, taking mission and service beyond church walls.
Editor’s note: This is Part 4 in a special UM News series on legacy Black United Methodist churches that are maintaining their traditions while also doing innovative ministries to serve the present age. The series features venerable yet still vital African American churches in the United Methodist connection.
“Throughout history, Black churches have been more than places of worship,” said Bishop Tracy S. Malone of the Indiana Episcopal Area. “They have been sanctuaries of healing, centers of empowerment and catalysts of justice for people who have endured systemic oppression and dehumanization.”
The first Black woman to serve as president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops, she sees these churches as “places where the wounded can find refuge, where truth is boldly proclaimed and where hope is nurtured.”
For many Black churches, being relevant and resilient means looking beyond their doors to offer fresh expressions of church and to impact their communities by forming partnerships and nonprofit entities, as is the case with the historic Black United Methodist churches featured in the initial three parts of UM News’ Legacy Black churches series. Some also are renovating and repurposing their aged church buildings to invite new people in to benefit from fresh ministries, like pouring new wine into old but fortified wineskins.
At Black Methodists for Church Renewal’s general meeting in Los Angeles last month, Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi recalled a childhood memory of her father, a pastor, taking his family to visit local churches during vacation. One favorite stop was historic Tindley Temple United Methodist in Philadelphia — the nearly century-old citadel of Black congregational and community life built by iconic preacher and hymnist the Rev. Charles A. Tindley. It was one of America’s first megachurches, numbering about 10,000 members in the 1920s.
Today, the sprawling sanctuary’s wooden pews and balcony chairs are rarely full — save for major events like annual performances of Handel’s “Messiah” in December — and the celebrated Möller organ upstairs is rarely played. But downstairs, where the church once held Sunday school classes, crowds now come to enjoy tasteful food, fun and music in the new Tindley Tea Cafe.
After the COVID pandemic, Tindley Temple tried to reopen its popular soup kitchen — once among the city's largest. But repairs for its broken freezer and refrigerator were too costly. So, to raise needed funds, the church used its kitchen, restaurant license and local partnerships to open the Tindley Tea Cafe in 2024.
Along with savory dishes served daily, from menus designed by a neighboring culinary school, the cafe has hosted a gospel karaoke night, a televised election debate watch party and other gatherings for the community. Moore-Koikoi, who leads the Eastern Pennsylvania/Greater New Jersey Episcopal Area, urged BMCR members to visit the cafe if they are ever in the area.
Tindley Temple’s young pastor, the Rev. John Brice, sees the Holy Spirit moving in this new endeavor and “maximizing the potential of the church to engage with its community in new ways.” Meanwhile, with grocery prices and food insecurity a growing concern, church leaders expect to purchase needed equipment and resume their soup kitchen ministry this year.
“Our churches are facing the most dramatic headwinds they have seen in several generations for complex reasons,” said Bishop Gregory Palmer, now retired and serving as the Council of Bishops executive secretary. “But they are also facing their greatest opportunity to be shaped again by the core message of the Gospel and to articulate and embody that message creatively to both the churched and the yet-to-be churched. We must strive to make the church a place where all people feel more loved.”
Historic churches making new history
Indeed, hundreds of historic Black churches are surviving and serving their increasingly unchurched communities with a message and ministry grounded in Christ’s love. Some are even using that message to make new history.
In October, St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, became the Greater New Jersey Conference’s first historically Black reconciling congregation. It is now a part of the Reconciling Ministries Network of churches that intentionally include and affirm LGBTQ people in the life and leadership of the congregation.
Church leaders received training to advocate for the holistic health and wellness of Black LGBTQ communities, especially young people, and to develop congregational initiatives that promote inclusion.
Union Memorial United Methodist Church in Boston is the oldest Black congregation in New England Methodism. Organized in 1818 by the Rev. Samuel Snowden, a former slave, the church has a long history of abolition and civil rights work. It hosted the 1950 NAACP convention that voted to pursue the Brown v. Board of Education case in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ended legal school segregation.
“The three gifts of the Black Church have always been its spiritual depth, its emphasis on social justice and its holistic community involvement,” said Bishop L. Jonathan Holston, episcopal leader of the North Alabama and Alabama-West Florida conferences. “It is our responsibility and, indeed, our sacred calling, to be a people of faith committed to the biblical witness of advocacy against hate in all its forms.”
Union joined the Reconciling Ministries Network in 2000 and is believed to be the first Black Methodist church to openly welcome and engage its LGBTQ neighbors. While still mostly Black, it is becoming more multicultural as membership grows in its gentrifying neighborhood.
The church made history again in 2024 by merging with three other congregations to form the Union Combined Parish, a racially diverse, multisite congregation. Now they share two worship sites, four church buildings, three affordable living residences and a collective mission to seek intersectional equity and justice for all.
“The coronavirus pandemic and global lockdown, the Black Lives Matter movement and the loss of a quarter of U.S. congregations from our denomination have taught us that we can no longer do things the way we’ve always done them,” writes the Rev. Jay Williams, lead pastor, on the church’s new website. “In this light, we’ve been innovating and imagining all that is possible.”
Church mergers are usually a difficult enterprise that demand care to avoid potential pitfalls. Most churches undertake them only to survive and avoid closure. But in these challenging times, as Williams said, such collective innovation has become necessary for many.
Three historic Black United Methodist churches in Houston merged their declining resources and memberships in November after several years of preparation. Legacy United Methodist Church is their new, multigenerational congregation. Sloane Memorial, St. Mark’s and Wesley United Methodist churches had been “displaced from their respective mission fields by gentrification and a highway expansion project,” according to the Rev. Elijah Stansell Jr., Metro District superintendent.
“Once we started worshipping together, we started looking at how we were so much better together as a whole,” Legacy member Rochelle Cebrun shared. “We felt the difference almost immediately. Now we’re just over 100 members in one unified church; and we just had four new families join.”
The “Mother Church of African-American Methodism on the West Coast,” Wesley Church in Los Angeles, established in 1888, merged in 2018 with Bowen Memorial United Methodist to create Heritage United Methodist. The 85 percent Latino/Hispanic and 15 percent African American congregation, with a Latino pastor, has a mission “to be a thriving, dynamic multicultural ministry empowered by the Holy Spirit to touch people with God’s love.”
Ministering in rural and urban areas
Most historic Black United Methodist churches are small to midsize congregations serving neighbors through ministry in rural areas and towns. However, many in larger, urban areas are more widely known, even if their congregations have declined in size and scope of ministry in recent decades. They include Cory in Cleveland; Scott in Detroit; Sharp Street in Baltimore; St. James in Kansas City, Missouri; and Mt. Zion in New Orleans.
Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church, the oldest historically Black United Methodist congregation in Northern California, has been in Oakland since 1921. Now more racially and ethnically diverse, its mission to go beyond the walls of the church is important to its members, according to church leader Leslie Forestant. That includes weekly distribution of healthy food and support for Covenant House, a residential facility for homeless young people.
Meanwhile, Easter Hill United Methodist Church, in Richmond, California, is active in a multicultural, interfaith coalition of congregations helping unhoused residents to access shelter, food, parenting classes and other needs as they transition to self-sufficiency. The church also operates one of Richmond’s Freedom Schools, the national literacy and social justice summer program created for young students by the Children’s Defense Fund. The popular schools boost students’ motivation to learn and become involved in social concerns.
The South Carolina Conference has long had the denomination’s largest number of Black members and churches. Three of its most historic churches are Old Bethel United Methodist Church in Charleston, John Wesley in Greenville and Trinity in Orangeburg.
Old Bethel, founded in 1797 and likely the conference’s oldest church structure, began as a racially mixed congregation; but free and enslaved Black members were relegated to sit in the galleries. Black members seceded to create their own congregation in 1840. Years later, they returned to the original building, which they moved across the street, when the white members built a larger church facility on the grounds, now named Bethel United Methodist. Eventually, the two congregations forged a close relationship based on their shared history — a relationship that benefited the Methodists of Charleston during and after the Civil War.
Trinity United Methodist and John Wesley United Methodist, first named Silver Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, both were started in 1866 and introduced Black Methodism to their respective areas. A century later, they would host important civil rights meetings and rallies that featured prominent national leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP head Roy Wilkins and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Conferences resource Black churches
South Carolina devotes staff, funding and programs to help develop and resource Black congregations. In 1998, the conference established its Office of African American Ministries to reverse declines in Black membership and churches.
“We offer grants, resources, training and special events designed to support leadership development of African American clergy and to help African American small-membership congregations start new ministries,” said the Rev. Walter Strawther. He is a congregational specialist assigned to African American Ministries. The special events include the biennial Summit on the Black Church and the annual Carolina Black Clergy Leadership Retreat, cosponsored with the North Carolina and Western North Carolina conferences.
Like other conferences, South Carolina relies on support from the denomination’s Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century initiative and partners with its conference Black Methodists for Church Renewal caucus.
A survey of conference websites reveals seven others that identify offices, programs and committees devoted to resourcing Black churches and leadership in particular. Those conferences are Peninsula-Delaware, Texas, Louisiana, North Georgia, Western North Carolina, Michigan and California-Nevada.
The California-Nevada Conference’s Committee on African-American/Black Ministry created a five-year strategic plan in January, after leaders of its Black churches welcomed newly assigned Bishop Sandra Olewine last November.
And the North Georgia Conference’s Black Congregational Development Office offers a rich variety of programs and initiatives to help generate new leadership and approaches to ministry. That includes an Ambassadors Internship Program for mentoring young leaders, help with marketing, fundraising and technology needs, and a Black Church Collective that networks churches with local United Methodist-supported historically Black colleges and universities and other partners.
“The Black Church’s legacy of perseverance and its commitment to justice and equity position it as a vital force in shaping the future of United Methodism,” said Georgia Episcopal Area Bishop Robin Dease. “Our ministry is not only about preserving a legacy but also about shaping a future where inclusion and spiritual vitality thrive so all churches can remain vibrant and relevant.”
Several conferences have shown their commitment to justice and equity in major financial ways. New England voted in 2023 to cancel major debts owed by its 18 Black churches for past-due property insurance and apportioned funds. The resolution, drafted by Union Memorial pastor Williams, cited the biblical practice of Jubilee and the fiscal losses of Black churches and clergy from “decades of divestment, denial and discrimination.”
The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference forgave about $3 million in debts for its 29 African American churches in 2018, acknowledging similar justice reasons.
And the Missouri Conference in November 2022 provided a dozen of its 27 historic Black churches with one-time, unrestricted “boost” grants of up to $25,000 each. Those grants were used to support outreach efforts, worship and youth ministry, facility maintenance and renovations, improved building accessibility, technology for livestreaming and digital media and other needs.
Meanwhile, other conferences resource Black churches and leaders through offices and programs that are identified more broadly as “multicultural” or “racial-ethnic” ministries. And many conference websites promote anti-racism programs and resources for all churches to support the denomination’s ongoing commitment to ending racism.
“But beyond activism and resistance to end racism, the church is also called to renewal,” said Bishop Malone, who is leading the Council of Bishops to craft a new vision for the denomination’s future. “Our worship, discipleship and outreach ministries must not only address injustices. They must also cultivate a deeper, broader vision of the Beloved Community where all people can flourish.”
Coleman is a UM News correspondent and part-time pastor. News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, [email protected].
