Methodist

Stony Hill Methodists marked 200 years in 2023. Their church began when Rev Robert Young bought a house in 1823 and turned it into a chapel and minister’s home, and about 300 people came to the first service in 1824.

McKendree United Methodist Church in Nashville filled its 46,425 square feet with clinics, housing and services, and Norfolk United Methodist in Virginia used its space for transitional housing and free offices for small businesses.

Atlanta First United Methodist Church is breaking ground on a 170-apartment tower on its downtown land, with most units reserved for lower-income renters and some rents as low as $485 a month, in a first phase costing more than $105 million.

A vacant Methodist church in Netherfield, Nottinghamshire, will become 13 one-bedroom flats for supported living after Gedling planners approved the scheme despite nine objections over privacy, parking and anti-social behaviour.

Whitehaven’s Grade II listed former Wesleyan Methodist church, empty since 1996 and now in serious disrepair, could become a luxury home under plans to keep its features with minimal changes.

The United Methodist Judicial Council ruled that a Book of Discipline provision on transferring church property can only be used with denominations that have a General Conference-approved agreement, not as a way for congregations to leave with their buildings.

Doncaster’s Grade II listed 1868 Primitive Methodist Chapel on Balby Road, a stripped shell with permission for 10 flats and a four-storey extension, went to auction in July 2022 with a £136,500-plus guide.

Two United Methodist agencies sold the Kern Building in Nashville, assessed at more than $9.5 million, to Vanderbilt University after staff cuts and remote work left them with more space than they needed.

In a UM News commentary, church real estate consultant Rick Reinhard warned that United Methodist congregations’ property was eating away at the denomination and urged a strategy of data, analysis and options from leasing to redevelopment.

Beacon Methodist Church in Dover, bought at auction for £135,000 in 2016, was turned into nine flats for about £860,000 in total and valued at £1.4 million to £1.6 million, as featured on Homes Under the Hammer.

Anglican and Methodist agencies opened 16 social homes in Christchurch on church land leased for 34 years, using former earthquake temporary houses, with a community worker funded for five years.

Bermuda’s 2021 plans to close primary schools put a spotlight on their church roots: St George’s Preparatory began in a Methodist Sunday school in 1876, and St David’s Primary in a building owned by St Luke’s AME Church in 1893.

A column remembered Rev Hugh Braham Sherlock, the Methodist minister who in 1940 began Boys’ Town in the Jones Town Baptist Church hall and moved it to Trench Town, where about 1,000 people then lived in one-room shacks sharing one standpipe.

A plan to turn three redundant Methodist chapels in the Yorkshire Dales into affordable rented homes collapsed after three years when the church’s property trustees objected to local-occupancy rules, and the chapels will be sold on the open market.

Sierra Leone’s United Methodist Church settled a seven-year dispute over 443 acres near Freetown, keeping 383 acres and giving 60 to the Masantigie community, on condition it develops the land within two years.